Let me repeat that to be clear: I am ANGRY!
Roe v Wade was overturned last week. I found out when I got up for the day and my husband said, "If you don't want to be angry, avoid Facebook for a while. I'm sorry. Is there anything that I can do right now?"
That night, my girlfriend - a relationship which is not considered "traditional" and which may come under fire soon as well - made me a shirt for the emergency protest at the courthouse the next day. It was a hanger that said "never again" along the bottom. She wore a shirt that said, "Ruth sent me".
This decision is one that starts a slippery slope in the United States. With this decision, abortions are no longer a federally protected right for women, something that has been protected for us since 1973 when the Supreme Court case was won. Now it is up to each individual state to decide whether or not they want to protect a woman's right to end a pregnancy for any reason - medical, personal, financial, etc. Now, for the first time in 50 years, states can say, "I don't care that you were raped or that your fetus isn't viable. I don't care if you risk death carrying this fetus to term. I don't care if you are financially, mentally, or emotionally capable of carrying and giving birth to a child. You have a bundle of cells in your uterus right now that might, someday be a person that we can profit off of, so you will have to make sure that it makes it to birth." The government doesn't care whether these cells will kill the living, breathing, fully-formed person that has them inside of their body like a parasite. They only care that this bundle of cells be born because "all lives matter."
But those lives only matter while they are in-utero. They only matter when they are cis-gender, white, and financially secure. The poor, the POC, the trans, the "others"...they don't matter. And it makes me ANGRY.
My mental health has not been the best the past few months. There have been a lot of stressors that have made things interesting and difficult for me, but this takes the cake. I thought that I was turning a corner. I thought that I was coming out of a tunnel and that my mental health would be getting better.
I can't tell you the last time I was able to sleep without nightmares without being passed out drunk. I can't tell you the last time that I didn't feel like the world - my family and friends - would be better off without me in their world. But now, I am angry. *SO ANGRY!* I want to tear down buildings and systems and governments that are telling me and my daughters that we are not as important - as living, breathing, and fully-formed humans - as a clump of cells that might become a human at some point. I am angry that if that clump of cells is "spontaneously aborted," aka: if the uterus-holding-person miscarries, we can be charged with MURDER.
I am angry.
This country was started - after we forcefully took it over from the Native American tribes that were here - because a group of people wanted the freedom to practice religion, the way they wanted to without the government telling them the "right" way to practice. It was a country that was supposed to give people - its people - the right to practice any religion that they chose, in the way that they chose without the government deciding what was the appropriate way to practice. Now, because there are Christian facisists in office - an office that isn't even elected, but appointed - they they can decide that ALL people should live by their standards, ideologies, and ideals.
They won't even take a stand against guns that are being used to murder hundreds of living, breathing, and fully-formed, human children every year while they are AT SCHOOL, but they are willing to tell a person with a uterus that their rights are second to the clump of cells that they developed. They aren't willing to make the people that produce the sperm interact or provide for those cells, but they are willing to tell the person that provides the home for XX months and the egg that provides half the required cells that they HAVE to carry that fetus, that clump of cells, to term or they will be charged with murder. And, if they are charged with murder, they are a felon that can no longer vote. The person that provided the sperm, though? Oh, "they were just there. It's not their fault that this person got pregnant" - despite the fact that without the sperm, there would be no clump of cells. "The uterus-haver should have kept their legs closed and this wouldn't have happened."
I am ANGRY.
I worked HARD and I CHOSE to have my daughters (twins). I carried them as long as I could and I was so happy to have them. I was LUCKY, because I was able to see a doctor and midwife practice that was only too happy to make sure that my mental and physical health were taken care of. I was LUCKY because I have a partner that was not just happy to be having children, but that I wanted to have children with them. I was lucky that we were able to find support that we needed, when we needed it, to get us through the pregnancy and the first several months post-partum. I was LUCKY.
Not every person with a uterus is that lucky or WANTS to be in the position that I was in. They may not be ready for pregnancy and childbirth for any number of reasons. And that is fine! There are so many children in the world - hell, even just in the US, that need to be adopted. Deciding that you are not ready to carry and give birth to a child - for ANY reason - is perfectly acceptable. It is YOUR body. YOU know what you can handle. YOU know what you are willing to provide, give up, take, etc and the GOVERNMENT shouldn't have a right to tell you that you have to carry a parasite because THEY believe that that parasite has more rights as a POSSIBILITY than you do as a REALITY!
I am angry. I don't want my daughters to grow up in a world where they are considered incubators. I don't want them to have to go through the things that their grandmothers went through to get the rights that we *had*. I don't want to leave them in a situation where they are seen as less than the amazing, wonderful, bright lights that they are. They may decide that they want ALL the babies - and that is fine. They may decide that they don't want to have ANY babies - and that is fine. They may decide that they just want to adopt or foster - and that is GREAT! ALL of that should be THEIR choice, though. Not the ruling class. Not the upper class. Not some person that thinks that they are divinely put on the Earth to decide what happens to others.
