I did not mean to do this, to once again write a whole post about abortion, but I am just so angry and so tired and I cannot stop thinking about all of this. I am surprised to be able to find any words because in my head this all just sounds like a primal scream. I feel resigned to an outcome I know is coming, but I also feel absolute rage. I am so mad that we have to do this, that this is happening, that no one is doing anything to stop it.
I am so angry at the Democratic Party’s abject failure to do absolutely anything at all, now or at any time in the past five decades, as the Republican Party built a political apparatus whose entire goal was to stack the judiciary with judges who would not strike down abortion bans, to flip the balance of the Supreme Court and fill it with people who would vote to overturn Roe. They did this overtly and unapologetically. They have succeeded, and we have all watched it happen.
I am so angry watching men on the internet discuss this issue in relation to which party this will help in the midterms. This isn’t a game, this isn’t your Fantasy Football league. People are going to die. It’s not about who will win an election. Shut up.
I am so tired of watching people who have been pregnant lay their trauma bare, expose these intensely personal and fraught moments of their lives to the public, in order to get men to take them seriously. People should not have to write and talk about their traumas in order for you to see their humanity.
This country does not take women seriously. It does not treat us fairly and it calls us crazy when we point that out. It is exhausting.
I cannot stop thinking about Amy Coney Barrett referencing the fact that all 50 states have safe haven laws, which allow a parent to surrender custody of a child they do not want without consequence. Why, she suggested, can’t everyone just carry a pregnancy to term and then give the baby up?
Adoption is an alternative to parenting, not an alternative to pregnancy and birth. This is such an asinine suggestion to make. We live in the country with the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world. The numbers are worse for people of color. Pregnancy and birth are, for many pregnant people, life threatening. It is 75 times more dangerous to give birth in Mississippi than to have a pre-viability abortion.
Pregnancy and birth are incredibly expensive, even with good insurance. Birth is major surgery and can result in a myriad of negative health outcomes. To suggest that people can just do this and give the baby up afterwards is so out of touch, such a misunderstanding of this entire issue, I cannot imagine how anyone could make this suggestion seriously. Amy Coney Barrett has birthed five children.
It is also just a violation to force someone to carry a pregnancy to term when they do not want to. As a person who can get pregnant, I am more than my body’s biological ability to do that. I am more than just a vessel to carry and birth a hypothetical child. I am not livestock. Just because my body is capable of doing this does not mean I should be forced to. If we don’t want to be pregnant, if we don’t want to give birth, we should not have to, and there is really nothing more to say. I am so annoyed to even have to say these words, to have to convince anyone that my body is mine.
We can argue forever about when a fetus becomes a human, about when life truly begins. We can go back and forth forever about the rights of a pregnant person vs. the rights of an embryo or fetus. Brett Kavanaugh, who is credibly accused of sexual assault, said on Wednesday, “The reason this issue is hard is because you can’t accommodate both interests. You have to pick.”
I am already human. I am already here. Pick me.
Recommended reading:
The first time I wrote about abortion.
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