The Heartbeat Law and Heartbreak

 

 

Ohio passed a bill last night, a bill that would drastically change the abortion rights. It is called the HEARTBEAT BILL but I would recommend to rename it to HEARTBREAK BILL instead.

We are a childless couple, we couldn’t be the family that we wanted to be, we became a stronger US instead. I had my share of heartache. I looked with envy at the pregnant women around me. Why couldn’t I have what they could? There was even a time when I refused to look at babies, that’s how cheated I felt. The easiest thing in the word, the most natural thing in the world was denied to us. Life isn’t fair, I learned that early on.

But even as a young woman who yearned to have children, even then did I believe that a woman should have more rights than a fetus. I am not pro-abortion, but I am pro-choice. The old question when life begins has put this bill on the table. Empowered by the election of Donald Trump, the Republican lawmakers try to cut  women and girl’s rights. When does life begin? Is it with the heartbeat, or is it when the brain develops. If it’s the heartbeat, why do we turn off the machines if someone is brain dead?

The Heartbeat-Bill will prohibit abortion as soon as a fetal heartbeat can be detected, at around six weeks -way before many women and girls even realize that they are pregnant.

It goes further into detail, that it will also prohibit abortion under the same law if rape or incest took place. Women would have to stay pregnant, even at the cost of their own life.

The bill would make it a fifth-degree felony, punishable by up to one year in prison, for a physician to perform an abortion without checking for a fetal heartbeat or performing the procedure after it can be detected. The doctor also could face a civil lawsuit from the mother and disciplinary action.

While several states have considered fetal heartbeat abortion bans, only two passed it, Arkansas and North Dakota. The laws in both states were later found to be unconstitutional by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and declared illegal. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear appeals.

The new President-Elect and the new Supreme Court justice appointees have changed the dynamic in this country, and it’s not even January yet.

I am not a  young woman anymore, now I am an older woman who never will have Grandchildren. But even now at an age where I don’t have to worry about an unwanted pregnancy, even now I would like to get up and scream STOP.

Once again do I stand on the sideline and feel that women’s rights are being trampled on. Once again do I feel that women will be puppets on a string for so many in power. Politics and religion they all want to rule us -again.

President-Elect Donald Trump said it himself, he believes that women should be punished if they have an abortion. “Poor little babies get cut out of the womb,” he said at a Presidential debate. I sat at home and shook my head. “Poor little babies are being forced having babies,” does that sound better?

Have we not learned a thing? Abortion has always been around -will always be around. If we don’t allow young women and girls to have a say in this, then we force them to have the procedure done in a back alley -often without a doctor. Do we really want to go back to that?

Where I came from we called these back alley abortion places, “Angelmakers.” Many women and many girls didn’t survive -still, they went there, it was their last hope.

We are all equal, are we not? To provide equal protection under the law, shouldn’t these abortion-restricting laws also equally punish the expectant fathers? It takes two to tango.

How can a fetus have more rights? How can a fetus decide over a woman’s health? 

Having a child or abortion, either way, it is a very personal decision of a woman and no one should impose a moral code. How can we have the death penalty and so easily take a human life, and then turn around and cry out when a fetus gets aborted?

In a perfect world, there wouldn’t be an unwanted pregnancy, there wouldn’t be rape and incest. Babies wouldn’t have babies, and there wouldn’t be any health concerns. Newsflash: We don’t live in a perfect world!

I hope young women and men in this country will get up and protest! The war against women is still going on.

This new law should not pass, not here in Ohio or anywhere else. It is unconstitutional and cruel. I do hope that Governor Kasich will veto it, yet I don’t hold my breath.

 

 

Protest