Is the United States really the “land of the free” like it claims to be? The Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to overturn five decades of abortion precedent has actively reversed years of progress in protecting the nation’s foundational ideal of liberty. In deciding that abortion is not a constitutionally protected right, the Supreme Court subjects millions of women and others who are able to get pregnant to the possibility of being forced to carry unwanted and nonviable pregnancies to term. 

Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, states across the country have reinstated laws regulating abortion. Most recently, the Supreme Court of Arizona ruled April 17 to uphold an 1864 statute that may legally penalize anyone who “provides, supplies, or administers” an abortion to a pregnant person. The law does not provide any exceptions for incest or rape, nor does it abide by our nation’s history and tradition of allowing abortion prior to quickening, the point at which a fetus’s movement can be detected. Also worth mentioning is the fact that this law, which only affects women and other people who can get pregnant, was created and voted on entirely by men.

The reinstatement of Arizona’s near-total abortion ban contradicts the nation’s foundational values of liberty and the pursuit of happiness. For over 50 years, the right to decide whether or not to give birth was a private matter between physician and patient. Now, in states like Arizona, the interests of the state commonly outweigh that of the person giving birth. Those who can get pregnant are not birthing tools to be used by the state, nor are they obligated to put aside their own interests in favor of a potential life. Laws that require these individuals to do such not only relegate them to second-class citizenship, but also deprive them of equal protection under the law. The right to an abortion is essential in promoting the liberty of women, making the refusal of such a right innately un-American.