NEW YORK — Vice-President J.D. Vance recently warned those impatient to punish women for having an abortion to wait just a little longer and to keep the quiet part quiet until they can “win big.” At the same time, self-described “abortion abolitionists” are advocating publicly to criminalize pregnant women for obtaining an abortion.
The following statement from Pregnancy Justice President Lourdes A. Rivera is in response:
“Four years after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion, the anti-abortion movement is showing its hand of its true agenda, Vice-President J.D. Vance recently warned those impatient to punish women for having an abortion to wait just a little longer and to keep the quiet part quiet until they can “win big.” That is, until they can persuade the American people that the government should send women to prison and face the death penalty for having an abortion.
It is not enough for miscarrying patients to be denied proper medical care because doctors and hospitals fear legal consequences of being accused of providing abortion care. The anti-abortion movement wants to control and punish women who fail to conform to narrowly defined gender roles and to use the state’s police power to do so. This has been happening even while Roe was in place. And it is expanding and coming for all of us in a post-Dobbs environment. We’ve seen at least 15 states introduce bills that would clear the way for the prosecution of abortion as homicide, with the overwhelming majority of these implicating the death penalty.
The policing and punishment of pregnancy and maternal behavior is a key mechanism in imposing a social order in which women are relegated back to the home, forced to be completely self-sacrificing for their pregnancies, even with their lives, denied the right to vote, excluded from education and financial independence, and made subservient to white, male, Christian heads of households.
We won’t stand for it. We’ll continue to fight every day for pregnant people’s human rights and ability to be part of an inclusive, equitable, and diverse democracy.
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Pregnancy Justice is a legal nonprofit organization that advances and defends the rights of pregnant people, no matter if they give birth, experience a pregnancy loss, or have an abortion, focusing on those most likely to be targeted: poor people, people of color, and people who use drugs.