I’m suspicious that one reason the draft of conservative SCOTUS justices dismantling Roe v. Wade is because the Rethugs are hoping we’ll all “forget” in favor of the “next news things” by the time midterms roll around. I won’t forget.
I was struck by an article I saw in my Daily Sound & Fury newsletter. https://dailysoundandfury.com/birth-control-for-married-women-wasnt-legal-until-1965-individual-women-not-until-1972/ It has to do with birth control for women, something we’ve had access to for all the lives of Millennials, GenZ, and most of Gen Xers. We take it for granted that we women can get birth control when we need it, but that could change.
I was 20 when my doctor prescribed the pill to me. He was a doctor from another country, much more open-minded that American doctors. It was 1975 and I didn’t realize that how recent it was that single women were even allowed to have the pill. Although the pill was developed in the early 1960s, it wasn’t available to married women until 1965 and even then, they had to get permission from their husbands! Single women were able to get the pill prescribed in 1972. 1972!! That’s a mere 50 years ago.
Having access to birth control is a fundamental right. We have a right to our privacy, but those issues are not in the Constitution. The trumper Rethuglican justices apparently are hiding behind that reason to take away our rights: “it’s not in the Constitution.” Neither is interracial or same sex marriages, certain consensual sex acts and a bunch of other things we take for granted.
Throughout junior high and high school, my brother and I bowled on a team with his best friend, Jimmy. Jimmy had an older sister, Nancy, who was a year ahead of me in school. Although I liked Nancy’s snarky sense of humor, we were worlds apart and she was so much more “sophisticated” than I was. We would say hello to each other but were more acquaintances than friends.
When I was a sophomore, I noticed that Nancy was gaining weight. Then she disappeared. I asked Jimmy what happened to her, but he was very evasive. She was “staying with relatives.” About a year later, she returned and had lost a lot of weight.
At the bowling alley one day, we met up in the ladies’ room and I asked her where she’d been. She was very sad and explained that she’d gotten pregnant. Her boyfriend didn’t want to have anything more to do with her and getting an abortion was illegal. Her parents sent her away to live out her pregnancy, deliver the baby and give it up for adoption.
She was too young to take care of a baby and her parents were “done” raising children. She deeply regretted having to give her baby up and missed her baby girl every day.
Wow, I thought, taken aback. How awful for Nancy. She hadn’t wanted a baby; she got pregnant in “the heat of the moment” and what a price to pay. She hadn’t been able to get birth control for herself; her boyfriend didn’t want to use condoms. They used the “pull out” method. Nancy hadn’t wanted to carry the baby, knowing she would have to give it up at birth.
That must’ve been what happened to my classmate, Jean, I reflected. Jean and I were friends for a while in 8th grade. She was completely boy crazy and lusted after our 8th grade geography teacher (not reciprocated) and a boy in our class named Gary. One night, my brother came back after a night of carousing in the woods with his buddies. Laughing, he told me they’d come across Jean and Gary “doing it”.
No access to birth control.
Jean got pregnant too. She and Gary were barely 16. They didn’t want a baby either. Abortion was illegal. There were legal methods and Jean tried them. She failed. Luckily, she didn’t injure herself or get sick. I don’t know what they decided to do after the baby was born because the school year ended and I didn’t see them again.
The biggest thing I took away from Nancy and Jean then was: whatever I did, I would NOT have sex. Not because I thought it was wrong or because I didn’t want to. It was because I was afraid of getting pregnant and ending up in a traumatic situation like Nancy’s or Jean’s.
How wonderful it’s been to have sex education, access to birth control to prevent pregnancy, and the ability to choose an abortion. Now, though, this SCOTUS is opening the door to taking away rights other than abortion. Already some Rethuglican clown has asked SCOTUS to have another look at gay marriage. I’m sure that would be followed by interracial marriage and on down the line until the looming possibility of counting people of color as 3/5 of a person.
Do we really stand for this? Not me. I’m going to do what I can to voice my opposition in every forum I can. Just because I was born in the 1950s doesn’t mean I consider it a “golden age” and I sure as hell don’t want to go back there!
Speak up. Protest. Call your representatives. Volunteer. Vote. DO something.
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