It’s easy to forget, or perhaps many haven’t learned, that less than 150 years ago, the now polarizing hot-button issue of #abortion was a widely accepted part of life in the U.S. In fact abortion “is absolutely traditional, it is sacred,” says Rachael Lorenzo (pictured left). 
“Our ancestors have been having abortions and controlling our fertility since time immemorial, since our Creator put us where we are today. And whether it was drought or famine or war or whatever, we have been controlling our fertility.” -- Rachel Lorenzo
Lorenzo, who is Mescalero Apache, Laguna Pueblo, and Xicana, is a queer parent of two. One of the main motivations for them in creating reproductive health and justice center Indigenous Women Rising, was to make "space for us to tell our own stories on our own terms."
Lorenzo talked with Unicorn Riot about a large swath of the reproductive justice movement they call “pussy hat feminism,” which doesn’t allow for critique of one of its popular slogans: ‘abortion on demand and without apology.’
Although Lorenzo admits the slogan is a “a great thing to aspire to,” they don’t think it speaks “to the values of a lot of Indigenous communities."
“We have to also consider colonization . . . and the history of boarding schools and how we’ve been indoctrinated by Christian religions and have had our language and our culture stripped away, and so when we’re dealing with all of that . . ." (pt. 1)
"and trying to figure out for ourselves where abortion fits in our spiritual lives, that kind of rhetoric doesn’t allow room for us to feel any kind of these mixed feelings around abortion and be validated." (pt. 2)
"Like we should be so grateful that abortion is legal in all 50 states, but for us it’s essentially not." (pt. 3)
When Roe v. Wade was passed, it didn’t automatically secure access to affordable, safe, and respectful treatment. And only four years later, the Hyde Amendment eliminated all federal funding for abortion, with a few exceptions.
The exceptions are if a physician finds the pregnant person’s life would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term, or if the pregnancy stems from rape or incest.
If those exceptions don’t apply and the pregnant person doesn’t have insurance (or the insurance doesn’t cover it), then they would have to pay at least $500 out of pocket, otherwise they can’t access a legal abortion.
In addition to Medicaid, the Indian Health Service (IHS) is affected by the Hyde Amendment. Many Indigenous people in the U.S. rely on IHS, which is a “crappy healthcare system,” says Rachael Lorenzo.
In the 1970s, IHS had a policy to forcibly sterilize Indigenous women. Lorenzo pointed out it was “targeting full blooded Indigenous people with the goal of breeding us out of existence, so that way the federal government wouldn’t have trust responsibilities.”
Accurate records were not kept, but the total number of forced tubal ligations and hysterectomies range from 3,400 to 70,000, or as many as 25% of those between the ages of 15 and 44 years old.
The United States has a long record of abusing, harming, and exploiting human beings to gain control and power, and to maintain their status quo. Attempting to govern someone’s internal flesh is no different.
Right now abortion is in the headlines because Texas lawmakers passed SB-8, known as the ‘six-week abortion ban,’ which went into effect at the beginning of September, including both surgical abortion and medical (pill) abortion.
This law effectively prevents anyone who can become pregnant from having an abortion in Texas (even if the pregnancy stems from rape or incest) by permitting a type of vigilantism.
It gives the green light for anti-abortion advocates to file lawsuits against reproductive health centers (and any “aiders and abettors“) if they provide an abortion after a heartbeat is detected. If the 'pro-lifer' wins, they can receive a bounty reward of $10,000 or more.
Before the bill was signed into law, the Center for Reproductive Rights filed a lawsuit on behalf of a coalition of abortion funds, doctors, clinic staff, support networks, and clergy members asking the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas to block the law.
The federal district court was “prepared to give some relief,” according to Joanna Grossman, a Texas-based law professor and reproductive rights lawyer, but the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals intervened and ruled for the law to go into effect.
At that point, the pro-choice coalition filed an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, and to Grossman’s surprise, the court denied the appeal.
In the Supreme Court’s published decision, the four chief justices who dissented shared their opinion that Texas’ “desired consequence” worked.
Since the state “delegated enforcement of that prohibition to the populace at large,” they are not the ones who can be “restrained from enforcing their rules because they do not enforce them in the first place.”
A few legal challenges have been filed since the law went into effect. On Sept 9, President Biden’s Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Texas. In its first hearing on October 1, the focus was on the DOJ's request to temporarily halt the law while the lawsuit is ongoing.
Presiding U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman ruled on October 6 in favor of the Justice Department, temporarily halting the 6-week abortion ban saying "this Court will not sanction one more day of this offensive deprivation of such an important right.” - Judge Robert Pitman
Two days later, Texas appealed the ruling to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and succeeded, putting the ban back into effect. The DOJ responded on October 11, urging the courts to halt the law.
The Texas Attorney’s General office responded on October 14 pushing the 5th Circuit to keep the 6-week ban in effect while the court hears the case. The next day, the DOJ said it will ask the Supreme Court to block the law as its legality plays out in the courts.
Although Texas' ban is the only one of its kind in effect, other states have signed 6-week bans into law that are currently blocked, and more bans have been introduced in other states.
Mississippi passed a 6-week ban on abortion at the beginning of 2020. The Center for Reproductive Rights filed a lawsuit against the state asking a federal district court to block the law before it took effect on July 1, 2020, which successfully halted it.
The state appealed to the Fifth Circuit, but the appeals court upheld the lower court’s decision. Then Mississippi requested the Supreme Court review the lawsuit filed against. In May 2021, the request was granted.
In this case, the Supreme Court agreed to consider the question as to whether all pre-viability prohibitions on abortion are unconstitutional—therefore putting Roe v. Wade at risk. The hearing begins with oral arguments on December 1, 2021.
Another 6-week abortion ban is in the works in Florida. At the end of September 2021, Republican state Rep. Webster Barnaby proposed a near identical bill to Texas’ 6-week ban called the “Florida Heartbeat Act.”
There are many more states with restrictions, and in fact only 18 states will have abortion protections if Roe v. Wade is weakened or overturned. Unicorn Riot created this infographic highlighting the most restrictive states.
Even with more than half of U.S. states clamoring for the repeal of Roe v. Wade, the majority of U.S. adults believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. According to the Pew Research Center, 59% of U.S. adults say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
Another survey by PerryUndem Research/Communication found that 73% of U.S. voters don’t want Roe v. Wade overturned, and 67% think abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
In recent history, control over one’s own body and fertility (including abortion) was broadly normal and not only for “Indigenous people, but every person who could become pregnant, that was part of life,” Rachael Lorenzo points out.
It wasn’t until settlers invaded the continent, forcefully removed and massacred many Indigenous people, created colonies, and began populating the land, that a shift in who controlled fertility was set in motion.
Because the legality of abortion in each of the colonies depended on the stance of the European country which controlled it, the shift wasn’t widespread.
In fact people could still have legal abortions, no matter the colony they lived in, up until they felt the baby move, or ‘quicken,’ which occurs between 16-25 weeks into pregnancy.
Abortion first became criminalized nationwide around 1880 partly out of fear that if white Protestant women (for whom legal abortion was most accessible) continued having abortions, America would fill up with “aliens.”
This theory was spread by the main proponent of outlawing abortion at the time, which wasn’t conservative religious groups, but the American Medical Association (AMA).
The AMA also argued against abortion because they wanted the medical profession to remain male-dominated—if women couldn’t have abortions, they had to stay at home to raise children.
“[Should our country] be filled by our own children or by those of aliens? This is a question our women must answer; upon their loins depends the future destiny of the nation.”- Dr. Horatio Storer, an OB-GYN who was a leader in the AMA anti-abortion campaign
Since then, the “loins” of people who can become pregnant have been fiercely debated—as if the internal flesh of a person is a communal resource that needs regulation.
If you appreciated this thread, check out our longform piece to learn even more about the past and present of reproductive rights! unicornriot.ninja/2021/abortion-…
Thanks for reading our thread! As always, we bring you stories #FromTheGroundUp!
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