On Aug. 5, Indiana decided that women no longer had the legal right to their own bodies. The government decided that women are just breeding points and that they care more about reproduction than women’s safety, health or even happiness. They decided women don’t matter. 

The abortion ban that’s going to be put in place on Sept. 15 states that all abortion clinics in Indiana are going to be shut down and abortions overall are going to become illegal. The few exceptions to this law are cases of rape, incest and cases that would harm the mother’s life. 

What the close-minded representatives of Indiana don’t understand is that banning abortions won’t get rid of them, it just gets rid of safe ones. Generations of women throughout history have lost their lives from attempting unsafe abortions. 

According to Fox News, it claims that abortions in America would be ruled as a “misdemeanor if performed prior to quickening.” This means that if someone was caught getting an abortion, they could be sentenced up to a year in jail. If someone attempted an abortion after quickening, or the point where the baby can be felt kicking, it was considered second-degree manslaughter, with much greater consequences. 

The way abortions are being seen as unruly is truly sickening. There are many instances where abortions are highly necessary in society. For one, rape. A 10-year-old girl living in Ohio was raped and ended up getting pregnant. Because of the ban in her state, she had to come to Indiana to have the procedure done. If she couldn’t have gotten to an abortion clinic that would help her, she could’ve died. It’s truly a shame that America doesn’t see the problem with that. 

They’re also needed because some women just can’t support the child. In many cases, women who are forced to carry through with the pregnancy and can’t provide for the child often give the child to foster care, or just leave them in the streets or other dangerous environments. When abortions became legal, the rate of unwanted births decreased five to eight percent, most of that being teenagers. Now that abortions are now being criminalized, the rate is going to go back up, maybe even higher than it was before. 

According to Amnesty International, the abortion rate in countries that allow abortion is 34 out of 1,000. On the other hand, in countries that don’t allow it, abortion rate is still 37 out of 1,000. Additionally, the National Library of Medicine says that 68,000 women die every year from unsafe abortions, making it one of the leading causes of maternal mortality. 

The possibility of that many women dying from unsafe abortions shouldn’t exist. Abortions should be accessible for every and any woman who may want one, regardless of the reason. With the new abortion laws being put in place, that number will only go up. 

People still need to be able to have access to abortions not only for health reasons, but for the moral concept as well. While women’s health is a huge issue and is worsened because of unsafe abortions, there is so much more to it. 

If the right to a safe abortion is taken away, it forces women to the dangerous alternatives. For example, some women use a clothing hanger to give themselves an abortion. Others may use other foreign objects to achieve the same goal. This may be because they can’t afford to have a child, or they can’t support themselves or the child they may be forced to have. Either way, having abortions legal and accessible is the right way to go. 

While some may disagree and say “Abortions are murder,” or “Abortions are cruel,” both of those claims can be proven inaccurate. Abortions are one of the safest medical procedures, severely raising the percentage of women who don’t have to go through with the pregnancy. It’s also not murder. Human brain activity is what makes a human alive, and fetal brains aren’t completely developed until 28 weeks into the gestation period, therefore proving fetuses aren’t actually living. Others may take into account the heartbeat. A fetal heartbeat isn’t developed until seven weeks along. While that’s much earlier than the brain, it’s still long enough for women to decide if they don’t want a child. 

Whether someone agrees with abortion or not, it shouldn’t be anyone’s right to decide but the person carrying the fetus. It can come down to this: If someone doesn’t agree with abortions, then they don’t have to get one. That’s okay. However, it should be up to the discretion of the woman it affects. Not everyone else around her.