Substitute while the actions of the article are loading
So they finally did it. A campaign that has been preparing for decades to repeal abortion rights in America is taking place on Friday at 10:10 a.m. Eastern Time. “Hey, hey, ho ho, Rowe vs. Wade it has to go, ”anti-abortion activists shouted in front of a barricaded Supreme Court, and then all of a sudden it was over. There was silence in the crowd as news of the decision leaked to the streets, and then the silence turned to applause, and that’s what it looks like when women’s rights across the country are denied, I suppose. Disgusting little party.
This is what I thought about as I watched those active anti-abortion activists – so many of whom were young women who branded themselves as the “generation after the deer” without having yet weighed down their lives to understand what that meant. I found that I was thinking about life experience. Not for the abortions that women will no longer be able to perform, but for the choices that they will no longer be able to perform.
The first abortion I didn’t have was in college. My period was five days late – it turned out to be random, due to exam stress, blah blah blah – but in the five days before it arrived, I had already searched Google for the nearest Planned Parenthood. The second abortion I didn’t have was in my 30s. Birth control was religious, and yet they were: two pink lines and a future I had never planned. As I tried to warm up to the idea of motherhood, nature resolved the situation in the form of miscarriage.
The third abortion I did not have was my daughter. Then everything was planned. I was ready, and the reason I knew I was ready was because I wasn’t thinking about an abortion, I was thinking about a baby’s name.
While America waited like a rabbit under the lights of this decision to fall (and it turns out that what we got was almost what the draft opinion said we would get, Samuel Alito in all his sarcastic 19th-century glory) , I heard from many women about their abortions. But I’ve heard from so many women about the abortions they have did not have. The options that were open to them. The choice they knew was their choice, and the future that unfolds because of it.
A friend was 16. First boyfriend, first broken condom. She went to her mother before going to the pharmacy for a pregnancy test. Her mother immediately said, “You don’t have to have a baby, we’ll take care of it.” The test turned out to be negative, but 20 years later she still remembers her mother’s calm relief and the stream of relief that comes with it.
Another friend told me that she went to the doctor for an ultrasound in the second trimester. The sonographer’s lips pursed in a smile instead of a smile, and she rushed to see a doctor. While my friend was waiting for more tests, she thought about how she might have to end a desired pregnancy, because continuing in these circumstances would be, in her opinion, indescribably cruel.
False alarm, however. The baby was fine. She didn’t have to make the terrible decision, but she later told me that the only mercy she could find while waiting for the results of these tests was in the idea that the terrible decision would at least be hers.
“It is time to listen to the constitution and return the issue of abortion to elected representatives,” Alito wrote. He meant that the issue should be taken away by the Supreme Court, but what actually means that the issue of women’s uteri will be taken away by women.
Perspective: Here is President Biden’s speech on abortion
My women talked about their own past. When they were still virgins, when they were in high school and in health care classes, they showed condoms wrapped around bananas, when excited students were encouraged to take optimistic promises of cleanliness. These girls at the time hadn’t even had sex yet, but abortion still existed in their minds as the second half of the if / then equation. If you are pregnant, then …
I don’t think many men realize this – that abortion is a procedure that many women have considered at least once in their lives, even if they do, it means deciding they will never do it.
It wasn’t a question of having an abortion, Judge Alito. The point was to know that your life should not be ruined. The point was that if you accidentally get pregnant, you don’t have to give up the scholarship, the master’s program, the transfer. You should not have been trapped in a miserable relationship by the baby’s financial needs. One mistake didn’t have to punish you forever.
Perspective: Unreasonable expectations of American motherhood
For some opponents of abortion, this freedom was their main argument turning Rowe against Wade. The most common word I hear opponents of abortion use when discussing the issue is “consequences,” such as “If a girl has sex, she must be willing to accept the consequences.”
But access to abortion did not provide a life without consequences. It provided a life in which the consequences were proportionate.
Perspective: Why “for life” means neglecting the real life of pregnant women?
My wives talked about their children. How much they love them. How important it is that they have chosen to have them. These women become pregnant at a time and place where they may choose to terminate their pregnancies. But sometimes the appearance of an exit ramp makes you realize that you want to stay on the highway anyway. Sometimes one has to know that one does not know it have to realize how much they want to.
This was lost on the dizzying steps of the Supreme Court on Friday morning. This is what is lost when you roll over Rowe vs. Wade. These are not the abortions we would have had. These are our abortions would not I had. We lose the idea that we were the best masters of our own bodies and our own future – our right to self-determination. We are losing the soothing voices of our pragmatic mothers who say: You don’t have to do that. And we lose the freedom to decide to do it anyway, if that’s what we want.
The abortions we have not had are as formative as the ones we have had. These are the paths we have taken. These are the paths we have taken without even dreaming that all other paths will be taken away from us.
Add Comment