TW: discussion of abortion, mistreatment of women, rape, abuse
Following the closure of a UK abortion clinic in July of 2015, women’s charities and sex positive charities have been calling for buffer zones to be established outside abortion clinics.
But it’s a free country! I hear you cry. Indeed, we are incredibly lucky to live in a country where each woman is free to choose, whether that be to choose abortion or to choose to disagree with abortion.
However, the flaw in this “free country” argument is that yes, this is a free country, until you use said freedom to encroach on another’s.
For hundreds of years, and still today, women’s bodies have not been their own. They have been treated as incubators, sold like cattle, gawked at, and been abused. In the UK, we now (for the most part) have the right to make our own decisions concerning our own bodies, “own” being the operative word. A woman down the street may not make the same decision as me, nor may I make the same decision as my best friend, and that’s just fine.
It saddens me to see women restricting the rights of other women, when we have fought long and hard to be able to take back ownership of our bodies.
I am not suggesting that everyone be pro-life, it is entirely your own decision, but please, don’t force your opinions on anyone else. Should you wish to protest, do it elsewhere!
You have no idea the amount of time, thought and emotion that may have gone into the decision to go to the clinic that day. There are a multitude of reasons why a woman may have to or want to get an abortion, and, quite frankly, they are none of your damn business. The woman in the video below articulates this point exactly:
So take a breath, take a step back and reflect on what you’re actually doing. You’re using your freedom to protest someone else’s freedom to choose. How can that mean that we are all free?
The idea of the buffer zones is that we can all keep our freedom.
If Roe v Wade is overturned in America, individual states will be allowed to implement their own laws on abortion. This is devastating, as it is expected that nearly half of all US states will implement harsher restrictions and that certain states will even impose a complete ban on a woman’s right to choose.
The thing that people who say they are ‘pro-life’ fail to understand is this; making abortion illegal has never and will never stop abortions from happening - it instead makes it harder for women to access the healthcare and resources they so vitally need in order for an abortion to be carried out safely. If Roe v Wade is overturned, there will be many more deaths and severe illnesses amongst women who have tried to carry out an abortion themselves as they have been denied access to healthcare. It’s not very 'pro-life’, if you ask me, to let a woman go through so much suffering and risk her life in the process. This is just one of many reasons why Roe v Wade cannot be overturned.
How your phone documents your abortion experience and what to do about it! By: the Digital Defense Fund
Risk: receipt for payment for your abortion and/or travel in your inbox Alternative: Make an email account just for this purpose, then delete it after
Risk: period tracking app shares your data Alternative: Use a privacy-driven period tracker like Euki App
Risk: search history saved in your phone’s browser, and with your ISP (internet service provider) Alternatives: - Use a privacy-driven search engine, ex: DuckDuckGo - Install a paid VPN to hide websites you visit from your ISP - Browse with Tor or Firefox - Use a private browsing window, or delete your browser history
Risk: payment history for your abortion in a banking or payments app Alternative: use cash or pre-paid gift cards where possible
Risk: ad tracking & location tracking from apps, browser history, & social media activity Alternative: in your phone settings turn off location tracking & mobile ad ID
Risk: sensitive text messages about your abortion experience are kept forever Alternative: use an encrypted chat app, ex: Signal or Wire, with disappearing messages turned on (important!)
