Safe, Legal, Accessible

This sum­mer, fol­low­ing the over­turn­ing of Roe v. Wade, I signed up to vol­un­teer as a dri­ver for the Kentucky Health Justice Network.  I am a staunch believ­er that the right to an abor­tion is an inte­gral part of the rights of women to receive health care.  I am not “pro-abor­tion” – but I believe that abor­tion is a deci­sion that women and their doc­tors are the only ones qual­i­fied to make.  Whole books can be writ­ten about par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tions when women might want or need access to abor­tions.  All of those rea­sons file under the tab “not my business.” 

But what is now part­ly my busi­ness is that abor­tion care – and many oth­er kinds of relat­ed non-abor­tion care – are hard to access for Kentuckians.  Monday morn­ing at 7:30 am, I picked up a woman I have nev­er met, along with her fam­i­ly mem­ber she asked to accom­pa­ny her, and I drove her to Cincinnati in morn­ing rush hour traf­fic.  I wait­ed in and near my car for three hours after arrival, and then drove her and her com­pan­ion home. 

I have two grown daugh­ters.  As much as I love them and want to be near them, I can­not, in good con­science, wish for my daugh­ters to live in Kentucky. 

That jour­ney and wait end­ed up tak­ing eight hours.  I am not in the least unhap­py that I was the per­son avail­able to do this.  But I did start think­ing about all the hours, all the peo­ple, and all the wor­ry that is being put into help­ing women access abor­tions.  I will end up spend­ing about 15 hours help­ing this one woman.  Other vol­un­teers have dri­ven women to Illinois, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina.  Some col­leges now pay to sup­port stu­dent trav­el dur­ing sum­mer breaks, if a stu­dent needs an abor­tion and can­not get one in their home state.  Enormous time and mon­ey and ener­gy are going into help­ing women get the basic repro­duc­tive health care they need.

Even if you’re against legal abor­tion rights, it has to be acknowl­edged that this is a huge expen­di­ture of pro­duc­tive human ener­gy that could be going to oth­er things: to gar­den­ing, to mak­ing art, to teach­ing or learn­ing, to research, to ser­vice.  And the fact is, no mat­ter how many states make abor­tion inac­ces­si­ble, women will con­tin­ue to go to enor­mous lengths to access abor­tions some­how, and there will be deter­mined peo­ple who will help them. 

I read recent­ly that work­er pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in the U.S. has dropped.  As flawed as the con­cept of GDP is (not includ­ing essen­tial ser­vices such as par­ent­ing and gar­den­ing and being a spouse — any­thing that doesn’t direct­ly or indi­rect­ly “make mon­ey”), it is still a mea­sure of eco­nom­ic health.  People with­out nec­es­sary repro­duc­tive health care will be less pro­duc­tive.  We shouldn’t have to dri­ve across state lines, using gas and time and ener­gy, sim­ply to ensure that women can con­trol their own repro­duc­tive fates. 

I don’t even want to get into dis­cussing the costs of hav­ing chil­dren.  While our safe­ty nets help with some of these costs – basic nutri­tion and min­i­mal health insur­ance – most of these costs fall to women, because the men who are unre­li­able about birth con­trol and con­sent are the same men who don’t share these costs will­ing­ly.  No small num­ber of abor­tions are cho­sen because chil­dren are expen­sive and because some men fail to share the costs of rais­ing them. 

I have two grown daugh­ters.  As much as I love them and want to be near them, I can­not, in good con­science, wish for my daugh­ters to live in Kentucky.  It’s not a safe place to get preg­nant, by choice or not, know­ing that so much preg­nan­cy-relat­ed care is tan­gled with abor­tion rights.  I’m going to keep fight­ing, though, by vot­ing against Amendment 2 and by con­tin­u­ing to spend oth­er­wise use­ful hours to make sure women in this state have access to repro­duc­tive health care.