The Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022. The decision, most of which was leaked in May 2022, was 6 to 3. Among the dissenting justices were Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.
At this time, there is nothing more important than taking care of yourself. People are scared. Live your life with the awareness of what is going on and actively participate in ways that make you feel empowered.
For example, I got an IUD (Intrauterine Device) implanted shortly after the overturn of Roe v. Wade. This was the first choice I made about my own reproductive health entirely on my own. I would tell any person with the capacity and capability to make these choices to be proactive. I was shocked at how empowered I felt.
Make informed choices and educate yourself on the laws of your state. Educate yourself not only on the attacks on abortion rights in the United States but on the attacks on women’s rights in other countries, such as Iran.
The overturn of Roe v. Wade was felt worldwide. As the United States is a leader on the world stage, activists are concerned that the overturned ruling “could fuel anti-abortion groups, reversing hard-fought gains or stifling efforts to expand abortion rights across the world.”
It’s also important to be aware of the argument over the use of gender-neutral language among some abortion rights supporters. New York Times columnist Pamela Paul argued in her op-ed “The Far Right and Far Left Agree on One Thing: Women Don’t Count” that the shift in language is “erasing cisgender women.” My response to that argument is that people shouldn’t be so attached to the label “women.” According to Gillian Branstetter, a communications strategist at the ACLU, “It’s a panic that is very absent from reality and attempts to position a growing, changing society as a threat.” Cisgendered women are not the only group of people that get abortions.
According to a 2020 study by Planned Parenthood and the Guttmacher Institute, “of the roughly 862,00 abortions performed in the U.S. in 2017, 462 to 530 of them were conducted on trans or nonbinary people.” However, an NBC article claims that “given the growing proportion of Americans who identify as trans or nonbinary, experts believe the number could be higher.”
I do not pretend to be an expert on gender inclusivity, but as a cisgender woman, it feels wrong to exclude anyone from the abortion rights movement. There has been so much of that type of exclusion throughout history, with marginalized groups constantly excluding other marginalized groups in activist movements. For example, white women excluded women of color from the feminist movement and the fight for women’s suffrage in the nineteenth century, and this is only one example.
As Mini Timmaraju, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, says, “Women have the right to be angry, but we’ve got to be focused on the true villain here. It’s not the trans community or nonbinary folks that are taking away your rights. It’s the extremist Republican elected officials.”
I feel a strong tether to the label “woman.” However, if I ever came to a new understanding of my gender in the future and identified as non-binary, I would hope that I would be treated with respect among cis-gendered women and in the medical community. I know that right now, that would not be the case.
I don’t want history to remember this era as another time when people fighting for their rights have excluded another group of people also fighting for their rights. At some point, we have to learn that we are all fighting for the same thing.
Something to be aware of, according to a Forbes article titled “100 Days Since Roe V. Wade Was Overturned: The 11 Biggest Consequences,” is that “more state legislatures will go into session in 2023 and could pass additional bans or new restrictions, such as ones targeting people’s ability to get abortions out of state.” The midterm elections will also heavily impact what abortion rights will look like.
If no one has told you all of this, you’re not a bad feminist. You’re also not a bad feminist if you need to put down the phone or take a break from the constant influx of news. You’re not a bad feminist if you can’t go to marches or donate money. And you’re not a bad feminist if you don’t identify with the label “feminist.”
We are all grieving and we are all fighting. What we need to do is uplift and support one another. There is hope in the Supreme Court Justices’ dissent. There is hope in all of us.
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