Let me begin this column by saying that everyone has the right to have deeply held convictions about abortion. Abortion, much like choices related to one’s sexuality and sexual and reproductive health rights, is always a very intimate matter. However, your right to your personal opinion ends where another person’s bodily autonomy begins. Let me be clear about what I mean by that. Your personal beliefs do not have bearing on the choices someone else makes about their body because you will not bear the consequences of their choices. Their body, their life, therefore their choice.

I say this as a refusal to spiral into a circuitous discussion premised on moral beliefs that demonize abortion and the women/pregnant people who decide to have it. Not at this point when the United States Supreme Court – made up of mostly men who will never know what it is like to get pregnant – have overturned Roe vs. Wade and stripped millions of women and pregnant people of the basic health right to have a safe medical abortion. The right to decide about their body and their future was a privilege women in America enjoyed for around 50 years. Now, women in America will have less reproductive and sexual health freedom than their mothers and grandmothers did. 

I am enraged. 

The overturn of Roe vs. Wade will be used to justify existing Philippine laws that criminalize abortion and punish both the pregnant people who have it and the healthcare workers who assist or perform it. It will be used to justify denying Filipino women reproductive and sexual health choices that will empower them to have autonomy over their bodies and control over their futures. Most tragic is that it will downplay the death of at least three Filipino women every day because of sepsis or hemorrhage and other related – but preventable – complications linked to unsafe abortions.

Must Read

[DASH of SAS] Abortion is an open secret

Filipino women and pregnant people die because banning abortions has never worked in preventing it. Abortion bans have only succeeded in making abortion unsafe and risky for women and pregnant people. 

The reality is that data from health authorities including the World Health Organization (WHO) shows that abortion is a healthcare intervention that about 1 in 4 women will have had by the time they are 45. In other words, about 25% of women during the span of their reproductive years will need an abortion. 

This number supports the many reasons a pregnant person may need an abortion: incomplete miscarriage that requires abortion care, fetal abnormality that will mean the fetus will not survive even if pregnancy is carried to term, failure of birth control, pregnancy as a result of rape or incest, or just because the pregnant person for their own reasons wanted an abortion.

As a reflection of a pregnant person’s informed personal decision, all of these reasons are equally valid and legitimate. As a reflection of medical fact and public health practice, these reasons widen the lens of discourse and view abortion for what it is at its core: a life-saving health intervention.

And to be honest, I am scared. 

I am terrified because this is only the start of what they will take away from us next. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, in his concurring opinion of the reversal of Roe vs. Wade, said that “the next to be reconsidered should be same sex marriage, gay sex, and contraception.”

Must Read

In their own words: US Supreme Court justices on overturning Roe v. Wade

This is more than a warning of what rights they will rob us off next – it is a blueprint. 

It also serves as a road map for the resistance. 

More than anything, I am fired up by the reaction around the world as a call to arms.   

I support, embrace, and respect the women around the world who are sharing their stories of abortion. At great personal risk to their emotional well-being, these women are creating a safer space for other women and pregnant people to share their own stories. 

Like many others, my rage and my fear propel me to stand up, take the streets, raise my fist, and extend my uterus. I am one of the hordes of others standing at the frontlines to safeguard the sexual and reproductive rights that we still have and fight for the rights we deserve. This is what our mothers and grandmothers did. It is time for us to do the same and more. 

They chipped off women’s sexual and reproductive health rights and they will strip away more – from the queer, from the gender non-conforming, from the colored and marginalized. But they did not and will not take away our spirit. Not today, not ever. – Rappler.com

Ana P. Santos writes stories that sit at the intersections of gender & sexuality, labor migration, and digital cultures. Follow her on Facebook: Sex and Sensibilities.com and on Twitter at @iamAnaSantos.