Do Women Care About More Than Abortion?

Meghan McCain really wants to know

Washington Post

As a media consumer, I try really hard not to fall into the outrage politics trap – I know why so many online commentators do it, because it revs views. What it doesn’t do is actually help our political future. 

Though I’ll admit, Meghan McCain got to me this morning with a post on threads where she said, (and I paraphrase), do democrats know women care about more than abortion?

(a) No fucking shit, talking about apples doesn’t mean I don’t also talk about oranges; but also (b) abortion is the threshold issue of this election cycle not only because of the substance of it, but also because of all it represents.  It’s about whether women are full people deserving of the LIBERTY described in the Constitution. 

It’s about the lies of the Right and whether we believe them.

Do you know how many well-educated and thoughtful people have tried to come at me with the argument that Donald and JD truly just want to leave it up to the states to decide on abortion laws, that they aren’t looking for an outright abortion ban? (*cough* “minimum national standard.”)

Then I have to tell these otherwise nice people that the Right is lying to them. And the fact of the matter is that abortion is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to taking rights away from women in this country. Oh, and red state women deserve healthcare too. 

It’s also about all the other rights we currently have in this country that are derived from the same legal reasoning that secured abortion rights. Contraception, marriage equality, education access, and more. Abortion is merely the first in a set of dominoes to fall.

I’ve talked a lot about the Idaho EMTALA Supreme Court case because I think it should send chills through everyone’s spines.  The Idaho AG literally argued at the Supreme Court that the State has no obligation to allow Emergency Rooms to provide abortion healthcare when a woman merely *might die.* And in that case the Supreme Court did something extremely rare – they decided not to decide anything and sent the case back to the lower courts to be re-heard.  In doing so, they left the door open for themselves to wait to make a politically unpopular decision about abortion until after the election.

To use a rare sports metaphor here. They punted!

Now, the Supreme Court has refused to review another similar case coming out of Texas, in which the lower court ruled that a state law which led to a woman with an ectopic pregnancy being refused an abortion could stand.

Here’s that story: Kelsie Norris-De La Cruz  went to Texas Health Arlington Memorial Hospital and was told she likely had an ectopic pregnancy which they refused to terminate because there was some chance the pregnancy was still viable. The Texas law that prohibits abortions allows doctors to treat ectopic pregnancies, but nonetheless she was refused care at the ER. Luckily she sought a second opinion from another OB/GYN and was able to receive the necessary care.

The Texas EMTALA Supreme Court case started because two medical groups (American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians & Gynecologists, Christian Medical & Dental Associations)  disputed the federal guidance that said an emergency room must provide an abortion to prevent serious harm to a pregnant woman, which conflicts with Texas state law.  Both the lower court and the appeals court sided with the petitioners (the anti-choice groups), and there was a permanent injunction against enforcing the EMTALA guidance.

The Guidance: “[i]f a physician believes that a pregnant patient presenting at an emergency department is experiencing an emergency medical condition as defined by EMTALA, and that abortion is the stabilizing treatment necessary to resolve that condition, the physician must provide that treatment.”

 When we talk about how the next President will impact abortion, the majority of the focus is on what people call ‘codifying Roe’ – ie: legislating some form of protection of reproductive freedom.  But this case highlights many other ways an administration impacts the issue.

1.    The President decides who leads the DOJ (Department of Justice), and those people decide what cases the agency brings and how to argue cases brought against it.  As we saw this summer with the Idaho EMTALA case, the Biden Administration has been going after states that are legislating that it is legal to force women to bleed out in parking lots before they can receive care. 

2.    After the Dobbs decision came down, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued guidance on how hospitals should comply with EMTALA, making clear that they have to provide stabilizing care to women and that includes abortion services. The president decides who oversees HHS and how they operate. A Republican administration will at best gut these guidelines or eradicate them.

3.    Federal cases are decided by Judges and Justices nominated by the President. This is the very obvious danger zone here, the continued bench stacking with extreme right-wing judges. 

Women care about more than abortion. We care about freedom and liberty and the right has proven that it will strip those things away from half the American population if they are elected. Meghan McCain’s statement was short-sighted and insulting. 

Abortion isn’t just a wedge issue. It represents so much more about how we care for and view women in this country. 

So yes, we care about other things (many, many other things) but we also want to and have to talk about what is happening with reproduction freedom as often as possible because it will be one of the first things they take away, but it will not be the last.