Opinion | Is it just me, or are we going backwards?

All over the country and all over the world, we are seeing backtracking when it comes to women’s rights. From abortion bans to femicides, women all over the globe are under attack. Photo courtesy of Unsplash

Is it just me, or are we going backwards?

Emilia Cuevas Diaz, Opinions Editor

For the last couple of years, I’ve been watching as women’s rights are threatened and taken away all over the globe. I’ve seen women yelling, protesting and fighting tooth and nail to stop that from happening, and it seems to be getting us nowhere. 

It kind of feels like no matter how loud we scream or how much we organize, nothing works. 

In Mexico, the fourth now annual Women’s Day March to demand a stop to the epidemic of femicides just took place once more this year. Yet, the rate at which femicides are committed keeps growing.

In Iran, women have been jailed and killed for protesting against the law that makes women have to wear a hijab in public, sparking protests all around the world.

In Afghanistan, women and girls have been banned from going to parks, gyms and public bathing houses, along with pursuing education past the sixth grade and working anywhere that is not health or education.

In China, what a woman's place in society is has become a big political issue recently, with many wanting women to go back to “traditional values.” Many women’s rights activists who have spoken out against this have been censored, whether that be on or offline.   

In Poland, women’s reproductive rights have been under fire since 2015, and a bill came into effect in 2021 that resulted in a near-total ban on abortion across the country, with the only exceptions being for rape or incest.

Turkey withdrew from the Istanbul Convention, a landmark of legally binding standards set in place to prevent gender violence, protect victims of gender-based violence and punish its perpetrators.

South Korea’s president gained votes on a pledge to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family in addition to other anti-feminist initiatives.

In Pakistan, their annual Aurad March, (Women’s march in Urdu) was targeted with a smear campaign on social media, and the march organizers were threatened by the Pakistani Taliban who demanded the government to persecute them for blasphemy.

And here in the United States, abortion restrictions are being rolled out throughout the country. 

So far this year, 15 states have introduced fetal personhood legislation, with the Supreme Court of Alabama recently ruling to give embryos personhood status. 

So basically, people who have an abortion, or a miscarriage, or do drugs while pregnant, or even just fail to get adequate medical treatment for their pregnancy could be prosecuted and arrested under the charge of harming or even killing a child.

Women’s rights organizations have been warning that this was coming. They were right about fetal personhood laws, and they were right about Roe v. Wade. And we continue to keep not listening. 

What is it going to take for people to stop ignoring their warnings and pay attention? Will it be when they come after women’s rights to vote? Or after women’s rights to own property? Maybe it won’t be until we are once again considered men's property that people will look back and remember the warnings.

And for those saying there’s no way we would ever go back that far, the Arizona Supreme Court just reinstated an 1864 abortion ban law. 

Our mothers and grandmothers fought to get rights that are now being taken away from us. We are now fighting the same laws that our foremothers fought for us years ago. 

Additionally, we are still nowhere near equal pay, or having women represented in positions of power or in politics. And that’s without even scratching the surface of workplace harassment and sexual violence. I mean, the #MeToo movement went viral less than a decade ago. 

And yes, that’s bullshit. We should not have to be taking up the fights our grandmothers worked so hard to win. But the reality of the situation is that if we don’t act now, it will be too late. 

If we don’t listen to the women who’ve been through this before, to the women who know better and join their fight, the next generation’s fight might be one to not be considered property. 

And I, for one, refuse to let that happen. So, I will go down fighting if that’s what it takes to ensure by the end of this, women have the rights they deserve. My question is: will you help, or will you keep waiting until it’s too late?