Overview:
With the leak of a draft opinion by SCOTUS overturning Roe v. Wade, the question must be asked: do the lives of the women mean nothing?
I was almost impregnated by a child molester.
I can’t go into too much detail, but I will say this: it was a heterosexual-passing long-term relationship between two white people. It was socially condoned in almost every way. I could’ve become pregnant and had that baby, and everyone would’ve cheered.
Luckily, that’s not what happened.
So when I read the leaked draft opinion suggesting that the U.S. Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade, I was unsurprisingly upset. It is horrifying for a million and a half reasons to entertain the thought that abortion will be limited in the U.S., not just because of my own near-miss, but because of so many uterus-bequeathed people who will suffer.
Why am I concerned? Because over half of U.S. states allow unrestricted rights on behalf of parental perpetrators. If I’d had that pregnancy and gone through with it, things could have gotten extremely complicated. But given my status as a white, middle-class, cisgender, hetero-passing woman, maybe not as complicated, since privilege often changes everything in the US.
Instead, let’s focus on…
– all the people for whom this could become a forced-birth situation, which takes us back to a terrible time in our country’s history;
– all the mothers who will have their bodies forever altered by the experience;
– all the mothers (and parents more generally) impacted by lack of maternal leave, the lack of federal policy;
– all the women and AFAB (assigned female at birth) people who will die, given our high maternal mortality rates here in the U.S., even with all of our tech advancements.
The belief that abortion is wrong—one that is held by many religious citizens—hinders the health and advancement of roughly half the population. With Roe v. Wade overturned, we know what will happen.
When did we decide that the life of a woman is worth nothing?