(photo credit Kit O’Connell)
Today there was a rally at the Capitol on the anniversary of Roe. It was a rally for the side of things that call themselves, Pro Life, though our team usually calls them Anti Choice. We had hundreds of amazing people, fantastic organizers, brilliant activists all. I am so grateful for them and their passion and devotion to justice.
One of the signs I saw today was about “My Generation Will End Abortion.” That’s a Utopian sentiment, and truly naive.
Abortion has existed for as long as women didn’t want to be pregnant. It’s existed in every culture and country, and has been needed not just to end a pregnancy that is unplanned or unwanted, but to save women’s lives should the fetus be causing danger to the living woman. The physical process for supporting a woman through a difficult miscarriage is the same, and doctors need to know how to help women through all phases of their reproductive lives.
I believe abortion will always exist because there will always be circumstances in which women have to choose. My life? Or, the life of the fetus suffering and unable to grow. My children’s well being? Or this new accidental pregnancy. My emotional, mental, and physical health? Or the pregnancy caused by a rape. There are more, many more stories, including wanted children who cannot be borne, including forced pregnancies through rape or coercion, including pregnancies incurred because teens had no idea how their bodies work.
The issue is access, resources, and choice. Do this, and you will indeed reduce the need for abortion services.
Abortion services though, will always be needed and should be legal and accessible, with trained providers that are free from religious or political pressure to deny patients rights.
Here are some things that will not end abortion:
- Lying to women about condoms, as many so called crisis pregnancy centers do.
- Shaming women and men about sex.
- Denying that some men rape or abuse women and girls (not that those women tempt men).
- Closing reproductive health centers (that will just mean women will take radical and drastic steps).
- Impoverishing communities by gutting education, approving unfair bank practices, eliminating health and mental health services, and lowering wages.
- Telling children they are like used up pieces of gum if they have sex, and then lying to them about their bodies, how they work, and being disingenuous about contraception.
The only way to reduce abortion (for it can never be eliminated) is to do the opposite things:
- Provide extremely comprehensive sex ed to all genders.
- Offer unfettered access to contraception, reproductive services and education.
- Create cultures of absolute consent and acceptance between men and women regarding sex and pleasure.
- Support a political system that provides living wages, fair bank practices, less corporate interference in local job economies, and provides safety and health care for all.
- Increase the safety net for mental and physical health, for job loss, and economic stress.
- Decrease oppressive racial and gendered systems so that more people have access to more education, more jobs, more ability to live with autonomy.
This will mean less unintended pregnancies, and more planned for and wanted children. It will also mean that the choice to keep an unplanned pregnancy will mean far less financial disaster for families.
It will also mean a more equitable life for ALL THOSE WHO ARE CURRENTLY ALIVE.
It confounds me that even when given this response, the Right and Anti-Choice side denies and refuses the truth of it. All I have heard for the million years I’ve been fighting against anti-choice laws have been about control, shame, vengeance, and discipline.
- Don’t have sex.
- Wait until marriage.
- Pray.
Live with your mistakes (as if a child should EVER be told they are a mistake to live with).
The core belief structure seems to be about personal control (and fear), vengeance instead of understanding, denial instead of adaptation. Punishment, certainly.
I don’t doubt that many many on the Right believe deeply that they are the correct side, that they hold the loving position, the compassionate position. I certainly know our side believes we are and we do.
The very words have different core meanings to align with the different deep core beliefs. When I say love and compassion are part of abortion services I am accused of murderous intent. When I hear and see those words used by the Right, it seems cruel and manipulative and I see it as a cudgel to control through shame. This semantic divide can make dialogue seem nearly impossible, nearly alien in how we use the words or understand the positions. One inroad I’ve seen is with Exhale and their use of stories rather than arguments.
In all this, I go out, I write and I activate with many others, but I’m a bit at a loss to figure out how to motivate the even larger numbers of people to get out there and make change. The Right believes they have “god” on their side-their churches organize like wild, they focus on their actions in much more lock step and may even feel that their actions are spiritually called (and if not that, their communities are part of church life so it’s where everyone is, pressing each other to act).
I’m not sure how to take back the spiritual position (or if we can), though Cindy Noland of Faith Action Women in Need, did a great job today speaking on faith and abortion as compassion, healing, justice. We are a mixed group of atheists, agnostics and the message of spirituality may not appeal to those on our side, but something has to pull more and more of us in.
I think it should, something should to get people out organized and in force. As Gar Alperovitz said last night in his talk, “The Quietly Deepening Political and Economic Crisis: Possibilities for an America beyond Corporate Capitalism,” the issues aren’t historical or political, but existential. “What are you going to do?”
Martin Luther King, Jr. said, most profoundly, “Life’s Most Persistent And Urgent Question Is, What Are You Doing For Others?”
Perhaps the Right believes that’s what they are doing, those others being fetuses in varying stages of development.
But, all I know is us here now. Those others? That’s you. The kids in school in this very county that might be marked for the school to prison pipeline. The people in West Virginia without water. The families who have lost children because of lax gun laws. The racism endemic in our country. The men and women who have lost jobs because of corporate outsourcing. The prisoners in Guantanamo, lingering still.
What will it take to get you out there?
The goal should be making this life livable for those here who are living. All of us, all colors, shapes and sizes, ages and ability. All of us deserve clean water, clean air, healthy food, access to jobs, safe working conditions, fair and equal treatment under the laws and the expectation that WE are the people making democracy happen.
What will it take to get you out there?
I think there can be no more holy work than that. And I want to see more and more of you stand with me. We are all we have and I believe if there is a “god” it is in those moments and junctures between each of us, tendrils of connection lingering eternally, invisibly, but part of us. That’s what we can count on now.
What will it take to get all our generations out there, and what will we do for others? How will we take to the streets to act on behalf of the least of us, here, now?
We need every single beautiful one of you.
