In a country where 20 percent pregnant women face violence, and several are prone to life-altering injuries and health conditions, pregnancy must be examined as an inherently violent circumstance, posing fatal consequences to women, globally, everyday. In the post-Roe U.S., we must collectively acknowledge that this is not a simple contest between the foetus’s right to life and women’s right to liberty and privacy. It is the woman’s survival that is on the line.
Hannah Zobair
28 Feb 2025
WOMEN often describe giving birth as “a scene from a horror movie.” Accounts of mistreatment during childbirth in the United States recall harrowing stories of doctors shoving their hands up the uterus of the mother, leaving her bruised, bloodied, and with severe post-traumatic stress disorder that follows her long after the birth. The choice to have a baby can often be a fatal one, always necessitating exposure to a certain amount of danger.
In the United States, a conservative movement to recognise the fundamental right to life of foetuses, and their corresponding right to not be aborted, has evolved over decades. Conservative proponents have put forth an assertive, moral view - the State cannot perpetuate the killing of babies.