Rage-mute so writing: SCOTUS and abortion

After many years of sitting daily in a beautiful chair that is really meant to be a rarely-used accent, I finally purchased a proper desk chair for my office. Though proper, it’s very chic. All green boucle and bowtie lines and midcentury lovely. Because I’m middle-aged, I also put a stylish lumbar pillow on it. I’m very pleased. (I am not pleased that I just had to zoom my screen to 110%, but whatever.)

I share this because I’ve been sitting in said chair for hours now, propped against said pillow, sputtering with fury that is so frothy and incandescent that when I placed fingertips to keyboard, I went blank for a moment and had to ground myself by taking a deep breath and focusing on something simple, physical, and present.

Alito’s draft opinion arguing for Roe v Wade to be overturned is a gut punch that we all knew was coming. Its arrival (via leak!) makes a hideous theoretical an even more hideous reality. Every friend I’ve spoken to today is a roiling cauldron of revulsion, rage, and “I told you so, Susan Fucking Collins.”

As you may have seen, old Susan today has expressed concern that “If this leaked draft opinion is the final decision…it would be completely inconsistent with what Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh said in their hearings and in our meetings in my office.” Lisa M also expressed shock at being misled: “My confidence in the court has been rocked.”

I’m no politician or seer, but I and everyone I know knew that Gorsuch, Calendars, and Handmaid wouldn’t give two holy crucifixes about stare decisis when it came to Roe. Nor will they when it comes to overturning gay marriage (made law in Obergefell) and all other standing rights that don’t map with their extremist white, Catholic/Christian, heteronormative worldview. In short, they lied, under oath, during their confirmations. (Also, did Susan or Lisa or anyone in their party say anything when Droopy Dog McConnell stole the SCOTUS seat from Garland during Obama’s tenure? They did not.)

Alito’s opinion says that states can criminalize abortion with NO exemption for rape or incest. And because so many lawmakers and politicians appear wholly or willfully ignorant about basic science, some want there to not even be exemptions for the health or life of the mother. Observe what this terrifying fool from Oklahoma: said just last week:

"A child who is, in fact, living out part of his or her early life as an ectopic pregnancy is still a unique human being with its own DNA. I don't understand why we allow those children to be murdered."
—Okla Sen. Warren Hamilton (R-Ignorance)

Ectopic pregnancies are NEVER viable and without intervention, they will rupture and KILL the woman.

What this all means is forced pregnancy and forced birth. Can you imagine if your father raped your sister and she HAD to carry and give birth to that baby?

Just one day after Warren Hamilton opined about murdering ectopic fetuses, Ohio state rep, Jean Schmidt (R-Gilead), in response to a Democratic colleague’s hypothetical about a 13-year-old rape victim, said:

“It is a shame that it happens, but there’s an opportunity for that woman, no matter how young or old she is, to make a determination about what she’s going to do to help that life be a productive human being.”

That is sick and perverse beyond compare.

If Roe is overturned, the 13 states with trigger laws banning abortion will immediately put those into effect. Literally overnight, what was a legal right becomes an illegal crime. Five other states will revert to the bans they had in place pre-Roe. Those 18 states do not include Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, or Ohio, all of which will almost certainly institute similarly draconian laws stripping women of reproductive rights. The Guttmacher Institute believes that Montana, Nebraska, and Indiana will join the right-wing flank, and at that point, a full HALF of the United States will, essentially, be Gilead.

The governors of California and New York have already asserted that they will remain safe havens for abortion providers and those who need their services. But what happens if the Republicans manage to pass a national abortion ban? Without a constitutional guarantee that states can write and enforce their own laws—like the one we thought we had via Roe and the right to privacy—nowhere will be safe.

What the Republicans are resigning women to, in particular poor women and women of color, is evil and cruel. It is unconscionable. It’s not like America does a great job of feeding, educating, or caring for most kids anyway. We have the highest maternal mortality rate of any developed country, we do not offer much or any paid maternity and paternity leave. We don’t have universally affordable quality childcare. We use prisons as mental health holding pens for entirely too many suffering people. The healthcare system is, by and large, a mess. Does any of that sound pro-life to you? It’s not. It is disgraceful.

The Republicans and a really gross number of Christians have spent decades putting an overturn of Roe into place. Why do you think they’ve been gutting voting rights so deeply?

I really don’t feel much hope for American democracy. I hope I’m wrong, but I just don’t see much evidence to the contrary. Off to the Supreme Court to protest. Use your voices, y’all.

Super Tuesday

Friends, I have sent more than 5,000 get-out-the-vote texts since Monday morning, and by and large, it has been a pleasure.

I find it so challenging to articulate what I like about politics, but it energizes me to no end. Tom thinks it’s because I’m a caretaker type. That I love to help and support others, and politics offers, optimally, a scaled way to do that. Maybe he’s right. I sincerely enjoy listening to and connecting with people. If I can help in any way, to do so is an honor. I think I am idealistic in the sense that while government seems, is, so very broken, it is, ideally, such an earnest way to care for others. Others you know, complete strangers, folks with whom you disagree, babies and children who don’t have much voice at all, the very planet we call home.

But is that enough to make the more stressful, uglier times worth engagement? For me, yes.

We are lucky to live in America. That fortune, for me at least, means we work to maintain its democracy as functional. We use privilege or time or love or whatever to inform ourselves and expend the energy to educate, inform, and inspire everyone to participate so that the democracy is a truly representative one.

And yet.

America is so troubled. Poverty, racism, sexism, news sources that are so false and propagandistic that to call them news is an insult to new…it takes real effort to be accurately informed and it seems to take, sadly, a greater sense of community than many have to really care about everyone with whom you share this land.

Today alone I was told that:

-“things were becoming too gynocentric, that feminists don’t care about equality- ‘they want it THEIR WAY. I am tired of being man-shamed for being male. Liz should do something about this…But she is much better than Bloomberg or Biden. Really, we’re all on the same team.’ The cognitive dissonance and untruths there boggle the mind.

-”you clearly have never read the Constitution. I am a triple minority and only by going back to the republic as it was founded will give me a real voice.” Erm, at founding, people owned slaves, had slaughtered Natives, and women had zero rights.

-”you should come to my church and see the true way and be saved from the lies you’ve been told. Democrats are anti-Semites.”

-”I’m for Bernie. Fuck off!”

Respectfully, I disagreed with all of these statements. Women and minorities are still not equal to white men in economic and too many other terms, and in most of my experiences, churches aren’t bastions of fact, truth (I do really like my mother-in-law’s church! They are sincere Christians walking the walk every day!), or tolerance. If you’re for Bernie, and I’m for the Dem, we are legit on the same team, so why divide and be ugly? But, ok. Room for all of us in the big tent. Please, though, can we keep the tent big? With plenty of room to welcome others?

tired Em

Plenty of room for most others was where the majority of my conversations today fell. I had such meaningful exchanges with Dems, Republicans, and independents from across the country: Utah, Oklahoma, California, Texas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Michigan…

I talked with tortured undecideds and proud already-voteds. I told Trump voters to have a good day, and they wished me the same. I thanked everyone who asked questions and everyone who voted for Liz. We just talked and challenged each other. And in both the identical and hazy spaces was connection and appreciation. I learned a lot, they learned a lot, we stayed open, we negotiated. In recent minutes, folks I talked to hours ago have followed up with me, letting me know what they decided, how they voted.

It’s meaningful, these fleeting but important connections. I am glad to know why Joseph in CA voted for Elizabeth but didn’t like her exchange with Bernie about women and the presidency. I am thrilled for Jodi who grappled all day with her decision but chose the candidate that made her heart sing. I applauded and thanked those who voted Biden or Bernie because both are good people and want to make America better for all, even though their approaches are dramatically different. And honestly, I appreciate the trump voters who thanked me for reaching out and wished me a blessed day. I detest everything about their candidate of choice, but if we lose all civility, we lose civilization.

If you’re in a Super Tuesday state, I sure hope you voted today (or early, based on your state rules). I hope you participated in the privilege that is each of your votes. The system is broken, but it’s not yet beyond repair. If you’re worried, scared, enraged, disgusted… ACT! That reaction is a call to action. There is ample to reason to feel all those things, so don’t bury your heads. DO something. It feels good.

And read this article.

If you’re in the DC area and care about reproductive rights, head to the Supreme Court tomorrow (Wednesday) morning at 8am to stand up for choice. See my events page for more info. This is mission critical, y’all!

#StopTheBans Day of Action for Reproductive Rights

“Excuse me, are you pro choice?”
”Yes.”
”But it’s not your body.”
-as told to Emily by a young white man in front of the Supreme Court

It’s been a long month since I last posted. A long time since Kieran died, since his funeral, since his mom started to meet each day without him. It’s been an honor to bear witness to some of her grief, to sit with her in it, to see a community rally together to help in any and all possible ways.

The past two weeks alone have felt horrifically oppressive. We have seen our “president” cross the 10,000 lies to the American people mark. We have seen Alabama and Missouri pass draconian anti-abortion bills; no abortion after six weeks, no exceptions for victims of rape or incest, heinous punishments for any woman who seeks an abortion and any doctor who dares to help her. Meanwhile, the rapist can have parental rights. These bills were voted on by majority-white Christian men. Here’s the Alabama slate responsible:

Do they look like people who have uteruses? Who can become pregnant from rape? They don’t and aren’t. And I am SICK TO FUCKING DEATH of other people, especially sanctimonious, right wing Christian men and women, attempting to regulate what I may decide to do with my body.

If you don’t remember, the right to abortion was decided in 1973. Forty-six years ago. And yet, for as long as I can remember, my mother has hoped desperately that women never need relive the pre-Roe years. I volunteered for NARAL while Tom and I lived in Boston, and marched in their March on Washington in 2005. I have listened ad nauseam as far-right pro-life supporters have demanded that I live by their rules and values while simultaneously denigrating mine and acting in stunningly hypocritical fashion all the while.

See: all the uber-Christians at my high school who sent out conversion caravans and preached abstinence but concurrently held the mantle of highest teen pregnancy rate in my town and area. Consider the one who had a painful, scary miscarriage in the toilet stall next to me in the school bathroom.

See: Alabama governor Kay Ivey carrying on about the sanctity of life as she signs the anti-abortion bill but who has also, while governor, executed seven men on death row. Alabama is notorious for the systemic racism that puts innocent men behind bars, including on death row. This is why the Equal Justice Initiative and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, the lynching museum, are housed in Montgomery.

See: the publicly pro life GOPers [Tim Murphy (a PA senator and Elliot Broidy (former RNC deputy finance chair, for example] who have decried abortion while paying for their mistresses and girlfriends to have them. (And if you don’t think serial adulterer Trump has done the same, your head is buried in some dark sand.)

Perhaps most revoltingly, I have become aware that for way too many pro-life folks, pro life really only means pro birth and, ideally, pro-white birth. Just look at the lack of willingness to support programs for hungry children, diaper banks, free- and reduced-lunch plans at school, early childhood education programs, and so on.

Sixty percent of Alabama women seeking abortions are black. “Alabama is tied for fourth-worst place in infant mortality,” according to this article in the Los Angeles Times. In this piece you’ll find that “more than a quarter of Alabama’s children live in poverty; 30 percent of those children are under the age of five. Only half of Alabama’s 67 counties have an obstetrician.” The state has no equal pay laws protecting women from discrimination.

It’s utterly despicable to force children into this world and then refuse to care for them or their mothers. It is sick and cruel to force a girl raped and impregnated by a family member to have the baby and then share custody rights with her rapist. Read this heartbreaking article if you want a firsthand account. That’s not pro life. That’s pro birth and then shit on the mother and shit on the kid. This is anti-woman and control the women at all cost crap.

This morning, I hurriedly coordinated with two regular Resister Sisters so that we could attend the #StopTheBans women’s rights rally at the Supreme Court. All of us canceled or shifted plans, grabbed or made signs, water bottles, and backpacks, and headed downtown. I riffled through my library of protest signs past before remembering that I’d been forced to leave my favorite pro choice sign outside of the Senate building before entering last time.

I scrounged up a half sheet of foam core, Sharpied “I didn’t vote to live in Gilead” on one side and “If it’s not your body, it’s not your choice” on the other, pulled on my resistance shirt, and left with my friend Karen.

Initially the turnout felt small, but by the official start time, the rally was thrumming with energy, camaraderie, outrage, despondency, and determination. My friend Julie arrived, and she and I set up camp just behind the speaker’s lectern, over to the left. This was fortuitous because in addition to the wonderful NARAL and Planned Parenthood speakers, including the wonderfully fierce Dr. Leana Wen (PP’s new president), a long line of Senators and Congresswomen and men, joined us and spoke.

Senators Klobuchar, Hirono, Wyden, Murray, Blumenthal, and Schumer. Congresswomen Pressley and Speier and Congressman Swalwell. Bernie was there but left before speaking. I’m sure I’m forgetting some, and because of early school dismissal I had to leave before the rally ended, but it was really an excellent turnout of support.

Julie felt pumped up and grateful to be in the company of like-minded resisters; Karen and I enjoyed ourselves, but really feel the bleakness of women still being treated like such non-beings. Things feel hard and as if nothing will ease in the near future.

Which was why I was beyond enraged when a young dress-shirt-and-tie guy came up to me and said, as I quoted at the start of this piece:

“Excuse me, are you pro choice?”
”Yes.”
”But it’s not your body.”

Yes it fucking is, man without uterus.

Karen sputtered and said, “Bless his heart,” before we turned around with utter disgust.

“It’s not your body” is really the essence of all this, isn’t it. If you see women as equals, with agency and selfhood, you couldn’t possibly divorce one’s physical self from one’s emotional self, reproductive desires and choices, and independent plans for life. You couldn’t possibly tell her that her body isn’t hers.

I am not just a goddamned vessel. No woman is UNLESS she chooses to be. The choice should be each of ours, as should safety and respect.