Post-election: Musing in a Sanctuary State

One week, post election and I’m still here. Choice was defended in Illinois. We are still safe on our deserted island of reproductive choice in middle-America.

Overall, the mood is calm. The usual political banter while reaching over to grab a container of the coveted cotton-candy grapes at Trader Joe’s was absent. Everyone was just waiting to exhale.

As I was walking home, an older White lady stopped me: “Hey, I saw you speak at the abortion rally a few weeks ago! You must feel great with the election and all!”

Excited was probably not the appropriate adjective. Chicagoland is once again —of no surprise to anyone—safe. Despite the usual issues of living in a major metro area like, Chicago, we were at least, safe from the womb-trolling fetus-philes, who want us to breed like Persian show cats! We even have snacks, legal cannabis, and lake front views.

How do I feel? I am exhausted, dystopian, & irritated.

As I sit looking out the bay window of my brownstone, my thoughts shift to a Tweet by Nigerian Professor Uja Anya about Georgia GOP Senate Candidate, formal athlete and Heisman Trophy winner, Herschel Walker,

“Herschel Walker can perform daily abortions at his kitchen table and beat ten wives and fifteen babymamas in the Piggly Wiggly parking lot. He will not lose a single [GOP] vote as long as he keeps serving his purpose [sic] of putting a Black face on White Supremacy.”

Currently, despite Walker’s sketchy dossier, following the November 8th election results in Georgia, he was 1.5% away from flipping the US Senate away from current US Senator, Raphael Warnock. The two are now in a run-off.

That about sums it up. Choice in Illinois is cool. So are a few others like Michigan & Kansas. Yet, other parts of the country is like a dumpster fire.

It all felt like a pyrrhic victory, of sorts.

The 1973 Supreme Court ruling, Roe versus Wade, would later become the rallying cry for women, girls, families and birthing people who wanted safe, legal abortion access. As a solid Gen Xer, —who has, in the past made an abortion decision—I have never known of a time, when abortion was not legal in the United States. Those facing an unintended, non-viable pregnancy FOR WHAT EVER REASON, knew that safe, and legal abortion was a constitutional right, upheld by the states to offer safe & legal access to abortion health care. In the wake of the Dobb Brief, it was clear, the Supreme Court of the United States was no long our safety net. In lockstep, state after state began to enact, “Trigger Laws”, which were codified, without a sunset clause—to immediately go into effect, in the event Roe was overturned by the High Court.

Six-week bans in Georgia, personhood bills in Texas & Kentucky were the tip of the iceberg as to what was to come. In state after state, activists, former abortion patients, physicians, and yes even clergy gave testimony against the restrictive bills. Former abortion recipients poured out their most personal life events onto statehouse steps and committee rooms, to no avail . Former Georgia Senator (and 2022 Democratic candidate for Georgia Attorney General), Jen Jordan, spoke in detail about her own personal experience with multiple abortions due to fetal non-viability, while her fellow colleagues made phone calls, texted, checked their social media, left the chamber or simply not cared.

In Ohio, a 10 year old girl, who was impregnated due to incest, had to cross state lines to Indiana, to have an abortion, due to Ohio’s restrictive abortion law. As a response, National Right to Life General Counsel and staunch antiabortion proponent, Jim Bopp, stated regarding his preference of the girl or other in her position, “she would have had the baby, and as many women who have had babies as a result of rape, we would hope that she would understand the reason and ultimately the benefit of having the child…”

What?

First, a 10 year old is NOT a woman…SHE. IS. A. CHILD! Second, this girl, who is elementary school-aged, would not even be allowed to receive comprehensive sex education, according to NRL’s statement on sex education, yet, is in someway mature enough to endure a pregnancy and delivery? Third, there are volumes of pediatric research, which conclude breast development & menstruation are not indicative of the ability to have a viable pregnancy; and further, that pregnancy before the 4th tanner-stage of development (17+) has a higher risk of complication, miscarriage, and maternal death. Remember, this is the same group who advocates for repositioning ectopic pregnancies, and “abortion pill reversal”

Yet, who cares? It’s only science. Who needs science?

So, I’m stuck, on how a grown man, with a law school education, could say that he would make a 10 year old child endure an unintended pregnancy due to incest; to be further traumatized by labor, & delivery, in a country where adolescent & minority births have the highest risk of complications, and death? So, caring about the “life” of a non-viable fetus trumps that of a living, breathing, child?

So much for being pro-life.

Physicians from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists spoke about misconception that the “cardiac function” —often used by antichoice groups as “a heart beat”—was not a clinical indication of viability. Viability, became the linchpin of the choice movement. And low and behold, the antichoice camp simply moved the goalpost. Anti-choice arguments became less and less about science, and more about ideology.

Abortion rights have been a lightening rod for those more conservative. Not because the conservatives necessarily hate abortion—what’s up Herschel? How’s is going Todd?— yet because abortion polarizes the electorate, feeds into the eugenics fear led by White nationalism, the control of toxic masculinity, the pain of those who are infertile, the Black nationalist troupe of Black extermination—because AWL the problems in the Black community are caused by Margaret Sangler, not poverty, intimate partner violence, systemic racism, under performing schools, school-to-prison pipeline, crime, sexual violence, et al., but Planned Parenthood— of course the million-dollar newborn infant adoption industry, and anyone who needed a platform to perch upon, to tap-dancing for some votes.

A lot of people, it appears have a vested interest in keeping birthing people pregnant, yet not really caring about the quality of life of those who go through pregnancy, nor the babies born from these pregnancies. That people can hop up on a soapbox and pontificate about “life” when Black & minority mothers/birthing people are more like to die due to obstetric and clinical racism, than abortion, is infuriating. When we have the most restrictive abortion laws, IN STATES WITH THE HIGHEST MATERNAL MORTALITY (sup Alabama & Georgia), it is political negligence.

Conversely, these same politicians, PACs and groups who are prepared to throw themselves into a political vortex, and serve as the voice for the “unborn” have historically voted and lobbied against Medicaid expansion , doula services, lactation coverage, and maternity & postpartum health coverage. Furthermore, once born, these same groups have systemically slashed free-and reduced lunch programs (and feel justified in denying meals, and forcing kids to eat “the poor lunch” when their lunch accounts exceed a certain amount, because THEIR PARENTS CAN’T AFFORD IT), slashed federal and state funded early childcare and other social programs, which will support a growing population. Instead, these groups push for school vouchers, spent millions of dollars lobbying for shorter revocation periods for newborn adoption & evidence-adversed abstinence-only health education, and against programs which reduce unintended pregnancies such as school-based health centers, and contraception access. Most recently, National Right to Life began to lay the groundwork of chipping away at access to hormonal contraception, under the guise of being an abortifacent. Despite the fact that these claims are loosely based on the same science, that they reject.

Ok. This all makes perfect sense.