I have written about this several times and I didn’t think I had anything left to say. If you know me, you probably laughed at that. I always, always, have something to say.
There are all the usual points to be made, about how the end of Roe leaves us in a legal minefield where pregnant people are more vulnerable to serious, life-threatening pregnancy complications. Ectopic pregnancies and incomplete miscarriages and cancer that needs chemotherapy treatment, etc. etc. etc. What about rape and incest? What about when the fetus is incompatible with life?
All of these are real and pressing issues, and if they convince more people that access to abortion is necessary and important then I will continue to have these conversations.
This is just so exhausting. It is exhausting to have to point to all of these caveats as reasons why I deserve to have autonomy over my own body, to be made to throw out example after example until I meet some imaginary threshold at which my choices can finally be deemed reasonable.
Pregnancy is traumatic and parenting is impossible and this country makes both of them more difficult and more expensive than they need to be. But also, the fact that someone simply does not want to do it is enough of a reason for why they should not have to. I can think of few things that would be more devastating to me in my life right now than an accidental pregnancy. I do not want to have a child right now. If I lived in a country with paid parental leave, the lowest maternal mortality rate in the world, a robust social safety net, free healthcare, and even if I had a billion dollars, I still would not want to have a child right now. That should be enough. Knowing what I want for my life should be enough.
It is exhausting to watch people who can get pregnant beg to be taken seriously. It is exhausting to read story after story about pregnant people who have suffered in the wake of inaccessible abortion care. Your peers should not have to lay their trauma bare in order for you to care.
No one owes anyone a laundry list of explanations for why they make the choices they make. We should not have to explain all of the reasons why someone may not want to be pregnant anymore and wait for someone else to decide which ones are acceptable and which ones are not. No one should have to walk others through all of the scenarios in which they would or would not be ready to have a child. It is, quite simply, none of our fucking business.
I feel like I have been stripped of my own dignity, and now I must beg at the feet of those in power to help me get it back. This is so deeply patronizing. I am profoundly uninterested in participating in this, in begging people to take me seriously at the most basic level. Why am I being made to ask for the most basic, the most fundamental of rights? It is so annoying to have to even talk about this at all, to have to spend time convincing people that my body is mine. I am my own person who can make my own choices. I should not be required to seek permission from anyone to do what I want to do with my own life. It is infuriating to be treated as less than a fully adult human capable of making my own choices. Leave me alone.
What we have witnessed here a total abdication of responsibility from our leaders at every level, for decades. They remain uninterested in trying, at all, to do something about this because they do not care about us. I have read this essay, by Rebecca Traister, from last Friday several times this week and keep thinking about this part: “This country’s history has been built on days like today. Bad days. It has shown itself capable of reform. Or rather, its people — those willing to give their lives and every scrap of hope they could muster — have reformed it by force.” Force.
Everything is so, so bad. This moment feels existential and soul crushing. I feel filled with dread and distain for my country, which has once again shown me that it does not value me in the slightest. But this is not the bottom. It is going to get way, way worse before it gets better. It might not get better in my lifetime. But we have to keep going, because it will get better eventually, even if we are not here to see it. It is so tempting to give up now. I am so sick of this and I don’t want to have to do this. But we have to do this. People are going to die and I refuse to just sit here and watch.
No one is coming to fix this for us. We have to do it ourselves.
Recommended reading:
We’re Not Going Back to the Time Before Roe. We’re Going Somewhere Worse
Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger by Rebecca Traister
More that I’ve written:
I wrote about abortion the week that SCOTUS let the 6 week ban in Texas go into effect.
I wrote about abortion again, the week that SCOTUS heard oral argument in the Dobbs case and it became clear what was going to happen.
I wrote about how angry I was when the Dobbs decision leaked.