Dobbs v. Hypocrisy
Conservative Christian women will ALWAYS be able to get abortions
The rules apply to thee, nay for me….
Even in the bad ol’ days pre-Roe v. Wade, women of means and/or connections could find ways to obtain safe abortions. Ask a few questions of the right people, grease a few palms, and before you knew it, the deed was done- no questions, no mess, no fuss. Money and connections make many things possible.
The beautiful thing about Roe was that it eliminated the two-tier hypocrisy. Finally, poor women had access to safe, legal abortion services instead of the back-alley, often unsafe, and frequently deadly abortions they sought.
Dobbs v. Jackson represents the Supreme Court turning the clock back 50 years. Poor women again face the prospect of being forced to have a child they can’t afford to raise because they lack access to safe and legal abortion services in many states. The cycle of poverty will become that much more difficult to escape from. This will become even more true if states (or the Supreme Court) ban birth control.
As was true pre-Roe, women of means and/or connections will always be able to obtain a safe abortion. Unfortunately, women living in poverty will be reduced to risking their health and in some cases their lives to obtain the same outcomes. Dobbs v. Jackson says a lot about how society values the lives of different classes of women. That reality is seldom discussed, but it’s something poor women will face far more than women of means and connections.
As in the tweet above, even Conservative Christian women have reasons for terminating pregnancies. They may never discuss it, and it may always remain their “dirty little secret.” They may even continue publicly (and hypocritically) opposing abortion. But they need access to safe and legal abortion as much as anyone else with a uterus. Contraceptives fail, women suffer rape or incest, or couples forget to use birth control in the heat of the moment. Things happen, and sometimes pregnancies result.
And then what?
That’s happened to me, and one of the most heart-wrenching decisions I’ve ever made was in conjunction with my ex-wife. We had to reconcile with the reality that we were in no place to bring a child into the world, so we decided that she would have an abortion. I sat and held her hand while the procedure took place. It wasn’t easy and it certainly wasn’t pleasant, but I have no regrets.
It took just a few minutes, but that option was open to us because of Roe v. Wade and because Oregon guarantees a woman’s right to choose. It still does. Even though we had to walk through a gauntlet of protesters outside the clinic, we were grateful that we could do what we knew to be the right decision. It wasn’t an easy choice, nor was it one we took lightly, but there were numerous reasons behind it, and I’m thankful for being able to make the decision we did.
Without going into detail, there were significant reasons why we could not bring a child into the world. When we divorced a few years later, not having children only made things easier for us. In the end, I decided not to have children with anyone, which I firmly believe to have been the best choice for me.
I don’t often think about that time in my life because it’s not a pleasant memory. It’s an important memory, though, one with particular poignancy in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson. Oregon Governor Kate Brown has pledged that Oregon will remain committed to protecting a woman’s right to choose. I’m happy about that, but there are states where that’s no longer true.
Roe v. Wade protected my ex-wife and me. She was guaranteed access to safe and legal abortion services, and I didn’t have to fear for her safety and well-being. Now, in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson, there are states where that isn’t the case- and that’s a damned shame. Women deserve to exercise control over their bodies. That should never be in doubt, and it mustn’t ever be the function of a governmental body. More than anything, it should NEVER be a decision controlled by White, Conservative, Christian, heterosexual males, none of whom can get pregnant.
The “party of small government” is now just small enough to force itself into a woman’s uterus. The GOP once said that it wanted to get government off our backs. They wanted to do that so they could plant their flag in the vaginas of American women. Dobbs v. Jackson was a significant victory in their drive to do that, and they’re not done yet.
No Supreme Court has ever rolled back a human right once it’s been enshrined in the constitution. Now that they’ve crossed that Rubicon, there’s no telling where they’ll stop, or even IF they’ll stop.
The American Taliban feels they have every right to dictate to Americans how they should live their lives. It’s up to the rest of us to tell them where they can stuff their plan to control our thoughts and lives. That means getting off our collective asses and voting. The American Taliban can’t dictate to us if they’re not winning elections.
First, they came for the women, but I did nothing because I wasn’t a woman….
What’s it going to be, America?
Margaret Sanger, based upon doctor's estimates of the day (the 1920's), put the figure somewhere between 1,000,000 and 2,000,000 abortions a year in the US.
This was sent to me by a longtime reader, who asked that it be posted anonymously:
"I should be the freakin' POSTER CHILD for antiabortionists... but I'm not.
For privacy of concerned parties, I didn't want to post this as a response to your latest blogging, but I'll tell you a story:
Pre-Roe-v-Wade, in 1963, my mom and dad were dating when there was some kind of "oops" moment. She was 21, he was 27. Dad came from "the wrong side of the tracks," while mom came from wealth... and they weren't married yet.
(Both of my parents are MENSA-level geniuses, but NEITHER completed college. (My mother went for a couple of years, but left to work for the state. My father never went to college, but one of his first jobs when they were dating (and/or first married, I don't recall - hey, I was young at the time) was as a chemistry technician for General Aniline, a/k/a GAF. We're not talking about stupid people, nor teenagers who don't know how to plan their lives.)
Again, they weren't married, and this could become quite scandalous to the country-club set of Jews (who were JUST getting admission to such exclusivity.) My mother's Jewish parents naturally got their panties in a wad. My grandmother's sister "knew ways to take care of this," and had the money and connections to do so.
My mother refused her. She married my father, and I was born 7 months later. (My younger brother pointed out this discrepancy in timing to me when I was 17. Personally, I would NEVER have noticed.)
But for my mother's decision to keep me, I would not exist. How horrible, right? No, wait I WOULDN'T EXIST, so I wouldn't care what choice she made. That ALWAYS should have been left up to her (and conceivably (pun intended,) to some extent, my father.)
But we ALL exist on a flutter of wind and a hairsbreadth of time. Without going into any details, I also owe my existence to a lightbulb that burned out at a fortuitous moment. My own children owe their lives to a late-1970s comic book ad (AND that lightbulb!)
Events (and people) collide in this world in the strangest ways. Sometimes, that's an underplanned, unplanned, or even unwanted sexual collision. Sometimes, at best, it's a PLANNED pregnancy that goes awry. I still (and always will) believe any decision in any such case should be up to the woman.
On that thought, I propose the following:
Some states have anti-abortion laws in place “except for cases in the life of the mother.”
Define “life.”
I propose that the “rest of one’s physicality on earth” defines “life.” (The laws in question generally DON'T say "imminent death of the mother.")
If any woman wants an abortion because it will affect the rest of her life if she gives birth, “life of the mother” should be a stipulation…thereby allowing almost ALL abortions.
Meanwhile, there's the 13th amendment: " Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." The way I read this, NO STATE shall have the right to make a woman "servant" to her zygote/ unborn child.
Don't even get me started on arguing the religious grounds against the overturning of Roe-v-Wade. Sharper, better minds are at work making that argument for me."