Some thoughts in the wake of Roe vs. Wade being struck down.
Both sides ginned up the debate over the past 50 years or so.
As a result, the conversation collapsed down to a woman’s right to choose. Not a person’s right to access healthcare — to have access to a particular healthcare procedure. A procedure that could save that person’s life.
Due process and a fundamental right to privacy got pushed aside as individualism was put at the center. The fundamental human right to healthcare is questioned.
You want to tell a woman’s story that will mobilize a vote? Talk about a woman going through IVF. Talk about a woman whose fetus isn’t viable and is past the first trimester.
Tell stories that middle class and rich people identify with.
Remember Ryan White? He was a teenager from Indiana who contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion. He was seen as blameless. And his story became a turning point in the fight against AIDS.
That’s the kind of story we need to mobilize the voting class.
The dire statistics that tell the story of women’s (and men’s) futures being negatively affected when they are forced to take a pregnancy to term? Those stories are too easily dismissed. Those stories are met with judgement and scorn. The women in those stories are seen as being (at least partly) to blame.
And with Justice Thomas saying that SCOTUS should reconsider it’s rulings allowing contraception and same-sex marriage, I can’t help but feel that the overturning of Roe vs. Wade is just the beginning of the end of a lot of rights we’ve taken for granted.