The overturn of Roe v Wade concerns this 22 year old Nigerian woman.

Clara Jack
2 min readJun 25, 2022

--

First, You can read on the case here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade
But note some important bits of the ratio decidendi:
The case was decided 1973(22 January) and gave women agency over their reproductive rights focusing on abortion.

Now, you’re probably wondering what a US Supreme Court decision has to do with me. Well this is because of a principle I like to call school father or imperialism in legal and political terms. Also, the connection between export and the free market. America is seen as the big brother to a lot of “developing”countries. So what America does, a lot of people follow. You can disagree all you want, it is factual. Now to this scenario, reproductive rights stem from my right to consent to ejaculation all the way to an abortion.

In between you have things like reproductive procedures and contraceptives. Now, American brands such as Pfizer are some of the largest producers of contraceptives which they then export to a very large number of countries, Nigeria included. What happens when in the country these products are being made, a law is passed to limit the rights that govern these demand? Funding can be pulled, licensing enforced so and so. All these boil down to an increase in price or a shortage of supply and worse, both.
Now let’s get the big guns, abortions. People have written entire theses and papers on the rights to abortion so do read one. But here’s a good paper on it: https://reproductiverights.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Safe-and-Legal-Abortion-is-a-Womans-Human-Right.pdf (Its 8 pages).

So, you can see how one decision has literally taken us 49 years back. Now don’t come at me saying that abortions still happen. I know they do. But illegal is coherent to unsafe. These unsafe abortions are a leading cause of female mortality. (Only second to men but if you even really trace it, it’s still linked to men) These are facts. Tyler Perry will agree. For colored girls will show you. These are very serious issues that deserve attention.

Surely, some of you are very conservative and shy away from this discourse but wake up. Abortion and contraceptives do not only concern “reckless young women”. Your mom who has 5 children just found out she’s pregnant, your sister who has a high risk pregnancy needs to terminate the child else she will die. We don’t need to tie injustice to proximity for you to care but do it so you can see the hot mess we are all in. So do not sit there quiet because you think it doesn’t concern you.

--

--

Clara Jack
Clara Jack

Responses (1)