This isn’t a victory for life – it spells death for women

We saw it coming at us like a 10-tonne truck but, if anyone needed confirmation, here it is: the bodily autonomy of women is under a deadly assault. Think that's hyperbole? Think again.

- KATIE EDWARDS

In a sucker punch to women's reproductive freedom, the US Supreme Court has overturned the landmark Roe v Wade ruling.

This means that there will no longer be a constitutional right to an abortion in the US, and states get to decide whether to allow, ban or restrict pregnancy terminations.

While former vice president Mike Pence celebrated the ruling with the words "today, life won", I wonder which lives he's talking about? It's certainly not those of women - particularly Black and impoverished women, who'll be disproportionately affected by the elimination of their legal right to abortion.

Criminalising abortions means criminalising socially and economically disadvantaged women, and putting their lives at risk through unsafe termination procedures. Because this is what happens when abortion is criminalised. It doesn't prevent women from terminating pregnancies, it just forces them into life-threatening, unsafe abortions with poorly trained or untrained practitioners and little or no aftercare, which can result in septic shock, perforated bladder and/or bowel, severe haemorrhaging, and death.