I reckon that the Supreme Court decision in the Dobbs case may come down tomorrow. It might still be another week before we hear what the decision is. I feel like it will be tomorrow because it's the last day of the week and that Dobbs will be dropped after the SCOTUS has gotten away from the building and are under guard somewhere. At any rate, this is probably the biggest case, and the one where we stand to have the most to lose.
When I was growing up, my mother and I went to the Moline Gospel Temple in Moline, Illinois. It was a fundamentalist Christian church--speaking in tongues, scaring people into becoming a Christian to avoid what will happen after the rapture to the unbelievers. In fact, that was how I became a Christian--I was about the age of my kids, probably younger than their almost 8 years, and on one summer night, after we had stayed up late playing a game, my mother chose that night to inform me of what would happen: the rivers would run bloody being chief among the terrifying things she told me. She told me that if I asked Christ into my heart, I could avoid this. I remember being scared out of my wits, and crying and screaming into her shoulder, 'Tell me what to do!'
So I asked Christ into my heart. As a child, I didn't really understand what that meant, but I knew that I wanted to avoid going to hell and what would happen to the unbelievers. We started going to church every chance we got, and I learned a lot--too little of it involved God's love and loving your neighbor and taking care of the poor. It mostly involved people complaining about how other races were either coming to take jobs from America or milking our social safety nets. It involved talking about how gay people and abortion would bring destruction. And there was so much gossip--once I started going to school at the private K-12 school the church ran, I realized that my family was too poor to keep up with the fashion scene that involved Guess? jeans and Esprit brand fashion. I was made fun of for my writing gifts and talents.
It was, in retrospect, one of the most unChristlike environments I had ever been in.
I mention all of this because one of the biggest things that our church preached was being Pro-Life. Abortions were evil. You were killing a life, and if you had an abortion, you would most certainly be going to hell.
And I believed it for a long time. Until I had a time where I thought I might be pregnant and I took a 180 degree turn on it. Luckily, that time, I wasn't pregnant, but once I walked in that terrifying pair of shoes, I realized that Pro-Life was Anti-Choice.
Pro-Life could not be pro-life if it didn't care for the children who were here, the people here who were poor and in need. I realized that mostly the so called 'pro-life' movement cared only that the baby was carried to term, and then after that, they didn't care. They didn't want them to have help from the government--they should have thought about that before the girl spread her legs. They didn't want to subsidize anything to help people who were forced through situation to carry a baby to term. Don't these people matter? Or maybe it's about more than that?
On the possible eve of Dobbs, I never thought we would be here. I never thought I would live to see the end of Roe V Wade, and I never thought that my own children would have to go through their lives without Roe's protection. We already fought for this--and since Roe doesn't force people to have or not have an abortion--I don't see why we should have to fight it again.
The thing that makes me so upset about the possible end of Roe Vs. Wade is not that abortion is going to end. It won't ever end. People who have the ability to get pregnant will always find a way to get an abortion or end a pregnancy in another way. There will most certainly be more deaths, as there were in the time bofore Roe Vs. Wade was decided. Mostly, white people will be able to have abortions still. They might have to travel, do it in secret, pay more, but they will still have access.
The people that are going to suffer are the poor and mostly minority persons in this country for whom the closing of clinics, particularly of Planned Parenthood clinics, spelled the end of reproductive care and abortions.
Ironically, SCOTUS did decide this week that is it not up to the states to regulate guns. However, SCOTUS may leave abortion laws up to the states. I wonder what the difference is between those two things?
I don't want my body to be regulated. I don't want my children to have to live in a world where if they need to have abortion care (because abortions ARE health care) that they cannot get to it. It's not anyone's business why someone might need an abortion, but this is going to severely impact people who are going through later terms abortions (which are rarer than the anti-choice movement indicates) by not allowing people who could die from continuing a pregnancy to die. No D&C for those whose babies are wanted and planned for and named, but have severe health issues that won't make them compatible with life. And before anyone comes at me with stories where they were suggested to have abortions because their doctors thought their child would be incompatible with life--you got to make that choice for you and your family. It's always a choice. Just because when I was pregnant with my twins, and had I found out that one of them might have been deemed 'incompatible with life', that I might not have chosen abortion because it wasn't the choice I wanted to make doesn't mean that everyone else should make that exact same decision.
It should be between the pregnant person, their doctor and anyone else they choose to involve. No one else.
And tomorrow, it could all be taken away.
What's next?
Birth control.
Gay marriage.
LGBTQ+ people in general. No more protections of any kind.
If you think this is just about saving babies, you need to re-examine your beliefs.
I hope tomorrow (or whenever Dobbs drops), we get good news that Roe will still stand. But even if it does still stand, for how long?
Choice needs to stay the way it is. I don't want to have the government involved in my family planning. Do you?
