Texas Republicans intend for SB 8 to be the template for gutting reproductive healthcare in the United States. It must not stand.

Ten days ago, a five-mem­ber right wing major­i­ty on the Unit­ed States Supreme Court allowed Texas Sen­ate Bill 8 to go into effect, in what felt like anoth­er death knell for democ­ra­cy and the civ­il rights of women and peo­ple with uteruses.

Billed by Repub­li­cans as the “Texas Heart­beat Act,” Sen­ate Bill 8 bans all abor­tions before six weeks of preg­nan­cy and puts antiabor­tion cam­paign­ers — or any­one inter­est­ed in mak­ing ten thou­sand bucks — in charge of enforce­ment, by estab­lish­ing a sys­tem where­by any­one may sue any­one who per­forms or facil­i­tates an abor­tion for a min­i­mum of $10,000 in statu­to­ry damages.

As med­ical pro­fes­sion­als have explained, SB 8’s nick­name (“Texas Heart­beat Act”) is a mis­nomer. At six weeks, a fetus is not ful­ly formed, so while there may be some lev­els of car­diac activ­i­ty, there is no heart­beat.

The name, like the law itself, is meant to intim­i­date peo­ple and put an excla­ma­tion point on the forced preg­nan­cy, forced birth agen­da that right wing Repub­li­cans across the coun­try have been push­ing for over fifty years.

Accord­ing to the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion of Preg­nan­cy, the major­i­ty of women will find out that they are preg­nant between weeks four and sev­en of their preg­nan­cies. With care clin­ics in the Lone Star State unable to offer abor­tion, women in Texas who find out they are preg­nant after six weeks will be a dif­fi­cult predica­ment. Many will no doubt be advised to go out of state for care.

In fact, clin­ics in near­by states like Okla­homa, and New Mex­i­co are already prepar­ing to deal with an onslaught of Texas-based patients in the future.

Apart from the fact that this has the poten­tial to over­whelm already thin­ly spread resources in sur­round­ing states, it is not a prac­ti­cal means of access­ing repro­duc­tive care. Inter­state trav­el is sim­ply not fea­si­ble for many women, par­tic­u­lar­ly women of col­or and eco­nom­i­cal­ly dis­ad­van­taged women.

Not all women in Texas have access to the trans­porta­tion or funds need­ed to trav­el hun­dreds if not thou­sands of miles for a med­ical pro­ce­dure they should have access to in their home state. Activists for wom­en’s rights and repro­duc­tive health­care providers have already spo­ken out about how Sen­ate Bill 8 will dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly impact low income women of col­or, espe­cial­ly Black women.

A study from the Guttmach­er Insti­tute revealed that 49% of all women in the U.S. who received an abor­tion in 2014 were liv­ing below the fed­er­al pover­ty line.

Fur­ther­more, data from Texas Health and Human Ser­vices shows that Black women made up 29% of all Texas-res­i­dent abor­tions in 2020.

Fur­ther­more, 36% of Texas-res­i­dent abor­tions in 2020 were Lat­inx women.

Stud­ies have indi­cat­ed that high­er rates of unin­tend­ed preg­nan­cies occur among peo­ple of col­or due to deep-root­ed struc­tur­al issues that lim­it access to con­tra­cep­tives and oth­er forms of pre­ven­ta­tive care.

There is a grow­ing lev­el of appre­hen­sion that this new law bill will force vul­ner­a­ble young girls in Texas out of girl­hood and into moth­er­hood before they are tru­ly ready. To this, back­ers of restric­tive abor­tion leg­is­la­tion proud­ly tout adop­tion as an option. How­ev­er, as a fel­low adoptee, I know it is not that simple.

For some, car­ry­ing a preg­nan­cy to term and then giv­ing the baby up for adop­tion is a far more trau­mat­ic deci­sion than elect­ing to have an abor­tion ear­li­er on in the preg­nan­cy. For oth­ers, abor­tion is a med­ical­ly safer option than adoption.

Data from the CDC shows that pri­or to the ver­dict in Roe v. Wade in 1973 (which legal­ized abor­tion nation­wide), only 9% of nev­er-mar­ried women chose adop­tion as an option for an unwant­ed preg­nan­cy. After the 1980s, this fig­ure decreased to about 2% and was last report­ed below 1% in 2002.

Soci­ol­o­gists note that women are not nec­es­sar­i­ly choos­ing between abor­tion and adop­tion but abor­tion and par­ent­ing, which in cas­es means choos­ing between one’s goals and ambi­tions and rais­ing a child one nev­er want­ed to have.

As an adoptee, I know very clear­ly what it means to have grown up in a home where I had a par­ent who was ful­ly com­mit­ted to being a par­ent and who had the resources to sup­port a child. The detri­men­tal effects of being born and raised into a home where one is made to feel like a bur­den are obvi­ous to most.

Restric­tive abor­tion bans like this do not just strip one per­son, one par­ent, or one gen­er­a­tion of their repro­duc­tive rights, but also affect gen­er­a­tions to come.

Chil­dren born to moth­ers denied abor­tions are more like­ly to live in house­holds with­out ade­quate access to basic care. Like­wise, moth­ers of said chil­dren are less like­ly to form strong mater­nal bonds with their kids and are more sus­cep­ti­ble to feel­ings of resent­ment, and issues like these are often cyclical

And we all know — or should know — that these same (most­ly male) Repub­li­cans who are forc­ing women and peo­ple with uterus­es to car­ry preg­nan­cies to term are nev­er there when it is time to feed, clothe and pro­vide for the chil­dren who have been brought into the world as a result of those pregnancies.

Remem­ber, every Repub­li­can in Con­gress vot­ed against the Child Care Tax Credit.

SB 8 is not a heart­beat bill. It’s a heart­less bill. It’s a thought­less bill. It’s a repro­duc­tive rights deny­ing, free­dom-steal­ing bill. And it must be overturned.