Our bodily autonomy is on the ballot in a record number of states. How did it come to this?

This op-ed is part of an investigative series and new documentary, The A-Word, by The Independent examining the state of abortion access and reproductive care in the US after the fall of Roe v Wade.

As Americans prepare to cast their ballots in a historic presidential election, a record number of voters will determine the future of abortion access in their home states.

On November 5, citizens in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, and South Dakota will check “yes” or “no” on ballot measures that could enshrine abortion rights in their respective state constitutions. In South Dakota, where abortion is banned without exceptions for rape or incest, constituents will weigh in on Ballot Measure G, which would restore Roe v Wade-era abortion protections to the point of fetal viability.

In Florida, where abortion is banned after six weeks gestation — before many people even know they’re pregnant — voters will decide on Amendment 4, which if passed will prohibit the government from banning, penalizing, delaying, or restricting abortion access before viability.

And in Nebraska, voters will weigh in on two abortion ballot measures — one that will enshrine abortion access until fetal viability in the state’s constitution, and another that will ban abortion after the first trimester.

On paper and in a post-Dobbs world, that 10 states were able to successfully put pro-abortion rights ballot measures in front of constituents is a net positive — voters are overwhelmingly in favor of unfettered access to abortion care, and despite former president Donald Trump’s consistent lies, the vast majority of Americans did not want to see the Supreme Court overturn Roe v Wade. If our country is truly guided by the “will of the people,” it is clear that the people have the will to demand the government stay out of our reproductive lives.

Yet the harsh reality of life in a country that has allowed cruel abortion restrictions to even exist makes the necessity of these ballot measures equally depressing. If this nation truly embodied its founding principles — of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all — it would be unfathomable that a pregnant person’s bodily autonomy would be up for debate, yet alone a “yes” or “no” vote on a sheet of paper or an electronic screen.

I have never, not once, voted as to whether or not a man should have the right to sterilize himself via a vasectomy without government interference. I have never read over a ballot measure that argues my husband’s ejaculate — a necessary component to us conceiving our two living children — should be regulated by our state’s legislature. I have yet to hear a candidate for public office pontificate on how often a man should dispense his sperm, and where, and with whom.

When my past lovers attended routine doctors’ appointments to test for STDs, testicular cancer, or snagged a fistful of condoms out of the bowl at the receptionist’s desk, they did not walk past protesters arguing that the government should take away their right to give me worry-free orgasms.

During my first year out of college, my then-boyfriend didn’t have to explain before a judge or argue in front of a panel of state representatives as to why my seven-minute surgical abortion was beneficial for both our lives — that by terminating an unwanted pregnancy we could pursue futures untethered from one another, free to make the very decisions that led us to our respective spouses and made it possible for us to build our families on our own terms when we were ready, willing and able.

When I found out I was pregnant with twins years after my abortion, I did not go in front of a city council to ask if my elected officials believed me fit enough to parent. I didn’t phone my state congressperson to ask their opinion on genetic testing, or amniocentesis, or if I should receive the doctor-recommended vaccines that would deliver antibodies to two still-forming fetuses. My community did not vote on a C-section versus vaginal delivery, or decide — having never met me or known anything about my medical history — if I should have an epidural, or receive pitocin, or supplemental oxygen.

Yet voters in 11 states are now going to determine not only their own individual reproductive and family planning futures, but the futures of their daughters, granddaughters, neighbors, coworkers, and friends. In the year 2024 — with all the medical advancements and scientific achievements of decades past — a pregnant person’s basic human rights are treated as political fodder; an election-year talking point; an oval to be circled or a box to be checked.

“Once you get out and you start to see what this ban is doing to people… it’s really gross,” Adam Weiland, co-founder of Dakotans for Health, the grassroots organization fighting to restore abortion rights in South Dakota, says. “The women in these abortion ban states are being discriminated against because of who they are and where they live.”

As a woman and mother-of-two who is currently pregnant with her third child; as a person living in a state with a near-total abortion ban; as a person who has given birth, suffered miscarriages and had abortions, I feel like a bizarre version of Oliver Twist. Here I am, begging my legislators, my Supreme Court judges and my fellow citizens for more than a simple dollop of unalienable rights.

Because I want more than an abortion ban exception that tells the world my life only matters when I’m in danger of losing it.

I want more than a legal loophole that says I can only make decisions about my own body when I’ve proved someone else has cruelly violated it.

I want more than what this post-Roe country can offer — measures on a ballot and the hope that enough voters will believe women deserve the dignity, the power and the freedom to decide what is best for ourselves.