I want to write this piece to express my disappointment in the regressive state of laws regarding women in the U.S. Three weeks ago, on April 9, the Arizona Supreme Court reinstated a Civil War-era near-total abortion ban that makes the procedure illegal except when the mother’s life is in danger.
In response to this distressing turn of events, my friend Ananya and I co-authored an article for The Tufts Law Review, in which we discussed the legal precedents that led to this outrageous decision, and how it reflects yet another symptom of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. While the Arizona appellant may have found all the loopholes to craft a legal argument against what the Constitution promises or doesn't promise, the Supreme Court is missing the point — the immorality of curbing bodily autonomy and its long-term implications for gender equality. This decision disregards fundamental principles of human rights, perpetuating a system that undermines women’s agency and freedom.
Allowing the state to dictate a woman’s actions regarding an unwanted pregnancy not only restricts women’s reproductive freedom but also infringes women’s autonomy as a whole. In a society dominated by patriarchal norms, women already have difficulty attaining full autonomy over their choices. Now, with the imposition of state mandates on reproductive decisions, some women face even greater barriers to exercising genuine autonomy over their decisions regarding what they can or cannot do with themselves, as reproductive rights are just one facet of the broader right to self-governance of one’s body.
Furthermore, the act of prosecuting physicians who provide abortions — and potentially women who undergo them — violates women's basic privacy rights. This criminalization extends beyond the individuals targeted and carries broader implications for the surveillance of women's bodies and personal choices. Under such measures, women's bodies effectively become crime scenes, with conversations, phone calls and digital footprints potentially being entered as evidence in legal proceedings. This not only publicizes deeply personal decisions that affect no one except the women themselves but also suggests that such surveillance practices may soon become the norm under the guise of constitutional compliance.
The larger implication for the state being able to decide what each individual feminine body is entitled to signifies a larger reversal in our progress on gender equality. Granting the state authority over personal choices regarding reproductive decisions perpetuates traditional notions of femininity and motherhood on a systemic level. It suggests that the rights of a fetus ought to be prioritized over the autonomy and well-being of women. Scientific evidence shows that sentience likely develops only after 24–26 weeks of pregnancy. This means that even if abortions were to be permitted beyond this time frame, the rights of those who are merely sentient would be given precedence over fully developed, independent women who are in need of abortions. The rights of a fetus should never override a woman’s right to govern her own body. This perpetuates the societal role of women as nothing more than mere child-bearers in an oppressive patriarchal framework, further exacerbating the injustices inherent in the Dobbs and Arizona rulings.
Legalizing abortion does not mean forcing women to terminate unplanned pregnancies, but rather it means providing abortion as a safe option that allows women to make their own decisions. We can still reserve discussions on whether each individual should get an abortion in the private arena. Granting women the choice to get an abortion or not will provide them with actual autonomy free from state intervention. If a woman cannot even act of her own volition when it comes to her body, how can we begin to fight for other rights that women deserve? We cannot embark on greater progress toward true equality so long as the feminine body remains enslaved.
