Utah Now Has 72 Hour Waiting Period for Abortions

keepyourboehneroutofmyuterus:

Melissa McEwan:

For everyone, it is profoundly hostile to their agency, their capacity for self-determination and self-knowledge. 

Again, I will note that forcing a pregnant person to wait to get an abortion will not change the circumstances which brought hir to an abortion clinic in the first place.

A pregnant person who is coerced by the state, via guilt or inconvenience, into not terminating the pregnancy will not be magically cured by a three-day delay of a devoid of the will to parent, or the lack of better options, or under- or unemployment, or being broke, or massive debt, or being uninsured, or the lack of daycare, or the inability to care for hirself and/or hir existing children, or the need to take medication that zie can’t take while pregnant, or the likelihood of passing on a fatal recessive genetic disorder, or the enmeshment in an unhealthy or abusive relationship, or whatever circumstance(s) made abortion hir preferred option.

Abortions don’t happen because women and other people with uteri are stupid or thoughtless or rash or uninformed. (In fact, young women especially are more likely to be uninformed about abortion than their other options.) Underlying this absurd law is rank paternalism rooted in the misogynist fallacy that women get abortions impulsively and must be stopped by the sage gentlemen whose “objectivity” is protected by their safe remove to august statehouses that aren’t sullied by the messy complexities of real life like the grotty experiences of bespoiled womenfolk and other uterined ones.

While it is easier to rally around laws that force ultrasounds on our bodies or actively work to take away access to birth control, waiting period laws are horrific pieces of legislation that drive up the cost of abortion, make access completely impossible for some people (mainly poor or low-income rural people), and only exist because lawmakers assume terrible things about the people who want or need abortions. I hate waiting period laws with a passion. This makes me very sad for Utah.