The Aftermath of Overturning Roe v Wade

For our dreams into action portfolio, I decided to create two pieces based on the overturn of roe v wade and the affect it has had on women's rights over the past few years. While I was researching for this project, I wanted to show how unfair it all felt. Women in certain states have been stripped bare of their bodily autonomy and often deprived of lifesaving medical assistance all in the name of a clump of cells that can't survive without the mother.

There are 13 trigger states which all banned abortion as soon as roe v wade was overturned including Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. As of October 2022, In Texas alone 28 pregnant patients experienced maternal morbidity than other pregnant patients and were denied the healthcare they needed due to the ban on abortions. In the eight states that immediately implemented their trigger laws Utah is the only state that has an exception for cases of rape and incest while 5 states have eliminated abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, which is before most people know they are pregnant.

When I was creating these pieces, I wanted them to be shocking and catch people's eyes. To start with a woman that has been disemboweled I felt is a strong start to show just how cruel and heartbreaking it is to be a woman in this day and age, to see firsthand your rights stripped away and to feel alone while dealing with the consequences that men have pushed onto you. I used charcoal and wanted to use scratchy movements with no color in the skin as to keep the woman's race ambiguous. The overturn of roe v wade affects black women and racial minorities more prominently than white women due to class disparity and access to lifesaving medical knowledge. This is something I didn't want to discount in this project.

The government has been portrayed as a vulture in the second piece and is carrying the uterus of the woman we previously saw. I decided to portray the government body as a vulture because historically vultures symbolize death as well as rebirth. They're multifaceted creatures making them the perfect subject for a multifaceted government. However, on first glace of a vulture you think of a scavenger animal who feeds off of easy prey that is usually already dead. Women have always been thrown to the wolves in times of crisis and in this context often the men in our lives have made us feel worthless when speaking about feminine issues such as pregnancy and healthcare. This makes it easy for us to become a target of a vulture as we're already wounded.