Stay Mad: Don't let them normalize post-Roe horrors

[Nevilledog]

https://jessica.substack.com/p/stay-mad

I do my best to stay positive. Despair isn’t an option when you’ve settled into a long-haul fight like the one we have in front of us for abortion rights. But I must admit, there are times when keeping my head up is harder than others.

This week, I did back-to-back events in Michigan and Florida—going from speaking to a roomful of college students in Grand Rapids to an audience of women in their 60s, 70s and 80s at a Planned Parenthood fundraiser in Palm Beach. All of the women I spoke to were furious, energized, and, frankly, in disbelief.

Older women, who raged at the eradication of a right they fought so hard to secure, were terrified for their daughters and granddaughters. After all, they remember what it was like before Roe. Younger women, in shock over stories like Brittany Watts’ and Kate Cox’s, were desperate for advice on how to help stop the nightmare.

And while their well-justified anger and energy reinvigorated me—as in-person events always do—I also found myself at a loss. Because the question that came up again and again, regardless of generation, was why are they doing this to us?

10 year-olds mandated to give birth. Miscarriage patients being arrested. Women forced to carry doomed pregnancies to term, turned into ‘walking coffins’.

Why do they hate us so fucking much?

*snip*

[niyad]

1. Heartsick KNR. Thank you for this very important piece. One would

think that their hatred was counterintuitive. .after all, without us, they would not be here. And yet, that appears to be the basis of their hatred, a sense of inferiority that we do something they cannot, that they owe their very existence to us. In their insecure, inferior little brains, they then have to prove that they are more powerful, more important. Anything we can create, they can destroy.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. Generations of women who have had legal and illegal abortions should come forward

with their stories.

Here's mine. I knew a girl in 1975 who just turned 16 and discovered she was pregnant. She had been having sex since 14. Roe was in place.

There was no way that she was going to have this pregnancy conclude with a baby. Her boyfriend was 21 and working at a golf course. They had no intention of getting married and raising a family. It was recreational sex.

Her family would have disowned her. Especially her father as she was the Golden Child. Even if her parents secreted her away to either have an abortion or have the baby (to be adopted, of course), her life would be ruined. First of all, she'd lose her prized status in the family. Then, forget college. Then, her prospects for marriage (on her parents' terms) would be severely compromised.

Her boyfriend didn't have the money for the abortion. Her sister coughed up $214 to pay for it. (Why that amount? 214 represented Valentine's Day and her sister wanted to be certain not to confuse love with sex.) BTW, that's $1,234.78 in 2023 dollars.

And so, two months pregnant, she and her boyfriend took off for an afternoon and got the abortion. She never told her parents and went on to college and marriage. And kept her Golden Child status.

She was spared abject emotional, mental, and perhaps physical abuse from her father. She was spared having to maybe raise a child she was unprepared to raise (and still is). 49 years ago.