Following the Supreme Court’s historic decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, 24 states have banned or limited access to abortion, including those six weeks after the detection of fetal cardiac activity. Sadly, the restrictions on pregnant women in abortion-free states, designed to protect the lives of those whom Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito defined as “unborn human beings,” have proven as porous as the American southern border.
Consider the recent case of Kate Cox, the Texas woman who circumvented the Texas Supreme Court’s ruling against aborting her non-viable pregnancy by having the procedure done in an abortion-legal state. Without state border checkpoints or vigilant monitoring of pregnant women, they can easily evade state prohibitions on abortions with impunity. Some abortion-free states have found it necessary to depend upon morally conscientious private citizens to sue those who perform abortions or who help someone get one. Meanwhile, many pregnant women continue to evade the law by inducing “chemical abortions” by means of the abortion pill, mifepristone.
It’s clear then that the anemic efforts of abortion-free states to enforce the letter and spirit of the law have proven disturbingly short-sighted. However, since the Supreme Court in the Dobbs case ruled that the state can legally intrude into a woman’s most intimate and private parts to control her body, her privacy, and her free will, then certainly the state can also legally make lesser intrusions to achieve the same end.
For instance, according to the National Health Service, pregnant women who drink alcohol increase the likelihood of miscarriages, as well as fetal alcohol syndrome. And according to the Center of Disease Control, “smoking during pregnancy can cause tissue damage in the unborn, particularly in the lung and brain.” Further, a pregnant woman’s poor diet may also jeopardize the unborn’s health. Therefore, I humbly propose that all behaviors of pregnant women that may be harmful to the life and development of the “unborn” should be prohibited under the law.
Granted, sceptics may ask, if the anti-abortion states have not been able to sufficiently enforce their present bans or restrictions on abortion, how can the state succeed in the more onerous task of monitoring the behavior of individual pregnant women?
Therefore, to ensure these women comply with the law, I humbly propose that all pregnant women, or those suspected of being pregnant, must register their condition with the state and be assigned monitors, as well as concerned citizens, to surveil their behavior and whereabouts. Further, to facilitate this surveillance, I propose that pregnant women also be required to wear a scarlet “P” on their clothing, large enough to be visible from a minimum of 20 feet, for the length of their pregnancy. The “P,” of course symbolizes “Protected” not, as I’m sure the “woke” will contend, “Persecuted.”
In furtherance of this security for the “unborn,” I also propose that it shall be illegal for heterosexual couples to engage in unprotected sex if either participant has compromised health or suspect genetics. Just as the health of the maternal vessel will affect that of the “unborn,” the father’s ill-health and defective genes may compromise a successful birth and subsequent health.
To ensure their suitability for healthful procreation, I propose that, under penalty of law, a man and a woman may engage in unprotected sex if and only if they have passed a thorough medical exam and genetic testing by a certified physician.
Moving beyond its control of the biological environment in which “unborn human beings” are conceived and develop, the state should also legally control the environment outside the womb. For instance, since second-hand smoke may compromise the life of the unborn, anyone smoking in the presence of women wearing the scarlet “P” must desist or retreat from her vicinity under penalty of the law.
Further, with regard to external environmental threats to the “unborn, a lawsuit has been recently filed against the EPA that claims “born” children are a protected legal class, [evidently as much as the “unborn”]. It also claims the EPA has violated “born” children’s “constitutional fundamental right to life and equal protection under the law.”
Certainly, if “born” children are particularly susceptible to the ill-health effects of climate pollution, then both the pregnant woman and her “unborn child” are equally exposed and threatened. Indeed, “Studies conducted in Europe, Asia, and the Americas agree that expectant mothers exposed to environmental levels of air pollution are at greater risk of having the development of their pregnancy compromised and maternal and fetal health could be affected.”
Therefore, to ensure equal protection of the lives of children both born and unborn, climate pollution should be illegal, and polluters should be prosecuted. I know this provision may destroy our economy and put all our lives at stake, but it’s the only moral thing living human beings can to protect the lives of “unborn human beings.”
I can think of no objection to this modest proposal unless it should be claimed that there may be no end to the intrusion the state may impose upon women, their environment, and society if the life of “unborn human beings” are granted more Constitutional protection than born human beings.
Certainly, no reasonable person would claim that the rights, privacy, body, and free will of a “born” American woman has Constitutional primacy over a part of her body. That would be absurd.
Thomas Cangelosi is a retired teacher from Avon.