It’s time we call out the glaring connection between sedition, the presumed death of Roe v. Wade, and lack of action to uphold the Equal Rights Amendment—all of which fuel the penetrating gender gap in power, pay and leadership roles.
A year and a half ago, we watched in horror as a vicious attack on the Capitol threatened to turn America into the authoritarian country my grandparents came here to escape. Women currently will have less rights than our grandmothers did. THAT IS FUCKED UP.
Between seeing the photos of members of Congress hiding under the benches and the clawing at the Capitol windows by a savage mob that was 86 percent male and 93 percent white and hearing about mostly white male physicians leading MASSIVE undercover “abortion clinics” during the early 1900s which were essentially money making clinics where they treated the women like trash and tossed their mutilated bodies into incinerators when the abortion was botched, I am quite literally sick to my stomach. Doctors who were actually willing to help women who needed abortions, were brutally murdered. “Back Alley” abortions were performed more and more. There is a reason for that term, along with the reference to using a “coat hanger.” This isn’t funny, this was reality. And seriously could be again in the very near future.
How Did This Happen?
In analyzing the events of January 6, 2021, equality advocate Jackson Katz correctly acknowledges “the insurrection was an overt and violent assertion of white male centrality and entitlement.” A look back at the history of reproductive rights and justice clarifies that racism and sexism are joined at the heart of women’s struggle to achieve bodily autonomy.
White men have always had a legal and moral right to their own lives, but neither the court of law or the court of public opinion has declared unequivocally that women’s rights are human rights, and human rights are women’s rights after all.
When the targets of such vitriol and violence were “just” women, law enforcement was slow to act if at all. … I once had to get the mayor to intervene when, rather than protecting us, our police chief told us to “close our clinics” if we heard an incursion was planned.
The wanting of pregnancy among most women in America is evidence of many victories: Contraception was legalized by the U.S. Supreme Court in Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965, and pre-viability abortion was legalized by Roe v. Wade in 1973. Yet these victories carried the seeds of their own demise, because the decisions are not grounded in an assertion of the moral and legal agency of women; instead, they’re based on an assumed right to privacy.
Ironically, the personal freedom to make decisions regarding childbearing had to be won through the political process. Author Jane Smiley rightly observed that “pregnancy is the most public of conditions, and the state of a woman’s uterus is the most public of political battlegrounds.” YES.
History of Roe v. Wade
Back in 1969 in Texas, Norma McCorvey, otherwise known as Jane Roe, became pregnant with her third child, a pregnancy that was unwanted as she was unemployed and depressed. Friends advised her to falsely claim she was raped in order to obtain a legal abortion. Due to lack of documentation or police evidence, she was denied an abortion and later admitted to the fabrication. Following this, she attempted to have an illegal abortion, but the respective clinics were closed down by authorities.
McCorvey was eventually referred to two attorneys, Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington, who were actively seeking women looking to have an abortion. They filed a case on behalf of McCorvey and “other women similarly situated,” under the alias of Jane Roe. The defendant in the case was Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade, who represented the state of Texas. In 1970, a three-judge panel declared the Texas law unconstitutional, stating it violated the right to privacy found in the Ninth Amendment.
Roe v. Wade reached the doorsteps of the Supreme Court later that year. They voted to hear the case, as well as Doe v. Bolton, a similar case relating to abortion. Prior to a final decision, the justices heavily discussed the trimester framework and what authority the government had to restrict a woman’s access to abortion based on how far along she was in her pregnancy. Justice Lewis F. Powell suggested the point of viability is when the state could intervene. Justice Thurgood Marshall agreed. Justice William J. Brennan Jr. proposed abandoning the trimester framework and allowing states to regulate the procedures based on safety for the mother.
After much deliberation, on January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court issued a 7-2 decision in favor of Roe and ruled Texas’s abortion ban unconstitutional. The Court’s opinion was informed by the notion of the constitutional right to privacy.
This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.
410 U.S. 153
The Court reasoned that outlawing abortion would infringe on the woman’s right to privacy because it could tax the mother physically and mentally, bring psychological harm, and/or force the woman into a distressful life and future. However, the Court also ruled that beginning in the third trimester, the state could legally prohibit all abortions except when necessary to protect the mother’s life or health, in order to protect prenatal life.
To find Roe v. Wade in HeinOnline, navigate to the U.S. Supreme Court Library and click on Advanced Search. Next, enter Roe v. Wade into the Case Name field, choose Official Reports from Select Document Type and search.
What Do We Do About This?
I don't have a clear answer, but I can tell you what I am going to do. I am going to fucking get LOUD. I might be one small person, but if enough small one persons band together, they become a larger one. A LOUDER one. (watch the Newsies, trust me). I know there are local Women's Marches happening this weekend near me, so check your local events pages and organizations such as NOW.org, equalrights.org, etc. and get involved.
If you’re an introvert and don’t want to get LOUD, you can also get educated. Read about it, stay informed, pass on CORRECT information. I will say it again. Make sure the information you are absorbing and drenching others in is factual and educational and not from a stupid blog like this. (I mean, for real, do your own research people. PLEASE) Many of you probably don’t know that Roe V Wade has to do with SO MUCH MORE than just allowing women the right to choose an abortion.
While I am on the subject, EDUCATE yourself on what the right to choose means. It doesn’t mean I am for killing babies or fetuses. It doesn’t mean I don’t agree with all women's justifications for choosing an abortion. It just means I SUPPORT THE RIGHT TO FREE CHOICE. Now that that is cleared up, we can move on.
Lastly, help the women who need it if you can. There will be states where women can seek help and receive a legal and safe abortion. Could you offer a place to stay? A ride? A friend? Heaven forbid it is ever you, your daughter, niece, sister, friend, wouldn’t you want the same help available to them?
I live in Ohio. Ohio hates women. When we move again, I am going to heed some friendly advice to “find out if the state hates women first.” So needless to say, we’re fucked. In case you didn’t know, Ohio is a “heart-beat” state. You see, we value human life here. Not the QUALITY of life, just the actual physical act of living. On the fun maps you are seeing floating around all of social media, Ohio is dark red. It will be a fourth degree felony here. Which reminds me. Ladies, turn off your period trackers, do not use points cards at a pharmacy to buy a pregnancy test, and turn your phone on airplane mode when at an abortion clinic. I don’t know how much of this is true, but better safe than sorry. It is sad that this is what the world is coming to, but it is.
Stay safe out there, ladies. Stick together, fix each others crowns, and SMASH THE PATRIARCHY!
Love and Light,
