Overturning Roe is good for all women

On Monday night, as I read Politico’s report on the U.S. Supreme Court’s leaked draft opinion in the Dobbs abortion case, I was even more cognizant than usual of my ever-growing belly and the life inside of it. My unborn baby is at 12 weeks of gestation, and it is never lost on me that she is at an age when abortion could still legally claim her life in the very place she’s supposed to be most safe: my womb. But now there’s a chance that when my baby is born, she will never know an America in which abortion is recognized as a constitutional right. She could be one of the first of a post-Roe generation.

What the leaker almost certainly underestimated is the majority of Americans, myself included, who are elated at the draft opinion’s holding, who are rejoicing after reading the document, mindful of all the women and children and families who would be protected from the evil of abortion if it ends up being the court’s ultimate ruling. More than half of Americans are against abortion after the first trimester. Sixty percent do not want their tax dollars funding the killing of the unborn. We are not a silent minority. We are a loud, science-backed majority made up of women and men of every race and ethnicity, religion or none, political party and persuasion. We will see an end to the scourge of legal abortion during our lifetimes. We know this leaked opinion is only in draft form, but we wait with hope.

But I’m also mindful of the women who protested outside of the Supreme Court on Monday night, with their usual signs held high: “My body, my choice.” “You cannot take our healthcare.” They’ve been told they can’t succeed in life without access to abortion. They’ve been told that there’s no way they can have a child and a career, too. They don’t know how they’d make ends meet if they found out the pregnancy test was positive. Many of them don’t have spouses, or supportive spouses, or families that could help them stay afloat for the weeks and months it takes to heal from labor and childbirth. And they can’t imagine what their world would look like if their last-ditch backup plan disappeared.

These women’s fears are not unfounded. But it is abortion, not children, that has hindered true advances in women’s health in our country, which ranks among the worst for developed nations in maternal mortality. Postpartum care in America, while weekly for the newborn infant, consists only of one quick appointment for the mother six weeks after giving birth—not to mention the struggle for women in affording child care so they can support their family or the myriad health issues women face from conception to natural death that are not related to their reproductive health.

For too long, liberal politicians have conflated “women’s reproductive health” with abortion. For far too long, access to abortion has been sold as how women must live and thrive. Women deserve better.

This is why Christians have long served women with unwanted pregnancies through more than 3,000 pregnancy centers, which offer free services to their clients. It’s why Christians dominate the adoption and foster care spaces to assist birth mothers and their children. It’s why Christians will continue to operate these ministries, these essential social services, if Roe and Casey are overturned and abortion is returned to the states to decide. And it’s why Christians should be among the first to advocate that the government do more to protect women and children in this nation so that women no longer feel like abortion is their only choice. This is how we change hearts, minds, and, ultimately, laws in a post-Roe world: charity and compassion, yes, but also firm conviction.

Because we know that abortion is not a “choice.” Abortion is not healthcare. Abortion is not good for women. Abortion is, according to science, the ending of a human life.

On Tuesday, I watched my baby on the ultrasound, squirming in my belly, moving her arms and legs as any newborn would. She put her hand up to her face as if sucking her thumb. She was bouncy and active and very much alive. We owe it to her and the countless unborn like her to continue the fight. Not against those concerned women, but for them, too.

Lord-willing, the battle against Roe may finally be over. Even so, the fight for the lives of the unborn has only just begun.