A Philadelphia woman is going to jail. Jennifer Ann Whalen’s 16-year-old daughter was pregnant and wanted to terminate the pregnancy. The nearest abortion clinic was 74 miles away and Whalen did not have healthcare to cover a hospital abortion. She turned to the internet and purchased abortion pills from a European website. Now she’ll serve up to 18 months in prison “for violating a state law that requires abortions to be performed by physicians,” according to Reuters.
The lesson to be learned here: A Philadelphia woman is going to jail because Pennsylvania doesn’t provide enough access to abortions.
It’s the latest in a long line of examples proving that, regardless of legality or ease of access, women will find ways to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. Abortion legislation isn’t an issue of morality; it’s an issue of keeping women safe.
According to the New York Times, “67,000 women die as a result of complications from [unsafe] abortions [yearly], most in countries where abortion is illegal.” Additionally, the world’s lowest abortion rates occurred in countries where abortion is legal and contraception is widely available.
With every restriction on abortion in the United States, the country regresses in a way that’s dangerous to women. Pennsylvania’s own abortion restrictions prove that, which leads to situations like the one in Philadelphia, where a mother trying to help her daughter was jailed.
Under the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act, a woman seeking an abortion is required to wait 24 hours after she’s made her decision to receive her abortion and receive a lecture from a healthcare official about possible alternatives to an abortion. She will be forced to make another appointment for counseling in addition to one for the procedure, possibly delaying her procedure for weeks. Additionally, teenage girls under the age of 18 are required to obtain parental consent to the abortion, even if the pregnancy is a result of incest.
All the restrictions add up to one idea: We can’t trust women to make decisions about their healthcare. We need to second-guess them at every turn, adding emotional stress to an already mentally and physically taxing process. We need to humiliate them as they undergo pain and anxiety.
That attitude is reductive and harmful. It’s what turns birth control into something whores use, not something many women use as part of their health care for hormone regulation. It’s what makes “she was asking for it” an inevitable response to the rape of a woman who was wearing a short skirt. It’s what makes abortion a shameful secret instead of a common but personal medical procedure.
Pennsylvania needs to accept that abortions will happen and make access to abortion clinics convenient for every woman who needs one. It needs to ensure that no more mothers go to prison for helping their daughters terminate their pregnancies.
Abortion shouldn’t be a process which involves punishment and ill-will toward the woman receiving it. It should be a medical procedure treated with sensitivity and respect, one which focuses on ensuring women’s safety, not their guilt.