Vote to keep abortions safe, legal and protect access to women's health care

Echo opinion editorial published in the Daily Collegian, an independent Penn State University newspaper, written by Christa Hasenkopf and Abe Amorós, who are Penn State alumni. Check the source at this link here.

Unbelievable, but the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Supreme Court ruling took away an individual’s bodily autonomy in the United States. In the words of the dissenting Supreme Court justices, the decision “consigns women to second-class citizenship.”

With this ruling, if a person is pregnant in the United States, their body is no longer automatically under their own purview. The state can mandate that individuals risk their well-being through pregnancy and be forced to alter the trajectory of their life’s course against their will and judgment. In fact, this federal abandonment of human rights now has enabled some states to require a pregnant person take to term a child conceived by rape or incest.

No matter the state in which one lives, overturning the country’s nearly 50-year precedent of protecting the right to self-determination is profoundly disturbing and distressing. Even for those in states where one can currently still technically receive abortion services but where the right to those services are not enshrined in state law, like Pennsylvania, access now hangs by a thin electoral thread.

In fact, in Pennsylvania, there is now movement to amend the state constitution to explicitly declare that abortion is not a right to Pennsylvanians.

This  horrible Dobbs decision makes already difficult-to-access medical services even more difficult to access. Those who live in Pennsylvania but are legal residents of other states, like many Penn State students, may fear that their state governments can criminalize seeking an abortion.

And even for Pennsylvania residents, the practical barriers to abortion, predating the Dobbs decision, limit people’s ability to access essential medical care. Pennsylvanians seeking abortions often must travel many hours and take multiple trips to one of the few clinics in Pennsylvania that offer these services — or they must go out of state, where options post-Dobbs are now even more limited.

An  important method for protecting against unwanted pregnancy!

The work ahead to mitigate the damage done by the (harmful) Dobbs ruling and to ultimately restore and improve access and rights to abortion will be difficult, complicated and necessary — and will require all of us. However, a first step is simple for any person wielding institutional power: publicly acknowledge the harms and injustices of this decision.

As leaders in this community, we believe it is incumbent to say this to Penn State students, staff and faculty: You deserve the freedom and dignity to make your own health care decisions, and we support your access to abortion.

The next step is taking meaningful action!  (In other words...Vote!)