USA 2024: pro-life?

Why I consider the presidential election as a potential turning point for abortion, a human right.

28 November 2024

By Emma Davidson

You may have heard that Republican Donald Trump has once again won the election to become the President of the United States of America. While we all can’t stand hearing any more about the outcome of the election, there are many other discourses following the Republican’s victory.

Feminists, women and queer people across the USA have expressed their worries about a possible abortion ban under a Trump government, which is supposedly part of “Project 2025”.

Until its overriding in 2022, the Roe v. Wade act from 1973 had made abortion a constitutional right in the USA. Many states strictly banned and criminalised abortions following the termination of this act. Other states had not put a total ban on abortions and so companies in those states built a system of delivery in order to provide people in the anti-abortion states with abortion pills via mail delivery.

With news of Trump’s victory spreading across the country, a greater demand for abortion pills has been documented. People are starting to fear a “reproductive apocalypse” and are therefore hoarding abortion pills before they will be banned. But not only abortion pills have been on a higher demand, emergency contraception, like the Plan B pill, have also been purchased in bulk. Doctors have been contacted by their trans patients who fear they might not be able to obtain hormonal medication and -care under Trump’s administration.

So there has been a distribution of the power to make descisions conserning abortions. So what? Why is it so bad if the individual federal states decide about abortion rights? Taking away the right to abort is taking away people’s democratic right of self-fulfilment and sexual and reproductive autonomy. In a democratic country like the USA, a basic human right like this should not stay unprotected by the constitution. Yes, the citizens of the states will vote on the issue of abortions, but forcing someone to carry out an unwanted child is, in my opinion, cruel and should not be decided by anyone else than the pregnant person themselves.

Although the people sitting in the court rooms of the White House in Washington DC are majorily men, who cannot get pregnant, they recurringly put themselves in the position of deciding what pregnant people should and shouldn’t do with their bodies. The introduction of an abortion ban would mean a rise in illegal abortions, implying major health consequences and even death for the people getting the procedure.

Although this article is about abortion rights in the USA, I want to make a point by saying that abortion is not only a subject in the currant political landscape of the United States of America. Many other countries and regions are still talking about and actively passing bills to ban abortions, even in seemingly “liberal” countries like Germany.

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USA 2024: pro-life?

Why I consider the presidential election as a potential turning point for abortion, a human right.

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Fachbereich Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften