Two recent cases show women are regarded as vessels, not people.
Abortion opponents try to hide their authoritarian tendencies. In victory, though, their motives are clear, and so is the movement’s true character. Forced birth is not an accidental outcome of the end of Roe v. Wade, but rather the primary goal — no matter the consequences. A woman’s needs become secondary to fetal requirements. The viability of a fetus does not seem to matter, nor does the woman’s health. Just ask Kate Cox.
Cox needed an abortion. Her fetus had trisomy 18, which meant the pregnancy would almost certainly result in a miscarriage or stillbirth. The pregnancy was dangerous for Cox too. She repeatedly visited the emergency room with severe cramping and fluid leeks, and her doctors and attorneys have said that she was at high risk for pregnancy complications like hypertension and gestational diabetes. The mother of two would likely need a third C-section, which further increased her risk of complications, Vox reported. But she lives in Texas, where an abortion ban narrows her chances of getting the procedure. Though the law technically allows for exceptions if a woman’s life or health is in danger, the language is so vague that it’s unclear whether Cox could get the abortion she needed. So she sued with the assistance of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “An abortion was not something I ever imagined I would want or need,” she wrote in an op-ed in the Dallas Morning News. “I need to end my pregnancy now so that I have the best chance for my health, for parenting my children, and for a future pregnancy.”
A district court judge granted Cox a temporary restraining order against the state’s ban so she could get an abortion, but Texas attorney general Ken Paxton filed for a stay, which the Texas Supreme Court granted as it considered her suit. As legal limbo set in, Cox, who was just over 20 weeks pregnant, left the state to get the health care she needed. Her cause continued, though, and on Tuesday, the Texas Supreme Court ruled against her. “Any parent would be devastated to learn of their unborn child’s trisomy 18 diagnosis,” the court wrote, adding, “Some difficulties in pregnancy, however, even serious ones, do not pose the heightened risks to the mother the exception encompasses.”
As Cox challenged the state of Texas, a woman in Kentucky filed a class-action lawsuit against her state’s abortion ban. She is eight weeks pregnant and does not want to be. Her attorneys at the ACLU announced on Tuesday that doctors could no longer detect any cardiac activity in her embryo. “Although she decided to have an abortion, the government denied her the freedom to control her body,” the ACLU’s Brigitte Amiri said in a statement. “Countless Kentuckians face the same harm every day as the result of the abortion ban.” The lawsuit continues.
These women have revealed a crucial truth: Abortion bans weren’t written for human beings. As written, they strip women of their humanity and reimagine them as vessels. A vessel is not a person. A vessel has no rights. A vessel is only useful as long as it is functional. When it is no longer fit for purpose, it is cast aside; there are plenty more where it came from.
This truth contradicts the anti-abortion movement, which says it cares for women. “Every day, the pro-life community proves that we are here for women and their children, born and pre-born, no matter how many times we’re accused of not caring,” said Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life, in 2022 just before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. “But as we get closer to a post-Roe America, we’re taking our message straight to women across the country so that they know we are standing with them so that they never have to stand alone.” Care has its limits in post-Roe America, and abortion opponents have indeed abandoned women like Cox and Jane Doe. Serrin M. Foster, the president of Feminists for Life, once said that “since we are both pro-woman and pro-life, we refuse to choose between women and children.” We know, however, who the anti-abortion movement would choose. Ken Paxton and the conservatives on the Texas Supreme Court believed that a nonviable fetus mattered more than the living Kate Cox.
To even the friendliest foes of abortion, women are vessels, not people. By forcing a woman to give birth, they admit that, to them, a woman matters less than the fetus she carries. The two can never be equal. Cox, then, is not really an outlier. Though most abortion bans allow some exceptions, women rarely get them, the New York Times reported earlier this year. In one case, an Indiana woman learned that her fetus had a fatal birth defect. Her doctor recommended an abortion, but the hospital decided against it given the state’s restrictive abortion laws. “It was messy enough that everyone was appropriately nervous,” said the doctor, Lori Day.
Abortion opponents may promise care and compassion, but this is a ruse. The truth is now on display: The anti-abortion movement is at heart anti-human. It cannot promise compassion and deny abortion care at the same time. Nor can it be salvaged by a few acts of charity, like its crisis-pregnancy centers that lie to women about the dangers of abortion and offer, at best, a few free diapers and wipes. Only a few abortion opponents support an expanded welfare state, and they still can’t escape their innate authoritarianism — they’d force women to give birth too. There is no freedom here, and certainly no compassion. Why should anyone care how a vessel feels? But abortion opponents have badly miscalculated. Women are still people, and as such they can speak for themselves. They can fight.
