Unpublished, but not Unsent v8

Photo depicts staffers and co-founders of Ms. Magazine, including Gloria Steinem

Dear Editor,

Ruth Bader Ginsberg said this in 1993:

“The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman's life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. When the government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a full adult human responsible for her own choices.”

fox news launched in 1996.

The reason RBG has always been important to me is because she framed the issue of abortion as it relates to the freedom and rights of the MOTHER. By 2005, when I was in grad school, the issue had already been hijacked by the conservative, religious right-wing, who manipulated the conversation around abortion to frame it in relation to the freedom and rights of the “unborn.” At the time I could feel the backslide, I knew feminism was loosing its foothold, I just didn’t know what to do about it.

The fall of Roe v. Wade evidences the decline of feminism; we have got to turn that decline around. Now that we’ve been debilitated back to 1973, we have got to wrest back that frame. We are not our mothers, or our grandmothers. We cannot be forced to live like they did, simply too much time has passed.

Unpublished, but not Unsent v7

Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash

Dear Editor,

I have been thinking a lot about blame (which surprisingly is *not* one of the stages of grief). I don’t want to hear one more person lay the fall of Roe v. Wade at the feet of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I blame trump voters but at least there’s a through line in what they believe - first, they believe him, second, they believe fox news, and third they believe in an invisible, extra-terrestrial higher power called god, and it’s now the decrees of that belief that determine what living, breathing women can do with their bodies (and this coming from someone [me] who sometimes go to church:)!

But I also blame the rest of us and am struggling to find the through line there. How is this our fault? The simplest answer I can come up with is that we haven’t been political enough, because it’s too painful and too uncomfortable be political. I hate talking about politics in any situation that may cause even the slightest distress, especially with people who aren’t as “progressive” as I believe myself to be.

But as of now our reality is being legally defined by people who believe that bringing every pregnancy to term is what is best for the physical and emotional well-being of ALL women. By people who believe adopting out an “unwanted” child to strangers will be less painful for a new mother than terminating the pregnancy would have been. It’s our reality that is being legally redefined and if we don’t start talking about - and keep talking about - why we demand the right to abortion than that reality could disappear all together. Without Roe vs. Wade you really are going to need to become involved in politics at the local level and educate yourself about pro-choice candidates and elect them, which might sound overwhelming, but if we don’t do it now then our reality will literally disappear. How depressing.

Unpublished, but not Unsent v6

Photo of notorious friends Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia

Dear Editor,

For some of us, the 2016 election ushered in the post-compromise era. As an idealistic, former Cultural Awareness club member in high school, this was a precarious position to be in. I was taught to both respect, and have, an open mind. "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" and all that. My initial reaction, when criticized for not having an open mind with regards to Republican policies, is to fall back on the obvious: I am a single issue voter, as I have made clear via social media. Reproductive justice and abortion rights are what I care most about; I will vote for any Democrat who supports the pro-choice movement, no matter what else (I’m ashamed to admit) s/he has done. But this got me thinking: how many Republican voters are single issue voters too, and simply supported trump in the same vein? The reason I asked myself this was because the 2020 Democratic presidential victory has given me the energy to begin to look at compromise as once again possible. If we are all single issue voters at heart, how can we compromise if those issues are in conflict?

One thought I had was to connect over the issues we do agree on, so I did an online search for pro-choice Republican groups. DM me if you know of any! I didn’t have much luck finding one; the Republican Majority for Choice doesn’t seem very active.

My next idea was to force myself to expand beyond my single issue. If I could do it, maybe some Republican could do it, too, and we could finally connect over that issue. Holding myself accountable to my yearning “to be more than an ally, but an accomplice” with the Black Lives Matter movement, I volunteered with Chicago Cares to be trained to “coach” [I am not a fan of this word] local job-seekers at the North Lawndale Employment Network to develop and practice job-seeking skills. When asked about the meaning of implicit bias, I said it was when you didn’t see the same potential in, for example, a Black child (like Barack Obama) playing basketball as you do a white child (like Alexander Pichushki) playing chess, when neither child is known to you. That really got me thinking, but more on that later. If a radical, pro-choice militant like myself is able to broaden her activism to encompass additional (albeit social justice) issues, maybe your everyday Republican can, too? So, if you’re, say, a fiscal conservative, we won’t be able to compromise about the economic viability of that, but perhaps we can connect around a shared disgust for a former president recorded saying:

“I did try and fuck her. She was married…I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn’t get there…When you’re a star, they let you do it…Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”

Then again, perhaps not:(