--- title: Abortion Rights Benefit People Who Want Kids, Too description: Dismantling reproductive rights makes it impossible to enthusiastically consent to parenthood, writes Peggy O'Donnell Heffington. canonical: https://time.com/6271956/abortion-rights-benefit-parents/ author: TIME article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-04-14T15:56:33.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T15:44:27.724Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Abortion Rights Benefit People Who Want Kids, Too og:description: Dismantling reproductive rights makes it impossible to enthusiastically consent to parenthood. og:url: https://time.com/6271956/abortion-rights-benefit-parents/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4912da5edfde1040/698a3c04e6e84aeff42b001b/Abortion-Freedom-Consent-Protest.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: Abortion-Freedom-Consent-Protest og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Abortion Rights Benefit People Who Want Kids, Too twitter:description: Dismantling reproductive rights makes it impossible to enthusiastically consent to parenthood. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4912da5edfde1040/698a3c04e6e84aeff42b001b/Abortion-Freedom-Consent-Protest.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- # Abortion Rights Benefit People Who Want Kids, Too > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=74599c63-acd2-4bea-965f-55742e03f05a&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: What Happens Next in the Fight Over Abortion Pills [Watch (HLS stream): What Happens Next in the Fight Over Abortion Pills](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/YWU1AZq9.m3u8) (3:17)  _Published 2023-04-14. On April 7, 2023, Texas Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk ordered the Food and Drug Administration to invalidate its 23-year-old approval of mifepristone, one of the components of a medication abortion, a ruling that would effectively remove the drug from the market. Hours later, a Federal Judge in Washington state ordered the FDA to not make any changes to mifepristone’s current availability. Since then, a Federal Appeals Court has ruled that it can stay on the market, but imposed sharp restrictions for accessing it._ Apr 14, 2023 3:56 PM UTC by [Peggy O’Donnell Heffington](https://time.com/author/peggy-odonnell-heffington/) ## Peggy O’Donnell Heffington Apr 14, 2023 3:56 PM UTC On April 7, 2023, Texas Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk [ordered](https://time.com/6255625/abortion-pills-mifepristone-texas-lawsuit/) the Food and Drug Administration to invalidate its 23-year-old approval of mifepristone, one of the components of a medication abortion, a ruling that would effectively remove the drug from the market. Hours later, a Federal Judge in Washington state [ordered](https://time.com/6269703/abortion-pill-mifepristone-fda-case/) the FDA to not make any changes to mifepristone’s current availability. Since then, a Federal Appeals Court has ruled that it can stay on the market, but imposed sharp restrictions for accessing it. The legal wrangling over mifepristone has produced an outpouring of outrage among Democrats, as well as a [sharply worded letter](https://docsend.com/view/2ahvmwy8djzxax3g) of rebuke from the pharmaceutical industry, which now bears the signatures of hundreds of executives. Meanwhile, Republicans have been uncharacteristically muted—Florida Gov. Ron de Santis [tweeted](https://twitter.com/GovRonDeSantis/status/1644492295289335809?s=20) about Good Friday in the hours after Kacsmaryk’s ruling—with the exception of Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, a Republican from Mississippi. Judge Kacsmaryk’s decision, she [wrote on Twitter,](https://twitter.com/SenHydeSmith/status/1644497756000493569?s=20) was “a victory for pregnant mothers & their unborn children.” Since the Supreme Court released its decision in _Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health_ this past June, overturning _Roe v. Wade_, those of us who value reproductive rights have worried about people having to [travel across state lines](https://time.com/6185519/abortion-clinics-travel-state-borders/) to access abortions they need or want; about the risks of [self-managed abortions](https://time.com/6099921/texas-self-managed-abortions/) by those who can’t or would prefer not to travel; about doctors and patients facing [criminal charges](https://time.com/6222346/abortion-care-after-roe-doctors-lawyers/). We have spent less time worrying about the implications of limiting abortion access for people who were pregnant with (or already parenting) children they very much wanted. It’s obvious how restricting access to reproductive options affects people who don’t want to have a child, or who don’t want to be parents. It’s less obvious how it affects people who do, or who already are. But if we truly value mothers, children, and the work and responsibilities of parenting, that is exactly what we should be worried about. **_Read More:_**[_What the Texas Abortion Pill Ruling Could Mean for People Seeking Care_](https://time.com/6270258/texas-abortion-pill-ruling-mifepristone/) In the wake of the _Dobbs_ decision, a number of women I know who don’t want children, or don’t want them soon, expressed anger and fear about having lost the right to make decisions about their lives and their futures. But it wasn’t just people without kids who were angry. Friends who were pregnant or who already had children also told me they felt like something had been taken from them. One woman I know put it starkly: She realized that her ability to joyfully, fully consent to parenting had been contingent on her ability to also _not_ consent. You can’t say yes if you don’t also have the option of saying no. We normally talk about consent in the context of sex. Legally and morally, an unconscious person, or an extremely intoxicated person, cannot consent. On college campuses, trainings and workshops on sexual assault urge young people to get “enthusiastic, verbal consent” from their partner before engaging in sexual activity. Critics make this sound like a bummer, a buzzkill necessitated by people being too sensitive these days, overthinking everything and ruining all the fun. I’ve always thought they had it backwards. Shouldn’t it make sex more fun to know that your partner is really into it? By the same token, the very term “pro-life” makes a claim that opponents of abortion are the ones concerned with babies and their futures. But isn’t it possible that the opposite is true: that we value children and the work of raising them _more_ by ensuring that the people who take it on have enthusiastically said yes to everything it requires? The fact that we don’t seem to care about parents consenting to parenthood is revealing. On Twitter in August 2022, the anti-abortion organization Students for Life put it [starkly](https://twitter.com/SFLAction/status/1563618351531888640?s=20): “consent to sex is consent to pregnancy.” This is nonsensical: as writer Jessica Valenti [put it](https://jessica.substack.com/p/sex-isnt-consent-to-pregnancy), it’s like saying that by driving a car you consent to having an accident. It also represents a failure to grasp what pregnancy and parenting mean in the society we live in. The U.S. [ranks behind](https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2022/us-maternal-mortality-crisis-continues-worsen-international-comparison#:~:text=New%20international%20data%20show%20the,most%20other%20high%2Dincome%20countries.) most other developed nations in maternal mortality, and restrictions on abortions and clinics that perform them—which, especially in rural areas, are often the sole providers of prenatal care—has only made pregnancy and childbirth riskier. And, once the child is born, American society has long expected parents—mothers, more specifically—to take on the full responsibility for raising their children, meeting their material and emotional needs with little outside support. Needing support like financial assistance, reduced cost lunch, or subsidized health care is often construed a failure on the part of the parents. Earlier this month in North Dakota, the state legislature rejected a bill to expand free lunch to low-income school children. “It’s really the problem of parents being negligent with their kids,” Republican State Sen. Mike Wobbema [argued](https://twitter.com/HeartlandSignal/status/1641169366019350529?s=20). “I don’t believe that it is our responsibility.” In February 2023, _Christianity Today_ reported that evangelicals in Mississippi are preparing to welcome an estimated [5,000 “Dobbs babies”](https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2023/march/dobbs-babies-care-evangelicals-mississippi.html) in their state this year, babies who would not have been born had _Roe v. Wade_ was still the law of the land. “We can help women keep their babies,” a pregnancy resource center worker in the article says, but no one says how they will help women _with_ their babies—children with serious health complications, maybe, or whose parents were unprepared for them, or who never intended to have children—beyond simply celebrating their existence. Hyde-Smith’s claim that the Texas ruling is a “victory for pregnant mothers” sits uncomfortably alongside a belief that has animated the anti-abortion movement for well over a century: That pregnancy is punishment for women’s sexual bad behavior. Anthony Comstock, one of the foremost crusaders against contraception and abortion in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the U.S., [believed that](https://www.google.com/books/edition/Harper%5Fs%5FWeekly/jhOQMzXMpckC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22god+has+set+certain+natural+barriers%22+comstock&pg=PA490&printsec=frontcover) “God has set certain barriers” to sex, like the threat of pregnancy. If people lack the self-control to avoid sex (or, as he put it, if they “sink to the level of beasts”), he said, a “punishment falls upon the parents”: a child that they must raise and care for. As we careen toward an America where it is harder—impossible in some cases—to opt out of parenting, we should carefully consider the implications of weakening the ability of people to consent _to_ it. Is it really a “victory for pregnant mothers & their unborn children” to see babies as consequences of bad decisions, motherhood as punishment for sexual indiscretion? If we really thought parenting was that important, wouldn’t we want people to joyfully take on that responsibility—even _and especially_ because they have the option not to? It’s worth considering that people who choose not to parent—not to parent at all, or who decide they cannot parent a particular child at a particular moment—are actually reaffirming the value of children and the sacred responsibility that comes with raising them. In our rush as a society to dismantle reproductive rights, a side effect may be that we undermine that value, by making it impossible to enthusiastically, joyfully consent to parenthood—impossible to say yes, because we can no longer say no. ## Transcript A ruling by a Texas judge has left the legal experts and medical professionals alike. Scrambling to understand what it means when the FDA approves a drug. And who, if anyone can question that decision, I just can't believe that the there is a person in Texas who thinks that they know more than the FDA in terms of what is a safe medication and to try and remove a medication that we've been using for abortions, miscarriage management and other things In Obstetrics and gynaecology for more than 20 years is Completely absurd much like the daps decision last summer. This news will and has already overwhelmed, confused and height and fear. Within the communities, we serve the judge ruled. That me. Also known as the abortion pill which was approved more than 20 years ago to induce abortion. In the first trimester should no longer be approved. The Department of Justice and the drugs maker have appealed the decision and an appeals court. Granted the appeal that means that for now, the drug remains on the market and doctors can prescribe it and patients can use it, but the legal status of the drug remains uncertain, The judge's ruling is the first time that the powers of the FDA to approve. Drugs has been questioned by the courts and that's a big deal. Congress. Gave the FDA powers to review Drug Assessment for safety and Effectiveness and make decisions about that based on scientific evidence and to have a judge questioned that decision and not process, could seriously undermine the fda's authority. And that's what health officials are most concerned about. I spoke to the commissioner of the FDA who approved me for Christmas. And that's what she's most worried about. Is the precedent that this could set for questioning the fda's decision or not. Just me for christone, but other drugs as well. And she said, she knew that. When this drug came up for approval, that it was very important for women's reproductive Health, she instructed her staff to give the drug the same rigorous scientific review process that Used for every other drug that it approved and that's despite the fact that as an abortion pill. And at the time, the very first abortion pill, there were political pressures. However she said even then Roe v Wade, had already been declared law and therefore it was lawful to have an abortion and the climate was not as contentious as it was today. We're Roe. V Wade has been overturned by the Supreme Court and some states ban abortion while other states continue to allow it. The situation means that even experts don't know what happens next and everyone's looking to this case, to better, understand how much it will undermine the fda's authority and how much the FDA can rely on the powers that Congress gave it to maintain that when it makes decisions about drugs, like the abortion pill, that those decisions should stand. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6271956/abortion-rights-benefit-parents/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6271956/abortion-rights-benefit-parents/"},"headline":"Abortion Rights Benefit People Who Want Kids, Too","datePublished":"2023-04-14T15:56:33.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-24T15:44:27.724Z","description":"Dismantling reproductive rights makes it impossible to enthusiastically consent to parenthood, writes Peggy O'Donnell Heffington.","url":"https://time.com/6271956/abortion-rights-benefit-parents/","keywords":["abortion","freelance"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Peggy O’Donnell Heffington","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/peggy-odonnell-heffington/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/abortion/","name":"abortion"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/6271956/abortion-rights-benefit-parents/","name":"Abortion Rights Benefit People Who Want Kids, Too"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"What Happens Next in the Fight Over Abortion Pills","description":"On April 7, 2023, Texas Judge Matthew J. 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