Civil War

Family and Abortion

What are we supposed to do with all these emotions? What are we to do?

Perhaps you were overjoyed by the fall of Roe v. Wade. Perhaps, like me, you were devastated, even after seeing the Supreme Court’s leaked draft from May 2 that foreshadowed Roe’s doomed fate. Still, I was overwhelmed. If you’re a subscriber to this newsletter, you’re probably not indifferent. Most Americans are moderate on abortion—they want it legal with some restrictions. But most people are not indifferent to Roe v. Wade being overturned. According to a CBS News poll, 59 percent of Americans disapprove of the Supreme Court overturning the 1973 decision that made abortion legal in all 50 states, including 67 percent of women. Fifty-two percent consider it a step backward for America; and 56 percent say it will make women’s lives worse. Fifty-eight percent support a federal law that would make abortion legal. Of those women disapproving of Roe being overturned, 81 percent felt upset, 75 percent angry, and 67 percent scared. So it seems I was not alone in my reaction, shaking as I was with anger and sadness upon hearing the awful news.

I made a stream-of-consciousness video the morning Roe was overturned, uploaded it to Youtube, and shared it on this newsletter. Later that day I realized I had to tell my sons that a video I had made in which I discussed an abortion I’d had at 16 was now public. So much for my being a role model for my kids about how not to over-share on social media. Oh well. Desperate times call for desperate measures. When Charlie got home from water polo practice I told him that I had I posted a video on my Substack. I told him he could watch it or not watch it, but that it was out there. He decided to watch it.

Waiting for him to emerge from his room might have been the longest 10 minutes of my life. When he finally did, he came right up to me and gave me a great hug. He said he was sorry about what I went through. He said thank you. He started asking me questions and we talked for an hour, only stopping because Diego got home. But Charlie and I had had a beautiful conversation. Diego watched the video later. He was more reticent, which did not surprise me as reticence is on par with his personality: In general, he’s a man of few words unless we are talking about interesting jobs, investing money, or crazy adventures. He gave me a sweet hug and it was more than I could ask for. My kids’ response was the only one I was truly concerned about. If anyone else decided they didn’t like the video—or me—because of my disclosure, that was OK.

I also told Charlie that one of the most fraught moments of my life was when Derek and I were engaged and he was visiting me—we didn’t live together before we got married, and I was living in Santa Barbara and he was living in SLO. One night, I told him there were some things I needed to let him know about my life. I explained to Charlie that I told Derek as-yet undisclosed details, including my abortion, and held my breath. It didn’t matter, Derek said. I told him I wasn’t sure if I wanted kids. He didn’t flinch. We would figure it out together, he said. Despite everything that had happened, your dad believed in me, I told Charlie, even though I was a diamond in the rough, to which Charlie replied, Yeah, you were basically a piece of coal. (He knows how to make me laugh.)

I told Charlie that I didn’t regret anything that had happened to me—even the worst things. That they made me the person I am, made me more compassionate, a little more empathetic, a little less judgy. And I was a stronger person because of all of it. And when I finally did decide to have kids, it was because I really, really wanted them.

I sent a link of my newsletter video to my brother and his girlfriend. I was feeling a little angry, as both of them had voted twice for “the person responsible for this.” My brother responded via text:

“That was very brave of you to put that out there Mel. I will ALWAYS love, respect and appreciate you. You are the strongest woman I know, and when the shock wears off and it becomes time to get to work, the Pro Choice movement could not have a better, more intelligent person on their side. The fact that you have the time now is a gift from the universe. I love you.”

It was a thoughtful response.

However, at the time of his response, this was his Facebook profile picture, which he had changed shortly after Roe V. Wade was overturned:

If you don’t know what that is, it’s a mockery of RBG—Ruth Bader Ginsberg—the Supreme Court Justice who fought for women’s rights on the court her entire career and who was so popular, she was referred to as the Notorious RBG, which was also the name of a biography by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik. This version, the Notorious ACB, is of course Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee and the sole woman on the Supreme Court who joined five other conservative male justices to overturn Roe v. Wade. Writing for Slate.com, Dahlia Lithwick responded with this:

“Amid all of this grief, we are now subject to a turn to parody that is also cruelty. The White House rollout of Judge Amy Coney Barrett as candidate for the seat has gone beyond erasing Ginsburg’s legacy—they are stealing the trappings of that legacy and stripping it for parts….This comedic implication—that Barrett is the natural inheritor of Ginsburg’s legacy—is depraved.”

I felt sick to my stomach when I saw the callous meme, much like I did when my brother, giddy to show me his gun arsenal, placed an AR-15 in my hands and stated: “This is the same kind of gun that was used in Sandy Hook.” He likes to “trigger the liberal” as they say.  He wakes up, and, according to his girlfriend, watches three hours of news, bouncing between Fox and CNN, and then he goes online and trolls people who have “liberal”views. He claims to be OK with abortion up to 15 weeks, but then goes on Facebook to agitate the left. He will say that it’s intellectual sparring. I think it’s intellectually lazy and spiritually abject.

I was supposed to take my sons camping with my brother and his girlfriend and her daughters over July 4th weekend, and it felt like a Civil War was breaking out in my heart, brother against sister. We have a small family—it’s just my mom, me, my brother, one beloved cousin who lives in New Jersey, and a couple of uncles in York, Pennsylvania. These are my few blood relatives, my brood. I don’t surround myself with an echo chamber—I have dear friends and plenty of family on my husband’s side who hold different political views from me. But as far as I know, they’re not petty or mean online. They haven’t, like my brother, been temporarily suspended from Twitter for inappropriate tweets.

My brother is a self-made man. Despite our myriad childhood difficulties, he rose above the ashes  of our youth and has been gainfully employed for years. He makes good money and supports his family. He works really hard. He has two adult sons I care for deeply just as he cares deeply for my sons, who adore him. We have almost always disagreed on politics. I have at times been furious with him, but I have also tried to keep him close. I’ve dropped everything and in a moment’s notice and driven several hours to be with him when he needed me (he claims I saved his life). We suffered the same hardships as children, under the same conditions, with the exception that, unlike him, I became pregnant at sixteen.

Could I go camping with him when my blood is boiling, when we are literally facing the revocation of our reproductive rights, a moment my brother sees as no more than another golden opportunity to be a bootlicking lackey of the Right Wing Male Talking Head Douchebag Industrial Complex?

I didn’t want to back out of camping because of politics. But is it just political? Or is it a human rights issue? This court decision will cause untold suffering, and it will NOT lead to some fantastical utopia. Women and girls will go to desperate measure to obtain an abortion. Some will die. They will drive ungodly miles to escape states that are currently passing laws intended to prosecute them if they escape said states to have an abortion. They will have to borrow money. Who will take care of their children they need to leave for several days? Will their bosses understand if they need the time off? Where will they get lodging? How will they pay for it? If they get medical abortions and something goes wrong, will a doctor treat them? Will the women be punished? Will they go to jail?  Am I really asking these questions in America in the 21st century?  

Eventually, I spoke with my brother on the phone for more than an hour. He’s going through a tough divorce, he’s tired, emotional, worn out. We didn’t talk about Roe being overturned. And in the end I took my boys camping with their uncle. They had a great time. He was loving and affectionate. We held our tongues. We looked for ways to share common ground—he and I cooked dinner every night for everyone, for instance. We broke bread together. But  the revocation of abortion rights was on my mind. This is a watercolor I painted while camping.

I remember a student in my argument class at Cal Poly comparing the abortion debate with the gun control debate. I was talking, as I often naively did in that class, about the need for civil debate, for finding common ground, for making concessions. She said that neither the abortion rights activists nor the gun rights people wanted to give an inch to the other side, because they were afraid that the goal of the other side was not compromise but rather to take away all guns, to eliminate abortion completely.

At the time of writing this, there have been more than 300 mass shootings in the United States since the beginning of 2022. The AR-15 and other high-capacity rifles like it are the mass shooters go-to. The Supreme Court, just before it shot down Roe, also shot down a New York state law that required gun owners to reasonably explain why they should be allowed to open carry. Individual states cannot impede gun owners right to open carry, the Court decided. It’s constitutionally protected under the Second Amendment. Yet another victory for guns.

But abortion is no longer constitutionally protected; each state gets to set their own terms regarding abortion. Without missing a beat, many states immediately banned abortion or severely restricted it. Some states made abortion a felony; some don’t have exceptions for incest or rape. Clinics closed. According to the politicians on the right, this is a good thing: They feel the people in each individual state  should decide, but we know their goal is that they want to revoke your ability to decide. They want to ensure that there is no choice in the matter. I think the individual should decide.

Abortion is now prohibited in Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Wisconsin, and West Virginia. Arizona, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Utah also banned abortion, but the bans are temporarily blocked in the courts. Idaho, Mississippi, North Dakota, Tennessee, and Wyoming will be banning abortion soon. It has been restricted in Ohio and South Carolina (six weeks); Georgia also has a six-week ban, but it’s been temporarily blocked. Florida is banning abortion after 15 weeks, which now sounds almost liberal. Some other states are uncertain for now. Women have lost.

Abortion is legal and will likely remain legal in Alaska, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. These states, for now, are keeping abortion legal and expanding abortion rights: California, Connecticut, D.C., Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington.

As we all know, and as they have made explicitly clear, the goal of the anti-abortion movement is a nationwide ban on abortion.

Dystopian days.

I’m not naïve anymore about reaching across the aisle. The extremists are making the rules and they are dragging bystanders like my brother into the fray. I’m not sure I or you or anyone could persuade anyone who is wholly against abortion to soften their views. This is another issue that will divide us, terribly, if we let it. But I agree with the majority of those polled by CBS: this moves us backward as a country.  

Do our right-wing politicians really think so little of us and so highly of themselves that they feel they must be the ultimate arbiters of our most personal decisions? The hubris is astounding. This is how Derek puts it:

Imagine the millions of people who are having sex right now, at this very moment, under all different circumstances. Some people are making passionate love in order to conceive. Some women are having sex with abusive boyfriends in order to avoid further abuse. Some women are being raped. Some people are just fucking for fun because fucking is fucking fun. Some pregnancies will result, either by design or by accident. Each resulting pregnancy will lead to entirely unique circumstances for each pregnant woman.

Imagine having the audacity, the self-importance, the pomposity, to think that YOU know what is best in each and every one of these millions and billions of permutations despite not having any knowledge whatsoever of ANY of the specifics of each situation, despite not even knowing the individuals themselves. On top of that, add the fact that men, who will NEVER be pregnant and therefore will NEVER have to face the circumstances of the laws being enacted, are the pompous, self-important blowhards making the laws outlawing abortion. THIS. IS. ONE. THOUSAND. PERCENT. BULLSHIT.

That said, don’t despair. Well, maybe despair a little. But find joy where you can. Stay strong. Vote and encourage others to vote. Tell your story if you can (you could even tell it to me if you’re compelled; I could share it with your name or keep it anonymous). Give money if you’ve got it to give. (I put Planned Parenthood in my will years ago. Last week, I gave money to Just the Pill.) Get some exercise to keep the endorphins flowing. Last night, Diego asked me to go surfing with him this morning at 5:30, and we went, drove out to the beach together as the sun was rising, suited up, and paddled out. When stuff like that happens, I want to pinch myself at my luck—luck that is in part due to the fact that I was able to access safe, relatively affordable, and legal healthcare as a youth when I most needed it, so that my life wasn’t derailed when it had hardly begun.

Here’s the last and hardest piece of advice I’m giving and trying to follow myself:

Try to love people, even—and perhaps especially—when you disagree with them.