How many times do we have to fight for our rights? As women, we are forced to listen and follow the rules of old white men who hold power. They tell us what we can and can’t do, where we should or shouldn’t go. They run our lives. Now look where we are, we are turning back time. We are taking away a woman’s right to choose. What was Roe v Wade for if not to give us the right to choose? All the fighting and protests will have been for nothing. We try and try to get our rights back, but some people have a different idea. They think we are killing babies, doing the devil’s work. However, other people agree that we, as women, should have the right to choose what we do with our bodies. Makena Colihan, a sophomore at Chandler High School says, “I think that it is horrible. I feel like we are going backward in time. Women’s rights are being threatened and stripped away.”
Countless protests take place every year to speak out against the countless bills being put into place that continue to take away the rights we are entitled to. One such bill is Arizona’s S-1164, a ban that was recently passed 16-13 states that after 15 weeks of pregnancy, abortion will be considered illegal. This bill would strip away a woman’s right to choose what to do with their body. In this bill, the only reason an abortion would be legal after this point is in a medical emergency. This means that a woman’s life must be threatened for the government to view this as necessary. This is the bare minimum. Not only is the bill completely absurd, but it tries to guilt-trip women with phrases like, “An unborn human being begins to move about in the womb at approximately eight weeks’ gestation” (AZ 1164).
Stating what an unborn baby may be doing at a certain period is a way to guilt-trip women into not having an abortion at a certain amount of time. The bill also says, “Between five and six weeks’ gestation, an unborn human being’s heart begins beating” (AZ 1164). They use words like “unborn human being” to make a woman feel awful about a decision she may make. They also need to realize that most women don’t even know that they are pregnant at 5 to 6 weeks. This bill is a slap in the face to women across Arizona, and similar bills are being passed in other states like Texas. These bills take away a woman’s right to choose and lead to self-administered abortions, for lack of any other option. These abortions lead to the death of many women, leaving lives forever changed.
