This Evil Missouri Bill Would Cause Many People to Die

And having ectopic pregnancies can’t even produce a child

The state of abortion access within the U.S. already seemed disheartening, but I felt especially furious when I learned about Missouri’s attempts to outlaw abortions performed on ectopic pregnancies.

An ectopic pregnancy cannot even result in delivering a baby. During an ectopic pregnancy, an egg implants somewhere other than the uterus. Even though it can enter other spots, the egg usually goes into one of the fallopian tubes in this scenario.

Not only is an ectopic pregnancy never viable, it is extremely dangerous and absolutely a medical emergency.

Anyone with an ectopic pregnancy needs to have it treated as soon as possible to prevent death. Otherwise, a pregnant person can die from bleeding inside their body. It can break the fallopian tube causing this potentially fatal bleeding.

With an ectopic pregnancy, the only real option is to terminate it.

While U.S. governments should seriously stop interfering with access to reproductive healthcare, any law preventing abortion of ectopic pregnancies would result in the deaths of countless pregnant people.

Brian Seitz introduced this malicious bill. It is called House Bill 2810. If this bill goes into effect, it would make abortions, including those performed on ectopic pregnancies which the bill even mentions specifically, felonies. People would potentially receive life sentences for performing abortions on ectopic pregnancies.

Anyone with an ectopic pregnancy without the resources to leave the state or without the ability to leave quickly enough to have an abortion in another state would have a high risk of dying in direct consequence of this law.

Since a doctor needs to determine if a pregnancy is ectopic, that also risks Missouri trying to demand that doctors report on their patients’ ectopic pregnancies.

That could create a highly unethical system in which medical professionals are required to report on their patients’ life-threatening pregnancies. In that scenario, doctors could be required by the state government to harm the very people who they’ve given an oath to only help and never hurt.

In that system, the Missouri government could know if the patients had abortions, or it would even have the possibility of causing many prosecutions of miscarriages.

Attempting to ban abortions on ectopic pregnancies within Missouri is already horrendous, and Mary Elizabeth Coleman wants to use legislation to prevent people from even having the opportunity to go anywhere else to terminate their pregnancies, including the ectopic ones.

Although Brian Seitz has claimed that he just wants fetuses to be able to live, it’s difficult to believe that is his motivation to try to pass a bill ruling that pregnant people have to risk dying alongside their nonviable fetuses in the case of ectopic pregnancies.

Instead, this legislation seems to be about controlling and punishing people with uteruses for having sex. Passing this bill would harm so many people including cisgender women, trans men, intersex people, non-binary people, and people with any other identities who have the capacity to get pregnant.

Of course, all groups of people who would be directly impacted by that legislation are people a large portion of the United States always wants to control. Traditionally, many Americans have wanted to legislate and penalize women’s sexuality, and this law is one extreme way to accomplish that horrible goal.

In addition to punishing women, American culture often penalizes people for non-conformity. The Missouri government wants to harm trans men, non-binary people, and anyone else who doesn’t match their narrow, close-minded idea of what gender is.

It’s dreadful that so much of the U.S. population thinks that gender is always defined by genitalia or chromosomes and that legislation would punish people with uteruses who don’t fit into that gross, outdated definition.

Besides how immoral stealing abortion rights already is, removing them more and more could become a precursor to taking away rights to contraception, something at least some of the Missouri legislators unfortunately have already begun attempts to decrease access to.

I wish the U.S. war on abortion would finally stop. People fought so hard for abortion rights in this country, and they just keep being stripped away now to the point that legislators are trying to prevent people from getting life-saving medical care.

In light of the harm that the U.S. is trying to perpetuate on people with uteruses and the other injustices it commits, it’s definitely not the bastion of freedom it advertises itself as.

If this country were truly a haven of liberty, it would let its residents keep control of their reproductive systems, guarantee access to safe abortions and abortion pills, let people forever have their dangerous ectopic pregnancies terminated, and never try to take away access to contraception.

Works Consulted

Bacharier, Galen. “Missouri Anti-Abortion Bills Seek to Stop Crossing of State Lines, Ending Ectopic Pregnancies.” USA Today, 11 Mar. 2022, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/03/11/missouri-house-anti-abortion-bills-take-aim-crossing-state-lines-ectopic-pregnancies/7003993001/. Accessed 16 Mar. 2022.

De Graaf, Mia et al. “Missouri Seeks to Ban Abortion for Ectopic Pregnancies, with a Penalty of Up to 30 Years in Prison.” Insider, 11 Mar. 2022, https://www.insider.com/missouri-seeks-to-ban-abortion-for-ectopic-pregnancies-new-bill-2022-3. Accessed 16 Mar. 2022.

“Ectopic (Extrauterine) Pregnancy.” WebMD, https://www.webmd.com/baby/pregnancy-ectopic-pregnancy#1. Accessed 16 Mar. 2022.

“Ectopic Pregnancy.” Cleveland Clinic, 2 Feb. 2020, https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/9687-ectopic-pregnancy. Accessed 16 Mar. 2022.

Missouri, House. House Bill № 2810. house.mo.gov, https://www.house.mo.gov/billtracking/bills221/hlrbillspdf/5798H.01I.pdf.101st General Assembly, 5798H.01I. Accessed 16 Mar. 2022.