I am so angry.
I knew this was going to happen and I knew I would be angry, but oh my god I am so fucking ANGRY. I am so profoundly pissed off. Absolutely irate.
The list of people I am mad at is five hundred miles long. Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh, Barrett, Gorsuch, Roberts. Ruth for not retiring when she should have. Kennedy for retiring when he did. Breyer and his stupid little book tour earlier this year. Susan Collins, Mitch McConnell, Trump, Obama, Biden, Pelosi, Schumer. Joe Manchin. Kyrsten Sinema. Any politician who had the power to do something about this at any time in the last five decades. The Virginia Democrats who went on vacation instead of passing a law protecting abortion rights before our idiot governor took office. My professor who said she “felt sorry” for the Justices who had to make this decision. Anyone who commented on how awful it is that this leaked. The Federalist Society. The Catholic Church. The men who said anything about this. The men who didn’t. I will be mad about this for the rest of my life.
I knew they were going to do this, but if the final opinion is the same as the draft, they will be doing it in the worst possible way they could do it. The argument Alito lays out is an argument against most civil rights. They can use the same argument to overturn the decisions that legalized access to contraception, voting rights, gay marriage, interracial marriage, homosexuality. These are all at risk, and they will do it. They WANT to do it.
They are coming for birth control. They are coming for IVF. They will take it all.
This often gets lost in these conversations and I want to say it clearly: there is nothing wrong with getting an abortion. There is no situation in which a pregnant person should not be allowed to make this choice for themselves. Abortion is not bad, it is not shameful, it is not immoral. This is not a choice that needs to be justified by any special set of circumstances. I am not just pro-choice, I am pro-abortion. Abortion is good. Abortion saves lives. It allows people who can get pregnant the freedom to live their lives the way those who cannot get pregnant have always been able to. To live freely in our society, to build the life they want to live. Bodily autonomy is a basic human right. A person who is not allowed to make this choice for themselves is not a free person.
We are talking about forced pregnancy and forced birth. In a country where *breathing* in a doctor’s office costs money. In a country with an unfathomably high maternal mortality rate. With no paid parental leave, with no free child care, a country that would rather blame you for your own suffering than make an ounce of effort to make things easier.
I don’t know what to do. The system is not built in a way that makes this easy to fix.
We just have to be honest about what is happening. No more beating around the bush. No more “how dare someone leak this,” no more “they said it was settled law,” no more “they lied.” No one fucking lied. We all knew. This was the plan the whole time. I have known that for my entire life. They are PROUD OF IT. Stop acting surprised. Speak plainly. Call it out. Listen to the people who have been screaming about this for years. Ignore the people who called them crazy for screaming.
Find your local abortion fund and send them money. Don’t send money to national organizations, they don’t need it. Find the abortion fund that is paying for people in your community to get abortions and send them a lot of money. Make it a recurring donation.
Figure out who is running to be prosecutor where you live and only vote for the candidate who says, explicitly, out loud, that they will not prosecute abortion patients or providers.
If you need to get an abortion, make an appointment. The opinion is a draft. It is not in effect yet.
Scream. In the streets.
I don’t know what to do with my rage. I want to scream and I want to yell and I want to bury my head in the ground so that I don’t have to think about this anymore. I feel like I am going insane, just watching this happen and watching the people who could do something about it choose not to. As if I am screaming as loud as I can and no one can hear me. I feel like my body is on fire and my brain is melting.
I am so SICK of this. I am so mad that we have to do this.
There are a lot of people in this country who have not had access to abortion for a very long time. But it is about to get so much worse.
I have lived a very privileged life that I know would not be possible in many other places. But I do not know how to take pride in a country that does not value me at the most basic level.
Why should I love something that doesn’t love me back?
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