Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
Memory
A while ago I decided I’d said my last word about abortion.
That’s not so easy after the torching of Roe v. Wade and countless stories about women being put at risk by crazy, ancient anti-abortion laws. But still, I turned my back on all of it. I’ve done my revelations and that is that.
Last night, I walked past the TV on my way to the kitchen. The woman in Texas who is twenty weeks pregnant with a fetus sure to die within minutes of birth was answering a reporter’s questions. How did she feel about the Texas courts saying she wasn’t eligible for an abortion?
How did she feel?
I hate this, I thought. I hate this with all my heart. That she should have to explain herself to anyone. Ask for permission. Make a case for her own survival.
If there was a way to stand with her, just line up on the street in front of her house, create a barricade for her, link arms with all the old women who broke the law when there was no choice, drape a shield of love and compassion over her, I would do that.
In a minute.
It’s never so long ago that you forget.
5 Comments on “Memory”
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
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“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
Instead of asking her how she feels, I’d like the media to ask the ones who did it why. Why do you not want a woman to control her own body. And keep asking until they explain it.
Isn’t this crazy? So now she has to face the extra expense and stress of traveling somewhere else for care.
Thank you.
yes.
Living in WA, a state that fully backs abortion based on a woman’s right to choose, I hope she travels here. She will be taken care of professionally, with care and understanding and not made to feel any way except how she feels without question. I would like to think she and her family at some point will leave Texas for good.