I always write my best words in the early morning hours. Unfortunately, I write them in my head as I lay in bed wishing I could catch another hour's sleep. This morning, I was writing words of anger at the fact -- the fact -- of the obscene twenty-week abortion ban, the obscenely named "Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act" becoming law.
In a state that continues to rank above average in infant mortality, in which our governor has proudly fought federal health care for the poor, our legislature continues to waste our time and precious dollars on bills that would force women to turn their reproductive health over to the government.
In a state where gun violence rules families and neighborhoods, bills promoting the unabashed toting of weapons are as plentiful as, well, as anti-abortion bills.
But over the past years there has been a growing movement, voices that will be heard over the misogynists that have run amok over our state governments.
The headlines began in 2012 with two women representatives being banned from the Michigan House floor after Lisa Brown said the word "vagina" while speaking.
In 2013 a woman in the Texas legislature, Wendy Davis, in pink sneakers, filibustered an anti-abortion bill that would close abortion clinics throughout the state.
Over these past years, women have come forward to talk about their abortions, no longer hiding from public opinion, realizing that unless we can put faces to the right to have an abortion, that right will be lost.
And each indignity, each lie, has added fuel to our fire. From Hobby Lobby claiming religious freedom as the principle from which they could deny an employee contraceptive care, to the false identities used to film and edit a meeting with representatives of Planned Parenthood, women are realizing they have had enough and they are fighting back. The younger generation, those who do not have memories from before Roe v. Wade, are aware that this important freedom is being jeopardized. And they are pissed off.
Not too long ago, I worried that young woman, because they had always had this right, would not see that it was at risk. I was wrong. You can see it all over the media these days.
There is Amy Schumer's "ask your doctor" video and Samantha Bee's segment on Texas' attacks on abortion clinics ("How does removing access to health care improve health care?"). And John Oliver recently turned his pen to a scathing indictment of Texas HB 2, that bill that Wendy Davis filibustered against in 2013 and which is now being challenged in the Supreme Court.
I have often whined about the failure of movies to show abortion as a normal medical option, but that is happening too. Grandma, with Lily Tomlin, is a breath of fresh air and a paean to the strength of women who have had to endure the pressure and the venom of the anti-abortionist while making such an important and personal decision.
Yes, I think we have all had it. Right now it is the Supreme Court hearing regarding that awful Texas bill that has closed most clinics in the state for reasons having nothing to do with women's safety and everything to do with limiting access. But it is also the fact that more women (and girls), denied access to safe abortions, are seeking information on how to self-abort. It has come down to life and death, to the days of coat hangars and back alleys, once again.
And because of this, woman are willing to fight, for themselves, for their daughters and their mothers. Men are standing up and fighting for the women that they love and respect, who should have the right to the best health care and to make the best choices without government interference.
So while my sleep-riddled words this morning were variations on the angry and mocking words I have written before, as I became fully awake it occurred to me that H 3114 is one more step towards taking our bodies and our rights back. We have fought hard and learned that there is no way that reason can influence those mean-spirited and intellectually limited narcissists in our state legislatures. But armies of women can make enough noise, as we have before, and change those legislatures.
I am looking forward to women, young and old, standing up to run against the tyrants, with loud and fearless voices. They may not have the corporate money of the right-wing, but they have the power of the cause. I have said before that when we take back our government and our rights, it will not be with candidates who are cautious and try not to ruffle the electorate. We are the electorate, and there really are more of us that want our rights protected. If we aren't afraid to fight, we will eventually win.
So just as the Texas bill was weaseled into law, so goes H 3114. But that is not the end of the fight. It is a battle that has energized those of us who truly value life and freedom, and we will not let it go so easily.
As the mad Christians in our nation fight to preserve their right to control the bodies of women, I wonder why it is that we have been -- for decades -- victimized by this plague of anti-democratic, anti-freedom, anti-privacy, anti-women wingnuts. As those in the LGBT community gain freedom and acceptance, as African Americans insist that their rights are respected by law officers, women continue to have their rights violated and their privacy -- and bodies -- invaded. Some of the most liberal of our lawmakers deem it success when they reach a compromise that only violates some women.
How can this be, when we are fifty percent of the American people? How can this be when most of us of reproductive age use birth control, many of us have had abortions, and most of us believe that women have the right to make those decisions privately?
At the heart of this battle for reproductive rights is the right to privacy. Whether or not women should use contraception or have an abortion is so incredibly personal. But it has become the center of public debate because at its core it has to do with sex. This debate is not about safety or even about life. Pure and simple, this is about forcing women who have sex to bear the consequences. And the vitriol is so intense that those at the far radical religious right claim that even a married woman must literally carry the burden of the act of sex. The flights of fancy the anti-abortion brigade have taken to pretend this is about the value of life can easily be discounted by their near-unanimous opposition to gun control, universal health care and nutrition programs.
Why, then, are our forces so much weaker, our anger so readily ignored, our supporters so much more inclined to compromise our rights away?
Why are we not so enraged that we can't be ignored?
For one thing, we are women. I truly hate to say this, but we have been raised to believe that we should sacrifice for the common good, we should be willing to compromise, even walk away from a fight.
And we have accepted that abortion is a bad thing, to the point where our staunchest defenders are willing to make convoluted arguments about how birth control isn't always used to prevent pregnancies. We chase around the bizarre false scientific claims, arguing about what a fetus is capable of doing and feeling rather than merely insisting that what is inside of a woman's body is her own business, her own life, and it cannot be made into a separate life with separate rights in any way, shape or form.
We can look to movies and television for a sense of social progress. It wasn't that long ago that I was pleasantly surprised to see a couple of mixed race portrayed without it being a part of the plot. The same thing has happened with gay couples. They no longer need to be making a statement about who they are -- they just are.
But when have you ever seen a movie or television program where a character just gets an abortion? Damn, it happens in real life, why doesn't it ever happen in fiction? Until it becomes just something that happens, we are likely going to be treating it like a complicated moral dilemma, perpetuating the guilt and shame we have been told we should feel at having to deal with possible pregnancy. And passing it on to our daughters.
On the bright side, we can go to the fringes and find Amy Schumer, who I saw during a televised stand-up performance outright make a joke about getting an abortion. I did a double-take, admittedly a little horrified, and then feeling incredibly free. I was in the generation that was liberated by George Carlin's "7 Dirty Words" comedy routine. And yet, in 2012, we watched, stunned, as a Michigan representative was barred from debate after saying the word "vagina" on the House floor.
We certainly need to change the way we talk about our bodies and about abortion. But I don't think that that is the main reason we continue to struggle with winning back our freedom.
Abortion is a temporary condition. This makes it essentially different than sexual orientation or racial heritage. And, despite the crazy talk by the right wing, nobody wants to have an abortion, any more than a person would want to have a tooth extracted. Pregnancy is a condition that has a beginning and an end. We may look forward to or dread being pregnant, we may delight in our pregnancy or it may make us ill. But it is still not our identity. So when we decide to have an abortion, that too happens and becomes the past. If we have not been burdened by the taint of the abortion mythology, we are able to get on with our lives, as with any other medical process.
So when we won the right to reproductive privacy, we got on with our lives, naively assuming the courts had spoken and it was now law. We didn't look back, and our daughters did not grow up with the fear and dread of an unwanted pregnancy.
And now we must go back to assuming that we are losing that right.
And we don't want to either lose it, or have to fight for it.
That, I believe, is the essence of why we are losing the abortion war.
