Americans have always possessed the right to do what they wish with their bodies, no matter what your body belongs to you and you get to decide what to do with it. Unfortunately, many women in Alabama, Georgia and many other states are losing that right. On the 8th of May, just last week, Alabama lawmakers and senator, Kay Ivey signed a law essentially banning abortion.

Under this law, women will be forced to carry non-viable or unwanted pregnancies no matter what, including underage rape and incest. The law also imprisons any doctor who performs an abortion for 99 years, essentially a life sentence. To put this into a perspective: the average jail time for a rapist is 7-10 years, roughly 90 years less. Does nobody see anything wrong with this? According to Alabama law, performing a procedure that is said to be legal by the federal government is worse than violating and abusing a man or woman’s body.

Many people including Tahoma’s own AP Human Geography teacher Mr. Baker speculates that  “Alabama made this law so restrictive because they want to test the supreme court.” Currently, the American Supreme Court is made up of predominantly conservative people; Alabama lawmakers and other anti-abortion groups want to see what they can get past the supreme court. Hypothetically if someone sued Alabama for the law and it did go up to the Supreme court, abortion could potentially become illegal again. This could have many harmful effects on the women and children of America. The number of children in orphanages and foster homes would skyrocket, as would the number of children dumped on the streets by parents who can’t take care of them. Many women would also be forced to do shoddy at home abortions which could cause infection and could ultimately lead to death.

This law could also have detrimental effects on the life and wellbeing of many children and rape victims. In Alabama an eleven year old girl is being forced to carry her rapist’s baby. Carrying the baby will most likely kill her however, according to Alabama this  doesn’t matter since the baby at this point has a heartbeat. Hospitals take patients off of life support when they lose brain activity, which occurs when a patient is legally no longer alive. It doesn’t matter whether or not they have a heartbeat, so how does, in this case, a heartbeat matter if there is no brain activity?

The freedom to choose has always been a right the American people had, and in some ways taken for granted. Now that women all over are losing their right to choose it is even more apparent. This law changes the lives of many women all over Alabama and makes the #MeToo movement even more important to all women. Tahoma students, what’s more important? Living breathing women or a couple of cells?