OPINION: The ruthless ending of Roe v. Wade


This is for the girl who is currently hiding in the bathroom stall with two pink lines on a pregnancy test and the rest of her life ahead of her.

On Monday night, Politico published a leaked document that seemed to indicate the Supreme Court may soon overturn Roe v. Wade. “Roe was terribly wrong from the start,” Judge Samuel Alito Jr. allegedly wrote in a draft opinion that would end federal protection of abortion access. The official decision won’t be announced until later this summer, and in the meantime, it’s time to think about the girl in the bathroom and everyone who has been or will be in her position, and everyone who put her there.

The Conservatives finally did, or so it seems. Conservative voters elected conservative politicians who appointed conservative judges. A machine that’s been in the making for decades, leaving progressive women and the men who support them with a mix of incipient pain and blinding rage. A decision that cleanly establishes a division in the United States: men, who will have control over the most intimate parts of their bodies, and women, who will have control over their bodies only in some states, at the whim of some legislators.

This column is not for those conservatives. This is for abortionists. “Reproductive care providers” is the more neutral term, but “abortionists” is Alito’s preferred term in his draft opinion, a word that suggests clandestine repairmen who perform sordid procedures.

But people like Alito will look down on your work no matter what it’s called, so we might as well lay claim to the title. Others know what work really is and what it means to do it. This is for the abortionists who go to work in bulletproof vests in picket-lined buildings and who carry their patients’ secrets, futures, hopes and regrets to and from work every day, and who do so with due mercy. . God bless you. Let his face shine on you.

This is for Susan Collins. The senator from Maine in 2018 gave an hour-long speech on the Senate floor and announced that she would vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court because she said he believed her when he innocently suggested that Roe v. Wade shouldn’t be overruled. How do you feel now, Senator Collins?

We’ve wasted too much time and capitulated too much on “safe, legal, and weird.” It should always have been “safe and legal, full stop”. Because when conservative politicians or judges start complaining about “on-demand” abortion, we have to remember that “on-demand” just means that a woman wants it and is asking for it, and the politician or judge is trying to say that we shouldn’t . matter what she wants.

“The right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the history and traditions of the Nation,” Alito wrote in the draft opinion. He doesn’t mention the things that are rooted in the nation’s history and traditions: slavery, disenfranchisement, discrimination. America is allowed to work on itself. Bodily autonomy should not be granted to women by history and traditions; must be recognized for their innate dignity as human beings.

This column is for the women who fought for her the first time, who are now in their 70s and 80s, and who we will now ask to gird for battle again. The marchers. Protesters. Members of the Jane collective; those are the activists who learned to make abortion devices out of Mason jars and syringes, who transported patients across state lines or (yes) into back alleys.

After all, there were always abortions. They happened with glass jars, and they happened with knitting needles, and they happened in bedrooms, and they happened without painkillers, and they happened with women clenching their hands so hard their knuckles were white, and they happened, and they happened, and they happened The Overthrow de Roe would not mean the end of abortions. It would simply mean the end, in certain states, of legal and safe abortions.

Alito’s opinion is barbaric and cruel. It is wide where it could have been narrow. He is scathing where he could have been compassionate. She is, as abortion discussions often are, so preoccupied with arguing for moral high ground that she pays no attention to women being trampled on.

This is for the girl hiding in the bathroom right now with two pink lines on a pregnancy test.

The girl who is going to find a way to not get pregnant anyway, no matter what the Supreme Court ends up saying in June.

There are people who will applaud the message in Alito’s leaked draft opinion, seeing it as a victory for the “unborn” or “unborn” who believe they are the victims in the abortion war.

The victims are the girls in the bathroom stalls. The victims are the women who were already born, whose lives are already being lived, only now they are lived with more fear and pain.

The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Anchorage Daily News, which welcomes a wide range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, please email comment (at) adn.com. Submit submissions under 200 words to [email protected] either click here to send through any web browser. Read our full guidelines for letters and comments. here.




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