I can’t believe it’s 2022 and women, once again, have to take to the streets to affirm their private reproductive freedoms. But that is what is happening right now. This right is threatened and if you believe, as I do, that women’s reproductive choices are private, join the Rally for Reproductive Rights at 1 p.m. on May 14 at the Edwards roundabout. And bring your signs!
As a leaked Supreme Court document shows, the court’s majority of conservative justices are poised to overturn this right.
No. Not again. We will not go back to women and girls being forced to give birth or dying from botched, illegal abortions. As data shows, making abortion illegal does not decrease the number of abortions, it just increases the number of women who die.
And let me tell you, adoption is not the easy and simple solution that the draft opinion by conservative Justice Samuel Alito argues. He makes a familiar and deeply deceptive argument that “modern developments” on “safe-haven” laws that allow parents to relinquish babies without legal repercussions have rendered abortion “unnecessary.” The opinion notes “a woman who puts her newborn up for adoption today has little reason to fear that the baby will not find a suitable home.”
In my personal experience, this argument is almost criminally deceptive. This opinion covers over the fact that often homes can be found for what is called “adoptable” babies, babies that are considered desirable, mostly white and without flaws. But what happens to the others?
I know what I am talking about. My husband and I are the adoptive parents of two special needs kids, discarded by their birth parents. We know what a commitment this is, and few are willing to make it. On any given day, there are nearly 424,000 children in foster care in the U.S. In 2019, over 672,000 children spent time in U.S. foster care.
We adore our adopted children, and we also know full well the tragedy that awaits some of these children who are not considered “adoptable.” The Alito argument is truly offensive. Women’s reproduction is private. I agree with Reverend Raphael Warnock, a senator from Georgia who tweeted, “As a pro-choice pastor, I’ve always believed that a patient’s room is way too small for a woman, her doctor, and the United States government.”
I do not want the government regulating my uterus. That is a staggering overreach. And the hypocrisy is stunning, coming as it does from a lot of the same people who are anti-mask and anti-vaxxer and who scream “My body, my choice.”
You can’t have it both ways.
When it comes to reproduction, it is my body and it is my choice.
Lisa Lewis Edwards