01/22/2023
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the decision of Roe v. Wade. The landmark decision secured for us the right to choose to have an abortion. In the decades that followed, people were empowered to take control of their lives and make decisions about what was good and right for them. They were able to avoid horrors and pursue dreams. A culture that prided itself on embodying freedom more fully approached that ideal. Millions of folk grew up believing their autonomy was paramount and their rights were protected and cherished.
Today also marks 212 days since the decision of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization. In the months that followed, Tennessee enacted a total abortion ban. Folks who can get pregnant woke up on June 25th having to face the reality that, no, their rights were not sacrosanct, that they were instead contingent on the recognition of a select group of radicals who had seized the reigns of power and saw them as undeserving of the full dignity due a human being.
It is easy to be discouraged. It is easy to believe that we have entered a dark age and that things will only ever get worse, never better. We have seen the enactment of a total abortion ban in Tennessee. We have learned that the legislators who passed the law didn’t know its contents. Over and over, we have seen their lies about concern for life and dignity revealed to be just that. We have seen that there is still a concerted, backroom effort to strip away more rights to contraception and that national forced-birth organizations are counseling ‘our’ representatives on the best strategy to follow to ensure their goal.
But remember that it was only 50 years ago that Roe was decided. For half a century, the right to an abortion was secure. Even before that time, there were those doing the work to provide this essential service, and it was through their effort and struggle that the cause was won. Remember, too, that for most of the long centuries of human development, abortion was not the bogeyman it is in America today. Midwives, witches, and seers, in cultures across the world and since time immemorial, have had the know-how to induce and felt no compunction against abortion. Even here, it was only the result of a concerted effort of radical reactionaries consciously and intentionally manipulating our culture to make abortion a wedge issue for political power that gave us the ‘controversy’ that we have today. We live in a strange time. It is an aberration. It did not last before, and it will not last now. The arc of history is long, and it tends toward justice. We can and do and will help it along.
We continue in the tradition of those that have come before us. We do the work of the Janes, the witches, and the fighters for justice. We fight and struggle in the ways that we can and provide for each other what the powers that be refuse to provide for us.
Say it with me now:
Abortion is healthcare.
Abortion is a human right.
Abortion is good.
Watch this space.
