Like I needed one. I didn’t. I have been firmly committed to the feeling and belief that Texas and I are not a good fit. Lots of reasons. I always feel like I need to give Austin a pass though, like it is somehow being held hostage by the rest of the state. Maybe we should take up a collection to try and get it out of there...
When I met my ex-husband who was in the Navy back in 2002, I told him that I would go anywhere in the world with him...except Texas. Of course, he moved there as soon as we separated. I thank him because now I can have the “All my exes live in Texas” as a theme song...well, not really, just one lives there...as far as I know. But I only have the one ex-husband so...theme song it is.
I have long disliked the majority politics, big hair and overt friendliness that makes me feel like I am really disliked but no one will ever tell me. As a smallish person, I have long disliked that “everything is bigger in Texas”. That does not provide me comfort, I am actually quite a fan of smaller.
But this last week really sealed the deal. The Supreme Court’s ridiculous and sinister shadow ruling effectively banning all abortions in the state makes me convinced that I never need step foot in the state again.
I am pro-woman. I stand for the fading idea that all of us women should have agency over our bodies to include whether or not we want to be pregnant. I am against any law that restricts our ability to choose what, when and how we deal with our bodies. I don’t want to have any ability to make you stay pregnant if you don’t want to, anymore than I want to have the ability to terminate your pregnancy over your objection. I do not want to be the arbiter over you and your body ever. But more than that, I do not want men to ever have that ability.
I like men. I have long resolved my resentments toward that gender. But I stand firm on the ground that I do not want any man to ever have any say so over our bodies. They are ours. And the Texas ruling effectively has now allowed men to decide what we can and cannot do with our bodies. And I am stridently opposed.
We just got the vote 100 years ago. Meaning that for the last 100 years we women have been fighting to be treated as equal human beings. To own property, vote for our governing bodies, rent a place to live, make an equal wage. We have fought for every single liberty women have today. None of them were given to us. We had to fight. Every fucking time. And we fought men because they are the ones that long held us down.
And now the Texas legislature supported in the bizarre decision by the US Supreme Court has taken us back 100 years. Telling women in the state of Texas that you are no longer in charge of your own body. What happens to it, has been decided by men, men in power, men who do not know you and your life and your circumstances. The women of Texas have been subjugated in a most fundamental way right in front of our eyes. With no formal opinion, for a 5 to 4 vote. We don’t have juris prudence to back it up. We don’t have a formal decision. We just have five of the nine deciding that women in the state of Texas can no longer have agency over their bodies.
Can you imagine a mostly female dominated legislature deciding that men cannot have vasectomies? Can you ever in a million years see that happening? What would men do? We don’t know because MEN WOULD NEVER FUCKING LET THAT HAPPEN! And we shouldn’t either.
I feel absolutely sick for the women in Texas. They have lost agency over the most fundamental thing in this world, their own body. And the Supreme Court just signed off on it, in the most shady and non-justicey sort of way. I don’t feel reverence for the highest court in our land, I feel disgust. When you remove decision making from its process, when you blind the masses from understanding your reasoning, you cause the entire system to be meaningless. Democracy has fallen. First the highest office in the land, now the highest court. And the legislature has been gone for years.
They upheld the law because they can. The men can! My sisters we are heading for dangerous times where we are not equal, where we are play toys for men who see us as things to dispose of, control, mistreat and disrespect. This is not all men, of course. But a war was declared, please do not let it be silent. We have to fight to keep our bodies safe from the interference and control of men. We have to ban together with our like minded brothers who want to walk along side us, supported by our strength, our unity and our femaleness. We have to help the women who are living now behind enemy lines. We have to help them fight to not allow any man anywhere to tell them what they can and can’t do with their bodies.
I am terrified. I am worried. I am outraged. I am so deeply scared as to where we are headed as a nation. I fear that the future will be one where women willingly return to our place at men’s feet. Raising their children, not ours. Cleaning and serving men’s lives, while ours waste away. If we do not have power over our own bodies, what power do we really have? A woman’s right to choose has just been taken away in Texas. Not just her right to terminate her pregnancy, it has taken away her right to decide without the interference of the state. Choice means that there is more than one option. Now there is just one...if you find yourself pregnant and in Texas, you have only one choice regardless of your circumstances, your feelings and your beliefs. You are the handmaiden, subjugated again.
I am just going to let that sink in...and stay the hell away from Texas.
