Individual liberty and freedom include, by definition, the unfettered sovereignty over one’s person. This must be inviolable.

This includes the rights of privacy, full bodily autonomy, freedom of movement and travel, and the right not to be dominated by religious constraints to which we do not freely subscribe. Specifically, this must include a woman’s right to choose when or if she will bear children, free from outside interference. 

No government, federal or state, is authorized to abridge these rights, and no religious establishment is authorized to impose its imperatives upon our secular law. 

Personhood

Republicans in Austin, bending the knee to rightwing religious extremists, have wrested away from Texas women the right to control their very bodies. 

A synonym for “body” is “person,” and there’s a reason for this. In the legal sense, our body and all that is within it makes up the whole of who we are – our identity, our “person.” 

Denying a woman the freedom to control the totality of her body removes from her a fraction of personhood. This reduces her to a fractional person. 

We have a history with fractional personhood in this country, when chattel slaves were counted as “three-fifths of a person” to give out-weighted representation to Southern states in the U.S. Congress. But in practice, that “fractional personhood” amounted to no personhood at all for black slaves.  In law, they were “persona non grata.” Personhood not granted. 

Likewise, a woman denied the complete control over her person has had her personhood fractionated; she is stripped of her agency not in part, but in whole. In a society professing to be free and equal, this is an abomination. The equal protections afforded to American women via the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision must be restored. 

Healthcare Must Be Personal and PRIVATE

As I write these words, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the U.S. government for authority to seize the private medical records of Texas women who’ve travelled out of state for healthcare.

Decisions about whether to terminate a pregnancy – or for any other kind of care – must be the sole province of the patient, her doctor, and any others whose counsel or support she seeks.  Government authority with respect to these matters must be limited to expert medical regulatory bodies, such as the Food and Drug Administration, free of ideological political interference. Professional societies, such as the American Medical Association, would likewise be expected to inform practitioners on matters like the standards of care. 

A state’s medically unlicensed governor, attorney general, supreme court, and legislature must be prohibited from interfering with the foregoing, regardless of feigned political justification. And if that justification is based on religious tenets, our Constitution already explicitly forbids it.

Call to Action

The equal protections afforded to American women via the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision must be restored. Short of new developments in Washington, this will require Democratic control of government in Austin for full personhood to be restored in Texas. We can make a beginning on that right now in the 2024 election. 

We only need to flip twelve seats in the Texas House to win back Democratic control after two decades of harmful Republican rule. Only then can we begin the imperative work of restoring full rights to Texas women.