I have read and thought and talked so much about Alito’s draft opinion since it was leaked over a week ago, that my mind is overfull of thoughts and feelings about it.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
Yes, first there was white-hot rage, then disbelief, a depth of grief, horror and fear---now a continuous boil of this sickening emotional stew.
I am a woman, not a womb.
I plan to print those words in black on a large white placard, to hold high this Saturday when I and my community gather on our town green to make our voices heard, along with those of the whole country. How good it will feel to gather with others who share my feelings, knowing women all over the states will be joining us.
We cannot allow our decisions to be affected by any extraneous influences such as concern about the public’s reaction to our work.
The mocking, scornful, paternalistic tone of Alito’s words should have been more shocking than it was. We are used to him and his unfairly appointed cohorts by now, although his draft opinion was even snarkier than usual.
What misogynists these men are, Coney Barrett included (is there a word for a female misogynist?)
Have any of them ever encountered an eleven-year-old victim of rape by her father or uncle? A teenager raped by a boy she trusted? A married woman by her violent husband? A young women gang-raped at gunpoint?
I doubt it.
But I have. And though I know the damage to their bodies, souls and spirits is catastrophic and irreversible, access to abortion for a baby whose life would be a misery if allowed to live, could lessen that damage for both. Trauma just reproduces itself in succeeding generations without intense intervention, especially hard to come by in these days of too-sparse mental health services.
And where is the social safety net to support these unwanted babies, babies of women forced to carry them to term in a kind of twenty-first century female slavery? It’s the Republicans (and two Democrats) who killed Build Back Better, which included preschool for all, paid leave for new parents, childcare—the things, among many others, that are truly “pro-life.” These babies need the same things wanted children need-- diapers, formula, clothing, secure homes, parents who love them.
Instead, those Republicans are talking about a national abortion ban, even a contraception ban, if they take Congress in the midterms, or the presidency in 2024—a contemporary version of “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
The United States would become a theocracy—like the Catholic world in which I grew up. Worse really, because I had an out, though I just didn’t know it then, so suppressed in that cult-like society. In the vision Republicans have for the future, the entire country of women would be banned from having an abortion at any stage of pregnancy.
There would be no out, except for an illegal one. The uterus would become a crime scene. Doctors and nurses, women, would become criminals, subject to felony charges.
We haven’t seen anything yet, I fear.
As Maureen Dowd recently said, “it is outrageous that five unelected, unaccountable and relatively unknown political operatives masquerading as impartial jurists can so profoundly alter our lives.”
I could not agree more.
These judges live in elitist privileged bubbles; it is no wonder they have zero concern about the public, of which a majority approves abortion access. Most of them were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote. “The modern Republican Party is now about using the power of the government to enforce the beliefs of a radical minority on the majority of Americans,” as Heather Cox Richardson said in Thursday’s “Letter From an American.”
The disaster is always somewhere else, until it isn’t.
There will be so much more to say about all this as it unspools; I’m sure I will be writing about it.
So for now I propose a fix: vasectomies for all men.
Problem solved.
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And if you’d like to listen to a recent interview I did about my memoir, “I Am Not a Juvenile Delinquent,” here it is (Scroll past the gardening part, or not):
In southern CT, you can listen to the show on the radio Monday nights at 10 on WPKN 89.5 FM.