Over 500 female athletes, including Olympians and college players, sent a brief to SCOTUS, begging them to keep abortion legal because having a baby can ruin your life:
All athletes—men and women—have a narrow window of time to achieve their greatest athletic potential. This reality is magnified for women athletes for whom childbearing age coincides with their competitive peak in athletics. If the State compelled women athletes to carry pregnancies to term and give birth, it could derail women’s athletic careers, academic futures, and economic livelihoods at a large scale. Such a fundamental restriction on bodily integrity and human autonomy would never be imposed on a male athlete, though he would be equally responsible for a pregnancy.
The brief comes after SCOTUS refused to halt the Texas pro-life law, which bans abortions after a detectable heartbeat. Women know you can hear the heartbeat at the six-week appointment.
The baby is so tiny, and yet the heartbeat is loud and beautiful.
But the athletes filed the amicus in response to SCOTUS’s announcement on Monday that it will hear the arguments over the Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks.
The state of Mississippi specifically mentions Roe v. Wade in its case, asking SCOTUS “to overrule its landmark decisions in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, holding that the Constitution protects the right to have an abortion before the fetus can survive outside the womb.”
SCOTUS precedent does not allow states to ban abortion before viability, which is around 24 weeks.
Olympic gold medal swimmer Crissy Perham said:
When I was in college, I was on birth control, but I accidentally became pregnant. I was on scholarship, I was just starting to succeed in my sport, and I didn’t want to take a year off. I decided to have an abortion. I wasn’t ready to be a mom, and having an abortion felt like I was given a second chance at life. I was able to take control of my future and refocus my priorities. I got better in school, I started training really hard, and that summer, I won my first national championship. My life would be drastically different if I had been pregnant and forced to sit that race out, because that race changed the course of my life. It opened up so many opportunities, and a year later, I made the Olympic team.
The ever so lovely Megan Rapinoe signed the amicus. In a statement, Rapinoe said she is “honored to stand” with the women who are helping “champion not only our constitutional rights, but also those of future generations of athletes.”
Um, abortion is not a constitutional right. It was passed on questionable grounds using the 14th Amendment.
Rapinoe insisted, “we must have the power to make important decisions about our own bodies and exert control over our reproductive lives.”
You’re not deciding on your body. When you’re pregnant, you have another body inside you—a body of an unborn human being with his or her very own DNA.
Nothing in these sentences is wrong. It is all 100% true:
Pregnancy fundamentally transforms a woman’s body, impacting and potentially hindering an athlete’s access to higher education, elite competition, and a professional athletic career. Women athletes must have the power to decide whether and when to dedicate their bodies to athletics, pregnancy, or both.
Pregnancy does change your body. It changes everything. You do have a choice. You do have the power to decide.
It’s called not having sex. No birth control method is 100% effective except one: abstinence.
I am not for abstinence-only sex education. But you know what could happen when you have sex: pregnancy.
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