I’m tired and I’m angry. And I’m tired of being tired and
angry. Every time I think this immoral, unethical, corrupt, and repressive administration cannot do
anything worse, they find a new level of low. The latest being the laws
restricting abortion that are being passed in a number of states, with Alabama’s
being the most egregious of them all. Those passing them know that they will be
challenged in court, and probably initially blocked. Which is just fine with
them, because their goal is to get one or more of these laws to the Supreme
Court. Which they have now stocked with ultra conservative justices that they
are confident will overturn Roe v. Wade and recriminalize abortion across the
land. This has been one of the key goals of conservatives for years. I give
them credit for their fixation on this issue, and for playing the long game to
achieve their objective. We who advocate for the right of women to control
their own bodies have been lulled into complacency, even as the right to
abortion has been slowly wittled away in state after state. We couldn’t believe
we would reach this point. Yet here we are.
I used to be anti-abortion. I don’t even like to admit that,
but it’s the truth. I even participated in “pro-life” protests outside a clinic
in my teenage years. Today I’d rather provide protection for the woman seeking
the services at her local Planned Parenthood clinic. Now I see the hypocrisy
behind the “pro-life” movement, a movement in which many, like one of my family
members, will actively advocate for the “unborn” but won’t support any efforts
to provide for the well-being of the child, or mother, afterwards. Who don’t have
any problem with children being torn from their mothers because they “illegally”
crossed the border. Who refuse to demand measures to limit guns despite the
murder of children in school after school. Many of these conservatives will
loudly and vehemently protest any attempt by the government to regulate the
environment (I mean, who really needs a planet to live on in the future anyway?)
or business (because the rights of the business owner supercede all others) or
a number of other societal issues, but have no problem whatsoever with the
government regulating womens’ bodies. Because women aren’t really equal to men.
It’s really about enshrining the preeminence of men, as evidenced by the fact
that the Alabama law imposes a greater penalty for abortion after rape than for
the act of rape itself.
The simple fact is, if you don’t believe in abortion, you do
not have to have one. I’m absolutely against forced abortions, as is every
other woman I know. If you think doctors shouldn’t be required to perform them,
guess what? The laws already protect them. I don’t have any problem with the
fact that many people, including many women, believe that abortion is wrong. I
do have a problem with them forcing that belief on others by passing laws that
restrict the rights of others to choose what they do with their own bodies. I
believe in freedom of choice. Which, ironically, the conservatives claim they
believe in. Except when they disagree with your choice.
It may seem odd that I would advocate so vehemently for this
issue. After all, it doesn’t directly affect me. I don’t have a uterus so
therefore the entire debate is moot to me personally. Except it’s not. I am a
woman and stand with all women as our rights are being taken away, when our freedom
to control our own bodies is stripped from us by men with utter disregard. I
will not stand idly to the side as if this does not affect me as well. Make no
mistake, this is not just, or even primarily, about the right to choose an
abortion. It’s about the right to exercise control over your own body and your
own choices on a broader scale. It’s also intimately linked to the struggle for
transgender rights, which is also about the right to be who we are and make our
choices without being required to conform to someone else’s expectations about
who and what we should be. It’s about power, because those passing these laws
see the writing on the wall if they cannot disempower and disenfranchise women,
and with them minorities and anyone who doesn’t subscribe to the white patriarchal
status quo. That status quo is crumbling, and they are scrambling to hold it
together.
The past two years have been a period of increasing
darkness. I struggle to see light on the horizon, to find hope for the future.
But I have to hold on to hope. Barack Obama called it the audacity of hope. I
have to believe that a better future awaits us. I choose to believe audaciously
that this better future is not distant, but near. To relinquish that hope is to
fall into despair, and I refuse to dwell in despair. However, to get through
this time and to build that future, we must stand together. There are still
dark days ahead, perhaps even darker than those we’ve lived through for two
years. We women are strong. We are resilient. And we need one another. We need
to support each other in twos and threes and twenties and hundreds and by the
thousands. Because united we are a force that cannot be defeated. But divided,
we can be picked off one by one until our conquerors herd us into their reeducation
centers and enslave us. We will have our differences and disagreements. We must
be able to work through those and even to work together in spite of them. The
threats to our liberty are real and they are serious. Are we serious about
opposing them?
