Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg has weighed in on the ongoing American abortion debate, and her take has left people applauding.
Thunberg took to social media to bluntly attack the controversy over a woman's right to choose.
Using a graphic showing the "reasons why women have abortions," Thunberg dismantled the debate with just a simple tweet.
See it below.
@GretaThunberg/Twitter
The tweet features a pie chart that purports to outline the most common reasons women have abortions, along with the percentage those reasons. The pie chart is meant as satire, of course, but the subtext is anything but light-hearted.
The chart lists the following reasons for having an abortion:
- "Personal choice," at 60%
- "Not your concern," at 10%
- "Mind your business," at 8%
- "Fu*k off," at 22%
Thunberg's tweet comes in the wake of the state of Texas' draconian (and unconstitutional) new abortion law, which is the most restrictive anti-abortion legislation in decades. The bill bans abortions once medical professionals can detect a "heartbeat," which is typically around week six of a pregnancy.
But that terminology is a misnomer. A six-week-old fetus does not have a heartbeat, because it does yet have a heart--or any other organs for that matter. Rather, what proponents of the bill call a "heartbeat" are merely electrical impulses among fetal cells that will eventually, several weeks later, become a heart and other organs.
More importantly, most women do not yet know they are pregnant at six weeks. And given that a pregnancy's duration is estimated starting from the date of a woman's last period--which is usually two weeks before conception even occurs--it is very common for pregnancy tests to still come up negative at six weeks or before.
Add this together with the fact the bill provides exceptions only for life-threatening health complications but not for rape and incest, and the bill essentially constitutes a total ban on abortion in the state of Texas, in practice if not on paper.
The bill also allows for private citizens to sue women who obtain abortions and anyone who helps them obtain one--including rideshare drivers who bring them to a clinic, provisions that have struck many as terrifying and absurd.
Taken together, "fu*k off" pretty perfectly sums up many people's responses to the Texas bill, and Thunberg's blunt response to it drew several rounds of applause on Twitter.
According to a press release from U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Justice Department is exploring ways to challenge the Texas abortion law.
