I haven’t really wanted to get into politics here, for a variety of reasons. I spent more than a decade screaming into the ether, only to realize I was basically feeding a never ending quest for dopamine. I recently deactivated Facebook, and I’m seriously considering never going back. I’m still figuring out how to talk about the issues I am passionate about in a clear, concise way that doesn’t send me straight down the hyper-fixation rabbit hole.
Reproductive rights is something I have always been passionate about, and something that I focus on in my creative work as well as the focus of my political actions. It is one of the single most important issues in the fight for economic and social justice, and I will die on this hill. I knew for a long time that SCOTUS would overturn Roe v. Wade the second they got a conservative majority, and I operated on the belief that we needed to do everything in our power to keep them from doing so.
I was told that this wouldn’t happen, that Roe was “precedent” and “settled law”.
I was told I was paranoid.
I was told it was a “wedge issue”.
I was told that it wasn’t “that important”.
I was told that I shouldn’t call myself a progressive because I supported Hillary Goldman Sachs Clinton. BUT HER EMAILS neoliberal shill something something blah blah blah. Any woman but THAT woman, except when there was another woman, it turns out they didn’t want that woman either.
Let’s be clear, I would have supported a Swiffer Wet Jet over Trump, but I was pretty okay with the super educated and experienced woman who absolutely would not have allowed this to happen. We also would have kept the Court. Which mattered. A lot.
But here we are, nearly eight years after the 2016 election, and nearly two years past the fall of Roe. It wasn’t rocket science to see that Roe was going down. It was simple math. We can debate all day on who the blame falls on for that, but at the end of the day, we had the chance to stop it from happening, and we didn’t. The conservatives now have a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court.
These are lifetime appointments. Amy Comey Barrett is only in her early 50s. She could easily serve another thirty years.
I’ve had an abortion. A huge chunk of the women I know have had one. Everyone had their own reasons for doing so. The facts of when it happened, how it happened, how old they were when it happened, what method of abortion they sought out, and why they chose to have one is exactly none of anyone’s god damn business.
I won’t go into the horrendous consequences of restricting reproductive access and choice, because there are so many people doing a far better job of it than me. I recommend
by the indefatigable right here on Substack. There are pages upon pages of the horrors being unleashed by abortion bans all over the country. It’s hard to read, but necessary to understand the scope of it.For the past several years, we have had to sit through this absolute sham of a Supreme Court and their precedent-shattering rulings. The conservative justices - Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Barrett, Kavanaugh and Roberts - seem hell bent on ignoring so-called “settled law”. Each of them have their own agenda, and you bet your ass a lot of that is their personal grievances against women. We all know Clarence Thomas will go to his grave raging at Anita Hill, and we also know Brett Kavanaugh is still Big Mad about his confirmation hearing. Leave it to a mediocre man to continue being pissed about a rough job interview, even though he got the job anyway. HE JUST LIKES BEER OK? Meanwhile, the woman who brought up some very good reasons he shouldn’t get the job wound up having to go into hiding. Neat!
Today, because what better way to end March than a heaping dose of WHITE HOT RAGE, the Supreme Court heard arguments from anti-abortion doctors and activists that are going against the Food and Drug Administration.
From the New York Times:
The current challenge involves mifepristone, a drug approved by the F.D.A. more than two decades ago. At issue is whether the agency acted appropriately in expanding access to the drug in 2016 and again in 2021.
From the current reporting, it seems that even the conservative justices are “skeptical” about this case, and don’t seem likely to rule against the FDA. While it may seem like good news on the surface, a decision won’t come down until June, and that seems like a long time to wait for what would normally be a slam dunk easy ruling. We also can’t be sure that the conservative justices will do anything that makes one lick of legal sense. It’s white knuckle time until the official ruling comes out. So we wait.
This is life from now on. Every single time the Court hears a case about reproductive rights, or another issue we care about, I flash back to the terrible day when that memo “leaked” about SCOTUS’ intent to overturn Roe v. Wade, and the even worse day when the ruling was issued. It was a horrible day and flung me into a pit of despair, not only because of all the people who would suffer because of it, but because the thing I’d anticipated and feared for most of my adult life was actually happening. We have to re-live the trauma, over and over again. I couldn’t even bear to listen to the livestream of the hearing today, so I stuck to the transcripts. I just can’t hear Clarence Thomas bring up the Comstock Act again without being in real danger of going full She-Wolf.
If you find yourself being dragged behind the Struggle Bus today because of all of this, you are not alone. Despite my best efforts to protect my mental health but also stay engaged, the body knows better. My heart rate has been elevated all day, and I am finding it hard to focus. My anxiety, when it happens, is all physical now. I don’t feel that fight or flight panic like I used to, but it feels like every single muscle in my body is tensed up. I am trying to just breathe through it.
Take heart - there are a lot of people on the ground fighting with everything they have. They are finding ways to get as many people access to care as they can. Aid Access is one of them. Plan C is another. These are not solutions or quick fixes, and it doesn’t get anyone their rights back, but it is ensuring that some people in states where abortion is banned can get what they need safely and discreetly. A small donation to any pro-choice organization feels good, and is a way to be politically active without sacrificing what little sanity you have left.
The sad fact of the matter is this: We lost fifty years of progress when Roe fell in June of 2022, and that isn’t going to get better overnight. There is no magic wand that any politician can wave to undo the damage that was done. Make no mistake: They are absolutely coming for birth control, IVF, and surrogacy. The invocation of the Comstock Act in nearly every related case is not an accident.
What a lot of people don’t seem to understand is that when you lose rights, it takes a very long time to get them back. I have to remind myself that this is going to be a fight we are going to be in for decades, perhaps the rest of my life. It breaks my heart that my friends’ children and maybe even their grandchildren are going to have fewer rights than I grew up with. All I can do is use my vote and my voice appropriately.
As for the upcoming election, which I am also trying not to obsess over…
There are two candidates for President. One of them will win, no matter what we do. There is no lesson to be learned from letting the GOP back in the White House, except to find out just how much worse things can get. Are our choices exciting and inspiring? No. But I would rather make a choice I’m not excited about, rather than risk losing the ability to choose at all.