May is Women’s Health and Maternal Mental Health Month
It’s May, the month that honors the important women in our lives, especially our mothers, grandmothers, stepmothers and any person who cares for and loves us the way a parent does. Sacrificing their own self-interest to better the lives of their children. It is also Women’s Health and Maternal Mental Health month. And, in today’s climate, I wanted to acknowledge that there has never been a time like now that deserves increasing awareness of how access to standard comprehensive healthcare is in jeopardy for many of these special women in our lives.
The United States is not united, quite divided in fact, increasingly so, over several factors that relate to protecting women’s healthcare: access to quality and consistent prenatal care, care during pregnancy and postnatal care. Since the overturn of Roe v Wade, care providers in states are limited by laws that prevent them from caring for women in need of help with many pregnancy related conditions including ectopic pregnancies, miscarriage, contraception, and issues surrounding deciding not to proceed with terminating a pregnancy. Women’s lives and therefore those they care for are actually in harm's way because of the government's insertion of itself into a person’s bodily autonomy.
It is alarming how women’s rights in accessing universal standards of maternal care are diminishing in our country. Over 15 states are deemed most restrictive when it comes to preventing women from access to abortion related services in the following scenarios:
Women who become pregnant as a result of incest or rape are being asked to carry these pregnancies to term in these states.
Women who are pregnant and become diagnosed with a disease like cancer are being put into situations where a care provider is limited in the choices of how to help these patients terminate a pregnancy to help save the mother’s life.
Women who are pregnant with a fetus who has no potential for a healthy life are put in increasingly life threatening situations when the baby with genetic abnormalities dies in utero.
This doesn’t have to be. Simply put, the women in the United States should have freedom and reproductive autonomy to make their own decisions. They should have unlimited and equal access to reproductive and maternal healthcare. Women should be the first decision makers in the choice of what kind of care they want and need.