Why It’s Normal to Feel Devastated About Roe v Wade
That emotion you’re feeling is grief.
On Friday, June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) overturned Roe v. Wade, the case that legalized abortion nationwide, in a 6–3 decision. The conservative supermajority voted in solidarity to do so, despite all of them having said that Roe is settled case-law when being confirmed.
This is the latest in the right’s campaign of regressive hatred, a campaign they’ve been waging since at least 2008 when Mitch McConnell publicly stated that they would work to make Obama a one-term president. They have been working tirelessly since then, stacking statehouses and Gerrymandering every state that they can get their grubby mitts on into oblivion to ensure that they will always have power despite their shrinking relevance in public opinion.
They stonewalled Obama’s Supreme Court pick for almost a year in the hopes that a Republican would win the presidency, and when that happened they rammed through three justices in four years. This includes Amy Coney Barrett, who was pushed through over a handful of months before the 2020 election, an egregious move from a party without any ethics or morals.
This has been their endgame: pack SCOTUS with conservatives, undo Roe and a bunch of other rulings that enabled us to have things like same-sex marriage, interracial marriage, contraception, and pretty much any kind of bodily autonomy for anyone who isn’t a straight cis white guy. They are literally trying to force us into a Handmaid’s Tale scenario, where the religious fundamentalists have all the power and America is a fascist theocracy.
So, so many people are emotionally devastated by this egregious stripping of human rights and bodily autonomy from the women in America, and rightfully so. Your rights have been violated by a bunch of shitty old white guys who facilitated this in the name of a religion that has been losing relevance for a while now, all in the name of so-called love.
All of us have lost something this week, and while some people are celebrating this loss, many of us are grieving. Grief is, in fact, the proper word here, for something significant and fundamental was lost on Friday, and when we lose something important to us, we grieve that loss.
Grief is a funny thing: it doesn’t necessarily matter what we lose, we can feel grief about all manner of things. It could be anything from a person we love to a physical object that is important to us. If you think that you can only grieve the loss of a person, think again. In this case, it is a fundamental right to bodily autonomy, which is a pretty big thing to lose and something that is absolutely worthy of grief.
So much of the country is grieving SCOTUS overturning Roe that we are sharing a moment of collective trauma over this loss. The thing is, grief manifests in different ways for different people. My partner and I have had a terrible week overall and have been largely numb over everything, and although we are both upset and angry beyond belief, it’s hard to show it.
Quite a few people went out to protest last night, though, including several of my friends. Those people are expressing their grief in the form of anger and frustration, and they are expressing it in a very public way. Many are raging on social media, protesting in the streets, or (as I am) writing breathy articles about this outrageous turn of events. Others are simply trying to hold onto whatever sense of sanity and normalcy they can grab.
There is no “correct” way to grieve — all of those examples I mentioned above are valid ways to express grief. So much of the country is grieving this loss, and that grief is expressing itself in a million different ways. Anger, frustration, sadness, numbness, any number of other emotions, and any combination thereof are being felt throughout America right now.
The thing is, it is tempting to let the grief drag us down into complacency and inaction, but we cannot afford that right now. In a handful of months, we are going to vote in the midterms, and this may be our last chance to take back any semblance of power before the right (ironically) destroys our rights. They will do just about anything to grab power for themselves and ensure that anyone who isn’t a straight cis white man remains a second-class citizen. We have to fight them tooth and nail.
We cannot let people like Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, and the whole cast of alt-right Q-anon nutjobs in power right now continue trampling over democracy and our rights as human beings. If you value yourself, your rights, and anyone who isn’t white, straight, or male in your life, you will do whatever you can to vote those assholes out of office.
We have long been at the point where we cannot simply tolerate this garbage; we must fight back however we can. Whether that means protesting in the streets, donating to political causes, signing petitions, or making your opinions heard to your representatives or online, do it.
Finally, and most importantly, vote. Vote with your feet, with your dollars, and in every election that you can. It doesn’t matter how small the election — the current tactic on the right is to infiltrate school boards and institute their alt-right fascist politics on the students in public schools, which is disgusting. Every vote matters, and every election matters. Vote in all of them.
Educate yourself about the issues and the candidates, and when in doubt, the liberal candidate is almost always the best option. Voting for Republicans and conservatives these days is as good as handing America to the fascists.
Normally, I say something like “vote like your life depends on it because it does.” This is especially true now. Your life, the lives of those you love, and America as a country and as an experiment in democracy is dependent on not letting the right seize power again. Fight them in the voting booth, fight them in the field of public opinion, fight them with your dollars by donating to good causes and buying from progressive businesses, and fight them in any other way you can conceivably think of.
All of our lives depend on us keeping them out of power, so fight not just for your life, but for the lives of your friends and the life of America. Don’t let the fascist right win.
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