Your Body Belongs to You

To the generation who fought for Roe, I am sorry for not understanding sooner. Thank you for your gift. To the generation that comes next, I promise to fight with all the rage inside me. 

We fight the same battles, over and over, decade after decade. And now, 53 years later, we find ourselves fighting a battle we thought we had won. We are fighting for a right that only a week ago was guaranteed to all of us. I was on the phone with my sister on Friday morning when the news broke. 

Oh my God, she said, Roe was overturned. Like actually, overturned. I can't believe it.

There was a hushed knowing between us. A rushing in the veins. The slow rising of rage. Rage that had been tamed, taunted, pushed down, held back, silenced, dismissed. The rage of knowing that this was coming but not believing that it would actually come.  The rage of realizing, yet again, that we've been duped by the ones empowered to serve us.

I am not sure how I expected to feel in that moment. I knew the decision was coming. I knew the misogny that was alive and well in American society. Just the day before, I'd shook my head at the disgusting vitriol in the comments on an ESPN post celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Title IX. Who cares. Not real sports. Get back in the kitchen. It was right there in front of my eyes, and I didn't want to admit how far and how quickly we've slid back in time. Or maybe we never moved forward, we just got better at hiding the hate behind fancy posts about progress.

I guess what surprised me wasn't the decision, but my immediate, intuitive reaction to it. It hit harder and closer than I expected.  I've never been pregnant. I've never had to make a decision about bringing life into this world. Still, I felt the impact in my bones.  I felt the cage being built around me, around us. I imagined the woman who in that moment needed a procedure to save her life and couldn't get it. I imagined her family. Her loved ones. I imagined the woman who's choice was taken away from her in that very moment when she needed it most. I imagined her fear, her trauma, her grief, her anxiety. 

Truth is, until it was taken away, I never understood the real power of Roe. I have been part of the silent mass of American women who have quietly enjoyed the right to, and benefits of private bodily autonomy my entire life without ever realizing how precious and necessary a gift it has been. I never had to fight for my right to bodily autonomy. I inherited it, and because I inherited it, I never realized the privilege, and protection Roe afforded me to pursue whatever gosh-darned path I wanted.

Idealist, naive, Catholic and poor. That’s how I grew up. I wanted to be a good Catholic, so I went along with the rally cry when I was young. Abortion was bad. Murdering babies was wrong. It made sense. I love babies, and life is sacred. It was hard to refute because the pro-life argument reduces the question of bodily autonomy to a disgusting, overly simplistic, non-sensical argument defended by stomach-turning photos and loud, indignant rants. I'm not pro-abortion, I'm pro-women having a choice about their bodies.

The rights guaranteed by Roe delivered an important message to women. Your body belongs to you. The stripping of rights in the aftermath of Roe deliver a dangerous message to the next generation of women. Your body does not belong to you. To force birth upon me, or any girl or woman is to take away our most sacred choice, responsibility and right. To force birth upon women, is to put us in danger of abuse and violence. To force birth upon women, is to strip us of the guarantees provided in the constitution - life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 

Without bodily autonomy for women, there is no equality in society, and without choice no woman can ever choose life. Roe isn’t about murder, it is about ensuring a woman’s right to life through private choice.

I'll finish as I began:

To the generation who fought for Roe, I am sorry for not understanding sooner. To the generation that comes next, I promise to fight with all the rage inside me. Because your body belongs to you.