As the issue of abortion access takes the spotlight (in the US), I wonder what it even means to be “pro-life” at a time like this.

Behind the flurry of back-to-school prep and other assorted minutiae occupying my mind this week was a near-constant ebb and flow of thoughts revolving around the news that abortion is now all-but-illegal in the US state of Texas.

Not that the news was surprising (it’s Texas, after all); it just fits so neatly into questions I’ve been mulling over recently, chief among them:

What does it even mean “pro-life” in a world where so many seem comfortable with an ever-climbing death toll if it means they get to enjoy their lives as they see fit? The same people aren’t particularly bothered by extrajudicial police killings, maternal and infant mortality rates, or even making sure that children have enough to eat.

My sympathies are with anyone of childbearing age in Texas. To have their right to a safe abortion curtailed to a period of time shorter than the point at which most women even know they’re pregnant is a terrible thing. Particularly in an environment where the people who are now empowered to sue their healthcare providers are highly likely to turn around and say “you shouldn’t have had a kid if you couldn’t take care of it” immediately after birth.

I feel even worse for us here in Trinidad and Tobago, where there is no clear legal right to a safe abortion. According to the Offenses Against the Person Act Act 10 of 1925 (sections 56 & 57), here in sweet T&T, anyone who has an ‘unlawful’ abortion runs the risk of four years of jail time, as does the doctor who performs the procedure. Anyone caught providing materials for the procedure is looking at two years of their own. There are zero caveats in the legislation itself beyond the use of the word ‘unlawful’, which creates just enough of a loophole to allow T&T to follow a common law legal precedent allowing abortions on the grounds of preserving the pregnant person’s physical and mental health. Lord knows that’s vague enough to leave the majority of healthcare providers wary of risking the charge.

Given the above, it should go without saying that accurate national abortion statistics are hard to come by, just as it should be pretty obvious what kinds of things people will resort to when they cannot access safe medical treatment and what kind of effect these things would have on the nation’s maternal mortality figures. If you’re facing four years’ jail time for admitting that you resorted to off-label drug use to end your pregnancy, imagine how the conversation will go with the healthcare providers at the hospital when you end up there haemorrhaging or delirious from infection. It’s estimated that something like a cool TT$12 million is spent each year treating thousands of these cases, to say nothing of the long-term effects on the patient’s health (reproductive and otherwise).

Of course, that only tends to be the case if you can’t afford to pay what it costs to get a doctor to take the risk of swapping the white jacket for court clothes, so we know who tends to endanger their lives and find themselves lying in the public hospital most often.

You’d think all of the above (which A.S.P.I.R.E. has been patiently explaining since 2000) plus the fact that abortions performed by medical professionals can be safer than childbirth, would make safe access an obvious healthcare issue to be urgently addressed by our government. Alas, this is the land of the Concordat; the land which, legend has it, bears a name bestowed upon it by a devout coloniser. It wasn’t so long ago that our national awards paid homage to this.

So, naturally, this is also the land where, when asked what the government could do to address this issue, a former health minister expressed concern while also declaring abortions to be a “moral decision“. The implications of this are quite clear as it relates to stigma (if an abortion is an immoral act, what does that make an individual who chooses to have one/assists a patient to have one safely?).

It also clarifies successive governments’ willingness (or lack thereof) to wade into a very politically contentious matter and brings us full circle back to the shenanigans going on in Texas. Unlike T&T, the US has an established Supreme Court decision confirming that abortion access is a constitutional right. This hasn’t stopped “pro-lifers” (AKA “forced birthers”) from spending decades looking for a loophole, though, and it looks like they may have finally found one that works.

This time around, instead of the State directly attempting to block access (which, again, would be unconstitutional), the legislation simply deputises individual “pro-lifers” to police the actions of fellow citizens by suing healthcare providers who provide the procedure.

The clever thing about this is that no one is actually required to sue a clinic for the law to be effective immediately. In a society as litigious as the US, the threat of a draining and expensive lawsuit is often enough to police behaviour, at least, among those who don’t have armies of lawyers and the required spare cash at their disposal. The fact that the new abortion police are likely to win (given the restrictive terms set out in the legislation) only makes it worse.

The especially diabolical thing about it is how, by placing enforcement in the hands of private citizens, the State shields itself from being sued. Where an outright ban would immediately result in a lawsuit against the State for violating the constitution, this law can seemingly only be challenged once a citizen sues a healthcare provider, which again is a very daunting process for a single organisation to undertake.

So it looks like the “pro-lifers” won this round in Texas. They’re certainly ‘winning’ here in T&T, where there is zero political will to even glance at the topic of abortion access, particularly given everything else going on right now.

I wonder what exactly they’ve won, though.

In a country where my child is technically guaranteed free healthcare and education, but where the quality she receives is often directly linked to my ability to either benefit from a personal connection, pay, or make enough bacchanal to get her meaningful care and attention… a country where I’ve been told to my face that I have damaged her irreparably by choosing to raise her alone in a happy home (instead of a toxic one) but I am also expected to work as if she doesn’t exist… a country that only recently outlawed child marriage (over the objections of certain prominent religious figures) and consistently refuses to institute a national sex education curriculum in its schools I really wonder.

I wonder what we’re actually interested in protecting.