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A Nuanced View on Abortion, If There Still Is Such a Thing

The decision to overturn Roe v. Wade will have deep and lasting consequences, including further dividing women who should be working together.

Pro-life women, I see you. I feel you and know that in your heart of hearts you feel you are protecting lives. My own views about abortion definitely shifted when I became a mother. I identify with the desire to protect children, babies, even fetuses and embryos that could eventually, miraculously, be born. 

Together, U.S. women have stood up for, and won, more rights than most other women in the world.

In this protracted period of political division, anger, and violence, what breaks my heart most is to see women pitted against women. Especially women in our generation. Most of us remember when we raised our voices together for access to better jobs, equal pay, and parental leave. Women’s rights are human rights, to quote a woman who, like her or not, has definitely aged boldly. While the U.S. is far from perfect, women have stood up for, and won, more rights than most other women in the world. We did that together. Not all of us marched, but many cheered from the sidelines, and all of us benefited from the outcomes.

I was an aide in the Texas Legislature when a member of the House of Representatives, Sarah Weddington, successfully argued Roe v Wade before the Supreme Court in 1971. Like most of my peers, I was on the pill, my (male) gyno assuring me it was 99 percent effective at preventing pregnancy: the one percent chance I would need an abortion seemed a minimal and distant risk. So I had no real appreciation for the profound consequences of Roe v Wade. I knew Sarah as a politician and a supporter of women staffers, not a feminist icon.

Read More: The Abortion Debate: What Women Our Age Know Better Than Anyone

Everybody Thinks They’re Right

Most people have firm views on the abortion issue, and everybody thinks they’re right. Political tribalism has blinded us to our common humanity, and it’s nearly impossible for either side to empathize with the other. Confirmation bias pollutes our ability to think critically, and failure to consider opposing views is a venom in the bloodstream of the body politic, and it poisons us as it tears us away from women who disagree with us.

Coming just one day after deciding that states do not have the right to protect children from assault weapons, the Supreme Court has exposed its dark hypocrisy. 

But it doesn’t matter what I think about this issue. And it doesn’t matter what you think. What matters now is that this Supreme Court has endorsed the states’ rights to interfere with a woman’s autonomy. This will not stop abortions. Nothing will. So what has this decision accomplished?

It has exposed the hypocrisy of leaders who say they want to protect children while failing to protect and care for children after they’re born. It has guaranteed that women in half the country have no affordable options, even if they were raped, even if they might die. It has put a bullseye on the back of anyone who would try to help women “in trouble.” 

Coming just one day after deciding that states do not have the right to protect children from assault weapons, the newest Supremes, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett, have opened their black kimonos and shown us their true selves. Is anyone surprised that their purported fealty to “settled law” was a ruse? 

Back to my pro-life sisters. You won the day they were confirmed, and the decision to kick Roe back to the states is something you’ve waited decades for. I know you are celebrating something you feel passionate about, and that you feel you stood up for what you see as an issue of life and death. 

But the truth is that while some consider every birth divinely guided, others do not. While this issue may deeply divide us, we still have much in common, and much to accomplish in this stage of our lives. I fear after yesterday, however, that we may be more divided than ever. 

Read More: 40 Years Later, I Still Have Conflicting Emotions About My Abortion

By Jeannie Edmunds

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