I’m Here, Heartbroken and Determined….

Add your “I’m Here” in the comment section

I’m Here. After every hard day…a new morning.

We cannot begin to know now how many women’s lives will be lost and limited. This is a dark day for women (particularly poor women and women of color) and for justice and true compassion.

When I was in Jr. High School there was a girl in my class who lived in a poorer section of town. She was a bright, lovely girl who liked to read. She liked the Jackson Five and was on the track team. She became pregnant at 13 years old. She would not say who the father was, but her own father was suspected. Her name was Sylvie. Not Sylvia. She was still very much a young girl and so and everyone still called her Sylvie. This was pre-Roe V Wade. She expelled from Jr. High School. That was what done at that time. I don’t know what happened to her. But as far as I ever heard, she never returned to school. The limits of her life closed in on her and I seriously doubt if at that time they ever opened again for her or her child.

Yesterday a super majority of radically conservative (appointed not elected) lifetime judges struck down a 50 year law that protected a woman’s right to make the most intimate and important choices of her life. It is beyond ugly that one of these judges was credibly accused of attempted rape and another credibly accused of work place harassment of women. Yet, both were still confirmed to the highest court in the land, and led the way to laws that in many states will once again force a 13 year old girl who has suffered rape or incest to bear their own sibling or a rapist’s child to term.

How many Sylvies will have their lives forever changed, limited or lost.

A women’s reproductive rights are a complex series of questions and issues of personal conscience. But it is an issue of personal conscience that women are personally and spiritually fully able to make for themselves without government intervention.

The reality of the loss of Roe V Wade is that it will not stop abortion, money will always get you an abortion somewhere somehow. It will be poor women, women of color and women who are still actually children themselves, that will be disproportionally forced to suffer the ramifications of this extreme limiting of women’s rights.

I weep for all the young women who will have to carry their own sibling or a rapist’s child to term. I weep for the women who’s lives will be cut short (and for their spouses, children, family and friends who will lose them) when life saving procedures are denied. I weep for the fact that so many people have been taught to believe in a god that would value access to military style weapons more than the value of women and women’s lives.

I will continue to keep working for justice for women. I will continue to work to preserve the right of every woman to determine her own life’s course, to finish school, to have meaningful work, to simply live.

Tomorrow i roll up my sleeves. But today I weep and feel how dire yesterday’s SCOTUS decision will be for women everywhere, but particularly for poor women and women of color.

You are not alone as you grieve this decision.

They would like for you to feel alone, to feel like you’re a crazy woman, an uppity woman, an immoral woman, a nasty woman. But we are strong, loving and determined to halt this march backward in time.

If you are heart broken, I’m with you. If you are determined, I’m with you. Let us hold one another today in solidarity and support

Please share and please put in the comment section “I’m Here” to let others know you care, you are heartbroken, and you are determined.

We need to hear men speak clearly as women…”I’m Here.”

Photo by Fionn Claydon on Unsplash