I was raised by a feminist. I don’t know that she would have called herself such, but she was one. And she was one of the best role models I could have ever hoped for.
My grandmother would have walked through fire for me. She was born in 1903, the oldest of five children, the only one of her immediate family to ever attend college. She earned both her Batchelor’s Degree and her Master’s at a time when most women never went to college at all. When she and my grandfather made the decision to raise me instead of leaving the job to my unprepared parents, they went into it wholeheartedly, and it could not have been an easy adjustment to their lives to add a toddler. She was 57 and he was 70 and no one in the 1960’s was saying perky things like, ’50 is the new 40’. Their ages were what they were and no one would have considered either of them young.
When I was born, I was unwanted by my birth parents. It is a more complex story than the statement would indicate because my birth parents were both over 25, employed, and married to each other for several years. In terms of age and life situation, they were considered mature adults. Adults they were, mature not so much. Until I was two, I was shuffled between parents and both sets of grandparents until finally my father’s mother drew a line in the sand and said, ‘This is ridiculous. We cannot keep doing this as she grows up. If no one else wants to step up, we’ll take her.’ And that was the end of that because really no one bucked my grandmother, all 4ft 10 inches of her.
I tell my abbreviated history because it does connect to the whole debacle that is the fall of Roe v. Wade. Though I was not an unwanted child who ended up tossed in a dumpster or drowned in a bathtub, I could have been had I been born to different parents in a different place. And though I ended up in the best possible situation I could have, my beginning has always made me sensitive to the subject of unwanted children and unequipped mothers. Most of those children don’t end up as lucky as I did. And thanks to the decision made by SCOTUS on June 24th, there will now be so many more unfortunate children and mothers.
We have so much to unpack from the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe. There are facts, there are fictions, there are rumors. There is history, there is uncertainty. There is understandable fear and widespread anger.
To deal with some of the facts and fictions, we have to first try and step back from some of that anger, understandable though it may be. As tempting as it is to feel hatred for the justices who made the majority decision (and I’ll be honest here and admit that I feel that emotion, too,), facts still have to come into it. Justices Barrett, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh never said they would not overturn Roe v. Wade during their confirmation hearings. All said they considered it an important legal precedent that had been reaffirmed multiple times since its inception. Barrett was especially coy in answering questions related to how she would vote if the subject of Roe came before her. But not one of them said they wouldn’t overturn it. I think it’s fair to say they were deliberately trying to mislead with their statements, and this doesn’t mean you have to stop hating them, but you should probably stop claiming they said something they didn’t when you’re posting Facebook memes.
While we’re on the subject of the justices, let us turn briefly to the pronouncements of Justice Clarence Thomas with regards to other benchmark cases, specifically contraception, same-sex relationships, and gay marriage. The problem with his obvious and odious invitation for challenges to these cases is that he may not be wrong to invite reexamination if the SCOTUS overturning of Roe is “right”. The very underpinning of Roe v. Wade was based on the right to privacy as expressed directly or indirectly by multiple Constitutional Amendments. The other cases mentioned, as well as the rights regarding interracial marriage which Thomas so conveniently and self-servingly left out, all depend on the justices’ interpretation of personal privacy and how it is protected, or not, by the Constitution.
All of this matters moving forward, not just in terms of the ability for any American woman to legally access a safe abortion procedure, but in terms of how she goes about the very act of accessing. Will your online searches for abortion clinics or medications be private? There has already been a case where a Mississippi woman was indicted on second degree murder charges when her online search and purchase history showed persuadable evidence of an illegal abortion. Now that the right to privacy of anything related to an abortion has been eroded by SCOTUS, where does that leave tech companies and search engines if law enforcement tries to force them to turn over users’ data? Especially when the legality of the alleged behavior varies from state to state?
Will HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) protect women’s’ privacy in such cases? We don’t know. While HIPAA does closely guard how private medical information can be maintained and shared, it generally applies only to those entities involved in providing healthcare. It does nothing to regulate what, for example, Apple does with your sleep score information, or for purposes of this discussion, your period tracking calendar, from your smartwatch. Should you immediately delete any period tracking apps you currently use from all your devices? Seems like it wouldn’t be a bad idea. At least until the path forward is less murky.
When and how we get to less murky is difficult to predict. There’s a been a lot of rumbling about how Congress could pass abortion rights into law, have President Biden sign it, and there we are, home free. But nothing would stop the Supreme Court from ruling that law unconstitutional the moment a challenge against it came before them. In our current climate, it’s a good bet those challenges would commence before the ink from Biden’s signature was dry and there is no reason to believe now that the present SCOTUS would not happily proclaim such a law unconstitutional.
While many, myself included, might believe Congress should still try, their efforts to pass abortion rights legislation in February and May of this year, even after the leak of the SCOTUS draft opinion occurred, failed. Looking forward, though the stakes have increased, getting abortion policy passed by Congress seems unlikely unless one party is able to elect a Senate supermajority in the midterms. Prior to November, Democrats would seem to have small hope of protecting abortion rights at a federal level without removing the oft-reviled filibuster. Senator Elizabeth Warren has been quite vocal on social media of late, urging her fellow Senate Democrats to do exactly that. But it should be remembered that same demonized filibuster is keeping Republicans from passing even broader abortion restrictions. Right about now, maybe we should be glad Senators Manchin and Sinema refused to get rid of it despite the stalemate it allows to continue?
As we move inexorably towards the midterms, the filibuster’s long shadow grows. If neither side wins a supermajority, we’re still stuck in the same quagmire. If the Democrats can pull together enough enthusiasm and voter turnout, then they could finally pass legislation protecting women’s right of choice. If the Republicans, conversely, emerge triumphant, maybe they would pass harsher legislation. Or maybe they wouldn’t. They know the fall of Roe has been immensely unpopular throughout the country, even amongst many Republicans, and any law more onerous for women might prove to be a Gordian knot even Mitch McConnell would be unwilling to cut.
What’s certain right now is that nothing is certain on the political side. The fall of Roe, disheartening though it is, should be a rousing battle cry to every Democrat, every Independent, every reasonable Conservative, and every unregistered voter who cares about women, privacy, and bodily autonomy. But will it be enough? It’s an arguable point that most voters who considered Roe v. Wade an issue worth preserving already showed up to vote. Meanwhile, Biden’s unpopularity grows worse and Republicans would love nothing more than to make his job even harder than it already is by handing him a Senate and Congress completely averse to his smallest request. Recent history shows Republicans have much better voter turnout in midterms than Democrats, and Republicans vote in lockstep. Once a Republican nominee is chosen for nearly any office, Republican voters vote for them; they don’t sit around and quibble amongst themselves about purity tests or whether they like them. They just vote for them. If all this sounds like I’m fearful Democrats will manage to squander even this opportunity to truly make a difference, it’s because I am. In 1935, comedian Will Rogers said, “I am not a member of an organized party. I am a Democrat.” Unfortunately, this remains true.
We didn’t arrive at this place overnight. If more senators had listened to Anita Hill in 1991, maybe we wouldn’t be here. If more senators had given credence to the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford in 2018, maybe we wouldn’t be here. If Ruth Bader Ginsburg had stepped down from her chair early in Barack Obama’s second term, if Mitch McConnell hadn’t blocked the confirmation of Merrick Garland, maybe we wouldn’t be here. And certainly, if Hillary Clinton had won enough states to garner the Electoral College’s magic number, instead of only winning the popular vote, we wouldn’t be here. All of these points are infuriating to different degrees, but unless someone knows the whereabouts of Mr. Peabody’s Wayback Machine, we can’t change any of it.
Where do we go from here? Beyond understanding the importance of voting in November and all primaries leading to November, we the people are still reeling from the SCOTUS decision. A majority of us are angry, many of us are numb. We must muster our support moving forward in the form of voting, peaceful protest, and letter-writing campaigns to our representatives. We must start paying far more attention to all elections starting at the most basic local levels, but there are no quick changes likely to be had.
The Republicans have spent years, decades now, being better than Democrats at seizing the initiative. Republicans are not smarter than Democrats, but they are often more cunning, more politically ruthless, and much more willing to push a point to the outer limits of acceptable behavior. Lately, there are those who go well beyond what was once considered acceptable.
Republicans have also used their organizational skills to capture political power and structure inside and outside Washington, D.C. Twenty-eight out of 50 state governors are Republican; 30 states have Republican-controlled state legislatures. When Donald Trump left office, he had managed to make 226 successful appointments to the trial, appellate, and Supreme courts. With no apologies, Mitch McConnell openly boasts about what he’s called his “court project” and “to do everything we can, for as long as we can, to transform the federal judiciary, because everything else we do is transitory.” He does this with almost united backing of his colleagues and Republican voters.
Political absurdities and disasters aside, what is certain in the immediate future after the fall of Roe v. Wade is that more women will die in childbirth or from pregnancy complications, many preventable, in a country with a maternal death-rate that should already make us ashamed. More women will die from botched abortions. More children will be born who are unwanted. More children will be abused, neglected, and killed because they were unwanted. More women and children will live in poverty. More children will enter the U.S. foster care system which already contains over 400,000 children. There will be more victims of rape and incest forced to live with their trauma in a very tangible way, possibly for the rest of their lives. There will be more suicides. There will be more mental health issues.
Approximately 64 million women and girls of reproductive age live in the United States; over half of them live in states that now, or will shortly, restrict their rights. There will be greater need for social structures to help these women and resulting children in the form of welfare and food stamp benefits. Medicaid will need increased funding in the states curtailing abortion access. More than ever, maternal leave and reasonably priced childcare should be discussed and implemented.
If these discussions could be had and acted upon, at least the fall of Roe v. Wade would taste a little less bitter. I want to believe that the people who are celebrating now will find it in the hearts they say they have to do just that. But I’m not hopeful about that either. I know there are some individuals who truly believe that all abortion is murder, but also practice many acts of kindness and charity. I know some who have adopted a few of those foster system children. I also see some of the celebrants posting of their self-righteous glee on social media. I have read their comments. Many comments take some form of, ‘if the current generation would just practice birth control, there wouldn’t even be a need for abortion.’
Those are the people we who mourn Roe are up against: people who are clueless regarding the failure rates of every type of birth control known save abstinence; people apparently too ignorant to realize their hero, Justice Thomas, has all but petitioned challengers to come for the right to freely use, choose, and access birth control. They are people who long ago shed all pretense of empathy for others, if they ever indeed possessed that quality. This is what we are up against. It is not a useless fight, or a hopeless one, but will, I fear, be a long one.
The fierce, tiny woman who raised me was a career teacher and school principal. She was also political. She was a poll worker. She watched the national conventions as they were televised every four years, and had me watch them, too. She was a supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment. She took me to the county clerk’s office to register to vote the second I was old enough. And when Roe v. Wade was recognized as law, I heard her make this comment more than once: “If a woman doesn’t want a baby, she shouldn’t have to have one.”
My grandmother has been gone since 1992. Wherever she is now, I know she is angry. Maybe if I channel her anger together with mine, it will give me enough energy to get through the coming fight.
Creative Credits
- Written by
- Kathryn Riley-Cuglietta
- Photography
- Diana Ragland
- Retouching
- Brianna Kish
- Hair Stylist
- Gina Barrington
- Makeup Artist
- Heather French
