It was a Friday morning and I was training the newest hire in my department at work when I saw my husband hovering in the hallway outside my home office. He normally doesn’t interrupt me while I’m in meetings – it’s highly unusual. “What’s up, babe?” I asked.
His reply – “It’s gone.”
I must have given the “what are you talking about” face because he quickly elaborated – “Roe versus Wade was just overturned.” Forgetting the meeting I was in and the new coworker on the other end, I swore.
I got through that meeting on autopilot – giving instructions, steadying my voice, going through the motions – but I was not there. I was in the entrance to a Catholic church in January of 2002, and my mom’s grip was tight on my small hand as she pulled me towards our car.
It was the Sunday morning of Martin Luther King Jr. weekend and we were walking into church when a woman with a huge bucket of roses stopped us at the door. To my mother, she asked – “Do your girls want to carry roses in today’s mass to represent the babies senselessly murdered by their own mothers?” All of 7 years old, I loved flowers – and never had gotten my own rose before. I wondered if I would get to keep it. I reached out for the flower, nodding enthusiastically, when my mother said, “No” and tightened her grip on my and my sister’s hands. She took a few uncertain steps before bending nearer to our ears – “Girls, we aren’t going to church today.” She led us back to the car.
Of course there were questions – I was unjustly denied a beautiful flower and an opportunity to be the center of attention at church, and I demanded answers as we drove home. My mom explained to us that the church was using today’s service to talk about abortion, and of course I asked what that was – my mom explained to me that sometimes, if a woman is pregnant with a baby and doesn’t want to be, she will go to the doctor and the doctor will take the baby out of her belly before it’s born, and that then the baby will never be born. The idea made me vaguely sad – I asked why anyone would do that, and my mom gave several reasons. Sometimes having a baby can be dangerous for the mom, or sometimes it’s known that the baby won’t be healthy. Some women can’t afford babies, or aren’t mentally and emotionally prepared, or they don’t have support.
It was a simple explanation for a simple young mind, but when I asked why the church was against it, but my parents were not, my mom gave an answer that my 7 year old soul could comprehend, one our highest justices still lack the compassion and capacity to grasp.
“It is not our place to choose, or to judge, what others do with their own bodies. While some churches want the law to match their beliefs, we can’t do that when not everyone believes in the same thing.”
And that’s how I learned about abortion – and the day I became pro-choice. It’s also one of my last memories of going to Catholic mass on a Sunday morning. Today, it strikes me as funny that a church who believed I was too young to learn that some people have two moms thought it was appropriate to force a conversation about abortion on a 7 year old.
Back in 2022, by the time my meeting had ended, Missouri’s attorney general had signed into effect a Trigger Law essentially stripping me of my rights to bodily autonomy. I spent the morning and much of the afternoon unable to focus on work, quietly weeping and reading the developing news.
My relationship to abortion and choice has always been one of distance and privilege – while I haven’t needed an abortion, I knew that I always had the right to get one, and had the privilege of support from my family and friends. I was raised by brilliant, strong, and compassionate pro-choice parents. I am wealthy, white, and well-educated. I have health care and access to birth control. So while I have remained vehemently pro-choice my entire life, it’s always been a choice I felt I was preserving for people with uteruses who lack the position and privilege that I do. I give that context to emphasize how eerie it felt on Friday when my out-of-state friends and coworkers, from Kansas or Connecticut or California, sent messages consoling and checking on me – one of the women newly stripped of her rights. I did not think this would happen to me.
I’m keeping this post personal because so many of the political, scientific, and intellectual things have already been said – and far better than I could say them. I highly recommend doing your research. But to summarize a few of the points floating around my head:
We can debate when life begins – at birth or at conception (and then we can rework voting age, drinking age, child support obligations, and more based on the falsehood that equates a clump of cells to a sentient person.) But that question is irrelevant. If I were to crash my car and die in an accident tomorrow, my organs could not be taken to save another life without my permission. My corpse has more rights in that regard than I do today. You can try to argue that becoming pregnant is a woman’s choice, but I will not entertain that judgmental take until sex education is comprehensive and all birth control is accessible and free. Currently, while I can’t be forced (alive or dead) to donate my liver, or blood, or marrow, my womb is public domain.
And yet, some people believe the benefit of banning abortion outweighs the loss of women’s autonomy and dignity – because their faith has them believing in the sanctity of life that begins at conception. For anyone who is against abortion – I will fight to the end for your right to carry pregnancies to term. I will fight for you to have phenomenal pre- and post-natal care, paid maternity leave. I will fight for your baby to be well-fed and well-educated, and I will vote for politicians that will make them safer once they go to school. I believe that all individuals with uteruses own the right to make decisions about their womb, and that includes protecting and supporting people who want to give birth. All I ask in return is that no one force their religious beliefs on my body.
To say you won’t get an abortion because your religion forbids it is freedom. To say I can’t get an abortion because your religion forbids it is an abomination against everything our country stands for.
Then I think of the women in my life. My friends who have tried for years to get pregnant, only to miscarry or have an ectopic pregnancy and need medical intervention to save their lives. My friends who got advanced degrees and are actively changing the world, and how their lives would have taken a different trajectory had they been forced to bear a child instead of finishing their education. My friends – and myself – who have survived abusive relationships, and the terror that would be our lives if a child had tied us for eternity to our abusers. I trust these women to make decisions about their lives and bodies. I know these women carry a disproportionate burden to the men on the other side of the bedroom, and I believe in these – and all – women’s choices.
Margaret Sanger puts it clearly:
“No woman can call herself free who does not control her own body.”
We’re facing 5 justices failing to put any modern interpretation on a document written 225 years ago by white men, failing to look beyond its words to its intent. It comes back to muted group theory – that if only dominant voices are used to create social structures and laws, the marginalized will never truly be equal. When our constitution was written, women were considered second-class citizens – and until we find leaders with the courage to look beyond a 225-year-old piece of paper, women will remain second-class citizens. While hopefully tomorrow I have ideas and action, today I have only despair.
Guest post by Elliot Olson.
