I didn’t want to write a heavy piece about reproduction and female caregiving this Mother’s Day. I didn’t really want to sit down and dig deep into the fear, anger, shame and helplessness that I’m feeling for those of us with uteruses in this country right now. But at this particular moment, I can think of nothing else.
I used to write 1-2 newspaper editorials every week (plus a column every so often) and when I sat down to write, I tried to ask myself, What do people need to know? What should they understand? What am I advocating for or against? What should my readers do or not do? My editorials didn’t always answer these questions, but the questions still helped me think about how to use my 425 words most effectively. So I asked them anyway.
And I am asking myself the same thing, right now, but I am pretty sure that you know that the end of Roe will be disastrous for women, mothers, children, families, and providers. I think you understand what a pre-Roe America was like. If you weren’t there, you’ve heard the stories. And I don’t think you have to guess, at this point, what I’m advocating for or against. So the question is: What do we do?
This question has been on my mind all week, but other thoughts keep crowding over it, drowning it out. On Monday night as I stared at my phone, reading the words “Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights,” all I could think about was my 10-year-old going into school the next day. I thought about how this country expected that little girl to stand up and put her hand over her heart and stare at the American flag and pledge allegiance to a country that just told her it is willing to put her life at risk if she becomes pregnant.
I have been reading, all week, the stories of people for whom abortion was life-saving medicine, a life-changing opportunity, or just the right choice. I have been thinking about the people I love whose abortions were vital to their health, their futures, and their families. But mostly, I have been thinking about my 10-year-old. I have been thinking about her friends and classmates who are starting their periods, who are buying their first bras, who are just now peeking over the horizon of adolescence.
What are we to tell these kids about what they are about to face? How are we supposed to guide them safely in a country that has told us, again and again, that the safety of female bodies is not its priority? Is it possible to give our kids a healthy, positive attitude about sex and intimacy when the risks of having a functional uterus continue to mount? What do we do?
I am asking these questions from a place of tremendous privilege. My family is able to access medical treatment and birth control. We live in a state that has taken at least some steps to safeguard this care for its citizens. I am white and college-educated, which makes it less likely that I, or my child, will experience the kinds of negative maternal health outcomes that people of color face.
But this privilege is not absolute, nor does it make me any less upset by the erosion of what I had stupidly, foolishly, naively thought was something I could count on. For some stupid reason, I thought I could count on raising my kid in a time and a place when she would have the same opportunities and choices that I did. That the things our moms and grandmas fought for would still be around for her to benefit from them.
I don’t know why I thought this. It’s the naivete of privilege, I suppose. It’s the intoxicating illusion of progress — the utterly false but irresistible idea that these milestone court cases are some sign that things are going to stay that way, that we have left the past behind and stepped into a new, bright, shiny future.
This, of course, is not the way it works. It never has been and it never will be. On some level, I know this. But I had also hoped to be able to hold on to some of the things that the generations before me had secured.
This Mother’s Day, I want nothing more than to celebrate motherhood and to be celebrated, but we are living in a country that does not celebrate motherhood and mothers.
The other thing that keeps ricocheting around my brain is the phrase, “this is what conservatives have been working toward for decades.” It forces me to ask myself: what have I been working toward for decades? Clearly, not enough. What have I, personally, done to try to stave off this “seismic shift in US politics”? Clearly, not enough.
It is easy to make excuses. It is easy for me to talk about being low on money or energy; to say that it seems too hard to attend rallies or knock on doors or run for office or make more donations. It’s easy to say that I’m doing what I can. But it’s also not true.
This Mother’s Day, I want nothing more than to celebrate motherhood and to be celebrated, but we are living in a country that does not celebrate motherhood and mothers. More and more, I feel that this nation that requests our children’s allegiance is openly hostile to everything that mothers are and do. And what I feel toward the United States is not allegiance, but rage.
So, what do we do? We know what to do, sadly, because generations of mothers and women and allies before us have had to do it. We fight, first of all. But also, we plan. We whisper. We make safety for each other where we can. And we tell our children, not about some new, bright, shiny future, but about the world that is — and the fight that we are still very much in. It is not the gift any of us would wish to give them. But it is one of the most important legacies we can offer.
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