I’m so tired. It’s been so much for too long. The news is never nice, bursting as it is with bad people doing worse things, but can we get a break?
Roe v. Wade was decided when I was 9 years old and now, in my 58th year, it’s all tumbling down. The fences are going up around the court and conservatives (*extremists*) are poised to strip women’s rights. This is not a surprise - if you’ve been paying any attention at all, you know that the minority with the megaphones and the ill-gotten reins of power have been dying to put women back in “their place” for decades. More than half of the US population, at the mercy of a few. Again. Still.
Even with Roe, it has never been easy. Abortion may have been mostly safe and nominally protected, but the minority has been loud and troublesome all my life. They’ve been screaming about the sanctity of life, pointing their fingers at women, while supporting capital punishment and everyone’s right to a gun. We’ve always wondered when - not if, but when - Roe would fall.
Like many women, I have an abortion story. It’s not one I like to tell, it’s hard and it’s mine, but it shares much with the stories of others. An abusive man, shame and secrecy, a terrifying walk through an army of aggressive protesters. Trauma. I am grateful every day that I had the choice and that I am not tied to that violent person. Grateful that I didn’t have to be what I couldn’t be in my teens.
I think, though, about the shame. So much shame. My heart breaks for women and girls who bear the burden of this shame alone. If we tell our stories at all, it is usually in whispers, in private, with our inner circles. We have been taught, even after Roe, that we should be ashamed. The giant finger points at women, we alone are responsible. And where are the men? The men who get us pregnant and legislate our bodies? They are the invisible part of the equation. They are throwing fences up around their governing body, lest they be penetrated without consent.
Abortion is healthcare. My body, my choice. A woman should be able to get an abortion if she wants one. Full stop. We don’t owe anyone our stories or our apologies, and shame on those who shame us. Of course it’s difficult and unpleasant. Those who are against abortion should never get one. They have that choice.
I have so much to say on this issue, but others are saying it better:
- - “It is misogyny enshrined.”
- - “These rights were decades in the winning, decades in the undoing, and will again be decades in the remaking.”
Rebecca Solnit - “The arguments about abortion in the US are about one thing: controlling women.”
- - “How to fight for abortion rights now and into the future.”
Happy Friday!
Lisa