POLITICS: Is this the post-Roe era women imagined?
By: Heather Rumsey
Living without Roe v. Wade was once something I could never imagine. But in the last three years, I've come to fear the possibility of this happening.
I grew up with a mother who was strongly pro-choice, who always taught me how to take preventative measures and made me feel like abortion was a safe back-up option.
When I was 24, I realized the pro-choice attitude my mother raised me with was at odds with a good portion of America. My wake up call came in 2019 when Alabama signed a law banning abortion at any stage of pregnancy, including if the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.
That same year, Missouri signed a similar law, banning abortion after 8 weeks in all cases. Other states, including Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina and Ohio, introduced the “fetal heartbeat law,” banning abortion once a heartbeat was detected. While these laws were met with significant pushback and legal delays, it was clear to me, for the first time, that my right to abortion was under attack.
The social and economic comfort of my life is a result of growing up in a post-Roe era, with a policy my mother always supported and taught me about. My education, the absence of marriage, and the choice I’ve made as a 28 year old woman to never have children, depend on my right to choose to have an abortion. Attempts to overturn Roe v Wade are far from over, in fact, they are just beginning in ways my generation has never experienced before.
I know a little about how the previous generation suffered from my mother. She’s strongly pro-choice because of some of her experiences.
My mom got pregnant the first time she and my dad had sex. That was in 1983. They were 22 years old, were working low-wage jobs, and hardly knew each other at all.
Neither of them were in a position, personally or financially, to raise a child. My mom decided to have an abortion in order to build the economic and social life she wanted. “I was afraid and young and on my own. I didn’t agree with having a baby, and I didn’t know your dad, I had no clue who he was,” she told me.
The procedure was a deeply emotional experience for her. “The hardest part was the minutes lying on the table before it happened. I was easily consumed with guilt. And all I could grab onto was knowing, that in no way, was I ready to have a baby.”
My mom told me the emotional aftermath she experienced after the abortion was largely disregarded by friends, family, and people at work. She felt she couldn't grieve over the process of it.
She went back to work the next day, and never talked about what happened. “The guilt was something I carried with me for some time after, but I knew there was no space for it, and it was a small compensation for building the life I wanted.”
After my mom and I talked about her experience with abortion, I understood the vital importance of abortion access for women. And that I ignorantly assumed it would always be there. I even considered that I wouldn't be here if my mom didn't make the decision to have one.
Even though she had an abortion 20 years after Roe, there were still biases she had to face. Yes, it was legal to have an abortion, but there were social and political forces, cemented during the pre-Roe era, that made the operation feel taboo.
This is happening today as states divide themselves into pro-life and pro-choice. That pre-Roe attitude and bias is infiltrating our politics and weakening the constitutional protection of abortion.
My life as a woman would drastically change for the worst if we lost Roe. I’d feel reversed back in time as a woman positioned in society by motherhood. The choices I’ve made, that define who I am, would be undermined, and I’d feel weakened by my womanhood, angry with it even.
The pre-Roe biases are still upon us, and I wonder if we ever fully escaped them in the first place.
My generation will experience, for the first time, an attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade. On December 1, the court will hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Women’s Health Organization, a case that will rule on the constitutional right of abortion. With the court's conservative majority, I fear I might have to rationalize the unthinkable.
I never thought, in my time, that the possibility of abortion being banned entirely could come true. But here it is happening.