The End of Roe v. Wade
On Saturday morning I woke up to the news that Roe v. Wade was overturned. It was expected, of course, but still felt like a punch in the guts. The inevitable demise of women’s bodily autonomy was one of the reasons we started looking to move out of the US. (And let’s not get started on guns which were another big topic in the news this week.)
I went back and looked at what I wrote about this the night of November 8, 2016 when it looked like Trump might actually win the presidency. This very issue - abortion access - was already on my mind.
“Logically, I knew I wasn’t in any physical danger. I’m an upper-middle class white woman with a bachelor’s degree. I have access to health insurance. My children were one and three. I most likely wasn’t going to be in the position of needing an abortion ever.
I was in no one’s crosshairs, and yet I still had a physical reaction to the election. I could only imagine what my transgender brother was going through at this moment. His world, while always tenuous, was going to be turned upside down. And he was just one of millions who had a legitimate reason to be afraid – very afraid – for what this administration would do.”
Later, when we were in New Zealand and wondering whether or not to stay, we woke up to the news of Justice Kennedy retiring. Truth be told, this was the moment when we decided not to go back to the US. This is what I wrote down about that day, which seems all to prophetic now:
“Justice Kennedy announced his retirement, giving Trump another Supreme Court seat to fill with an undoubtedly conservative judge. Kennedy, the swing vote that often saved progressive social issues, was a surprise, a terrible, terrible surprise. Jon and I weren’t quite sure how to process this development. We didn’t talk about it for a few days, but I know he was thinking about it just as much as I was. A new justice would cement a conservative hold on the court for what? Another thirty years? Forty? How many rights that we took for granted would be denied our children? In particular, I was worried about Meadow. I wanted her to have access to birth control. I wanted to make sure she could get access to truthful information if she even felt compelled to go to a clinic without me. I hoped she would never have to do that, but one never knows. I stewed in my thoughts, trying to process what this meant to me.”
New Zealand isn’t perfect in the quest for women’s bodily autonomy. A good overview of the history of abortion law in New Zealand is available here, but abortion was just legalized in 2020. Even before that there were ways to safely get them with the approval of two certifying individuals who would say there was serious danger to the woman. This was the sort of thing where if you knew the right people to go to, you could get those certifications. In some ways it was akin to all of the hoops many women in the US had to go through to get an abortion. It made it more difficult, but not impossible. There is the added benefit that contraception is extremely easy to get here - even for people under 16 - and is free or extremely inexpensive for under 22s.
This is one of those moments where I’m glad I’ve moved to a place where things are progressing in the direction I support, not regressing on important social issues. My heart is heavy for all of the people affected by the conservative Supreme Court decisions that unfortunately will continue for quite some time. I wish I had been wrong about these types of decision being the outcome of the 2016 election.
