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In the United States, uteruses are increasingly more regulated than guns. This must change if we are to avoid a repeat of horrific mass shootings like those in Highland Park, Ill., Uvalde, Texas, Buffalo, N.Y., and dozens of other cities and towns in the last few months alone. And the future doesn’t have to be one where we’re forced to have children because of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that pushed abortion rights back at least 50 years.
The same conservatives yelling from the rooftops that abortion is the killing of an unborn child are those who sit in silence as children are subjected to death and gun violence in their schools.
With Roe v. Wade overturned, abortion rights are now in the hands of state legislators. In Alabama, where I live, a 2019 trigger law went into effect, making it a crime for an abortion to be performed at any stage of pregnancy unless an individual’s life is threatened or there is a lethal fetal anomaly.
Alabama is one of nine states where abortion is illegal in most cases. There are four states that will have bans going into effect soon and eight states that currently have bans with injunctions blocking them from being implemented.
Knowing this, it’s easy to see why many people who can get pregnant feel that the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision is about forcing them to be birthing machines.
At the same time, some states are making guns more accessible. On June 23, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the first Second Amendment ruling in more than a decade, that Americans who are considered law-abiding citizens have the right to carry handguns outside of their homes. During the most recent legislative sessions in Alabama, Georgia and Ohio, laws were passed that abolished the need for pistol permits.
The same conservatives yelling from the rooftops that abortion is the killing of an unborn child are those who sit in silence as children are subjected to death and gun violence in their schools. Since the massacre at Columbine High School in 1999, according to The Washington Post, across the country more than 185 children, educators and other people have been killed in school shootings, and even a greater number have been injured.
The perpetrators of these shootings have all been young men who often have purchased guns as soon as they were legally able to do so. The Uvalde shooter was 18, Parkland’s was 19, Newtown’s was 20 and the Columbine shooters were 17 and 18. This disturbing trend, along with the right’s tendency to see their actions as the result of anything but the lack of gun regulations, highlights the inability of our political system to respond in any serious way.
One of the main reasons for this is that government offices are, for the most part, held by people who do not represent an increasingly diverse America. Women make up 50.8% of the population; and, as a study by the Reflective Democracy Campaign shows, white men hold 62% of all elected offices. Men dominate Congressional chambers, 42 state legislatures and many other state government positions.
These office holders — many of whom vilify pro-abortion advocates while simultaneously refusing to strengthen gun laws — simply aren’t listening to what most voters want. A Gallup poll shows that 52% of Americans favored stricter gun laws, and another poll shows that 55% support abortion rights.
These are just two examples of the ways in which gerrymandering continues to nullify our democracy and why demanding that electoral maps be drawn fairly and correctly is vital.
In Alabama, redistricting with an emphasis placed on incumbency protection has given the state a supermajority in both the state House and Senate. That means that laws—including abortion bans and measures to abolish pistol permits—can be passed without a single vote from the minority party. But we all deserve to be heard when our representatives take their seat at the table.
So if we want people with uteruses to have at least the same level of rights as gun owners, we must elect representatives who will listen to what the people want. We must demand that Congress codify Roe v. Wade and pass common-sense gun violence protection laws. It is our only hope to truly protect all people’s lives.
This column was produced by Progressive Perspectives, which is run by The Progressive magazine and distributed by Tribune News Service.