Overturning Roe v Wade. It’s been a year, and 25 million women now live in states with abortion bans or “restrictions.” I called them complete abortion bans. If a person doesn’t have a choice between themselves and their doctor, then it’s a complete abortion ban to me.
It took nine Supreme Court justices and 1,572 United States politicians to strip rights away from half of America. Eighty-two percent of these politicians were male.
Here are a few paragraphs from Moira Donegan’s incredible essay about the fall of Roe in The Guardian.
Amid all the brutality, all the horrific medical emergencies, all the women sickening to the brink of death, all the girls forced to remain pregnant with the children of their rapists while still children themselves, there is one central feature of Dobbs and its aftermath that hangs over every crude discussion of gestational limits and unspeakably vulgar argument over rape exemptions, this is the elephant in the room: that history does move backwards, that America does not advance all of its peoples steadily toward inclusion and justice, and that Dobbs diminished the citizenship of half of America because of their sex.
It came as women attained new heights of education and achievement – it aims to reverse them.
It came as trans people achieved new levels of visibility and acceptance as their true selves – It aimed to shove them back into a social role determined by their sex assigned at birth.
Dobbs created a two-tiered class of American citizenship: one for those who are trusted to plan their families and control their bodies, because they are male, and one for those who are not, because they are female. It is a generational tragedy.
This is not the kind of thing we are accustomed to memorializing in America: the lost dreams, the ruined health, the unwritten novels and symphonies, the early deaths, the searing and profound humiliation.
We do not like to dwell on our failures, our violences, our ignoble reversals. But it is worth dwelling on this one today.
Take a moment to remember the women who have been denied abortions since Dobbs – those who are hurt and threatened by their pregnancies, and those who simply do not want them – and grieve for them. Grieve, and wonder about what other lives they might have led, if they had a choice.
Moira Donegan, columnist at The Guardian