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It was on May 14, 2022 when I joined protestors in the ‘Bans Off Our Bodies’ March in Portland, Oregon.
But even one year later, every time I think about it, it’s like I never left.
The woman marching to my right is shrieking into her megaphone: “OUR BODIES OUR CHOICE! MY BODY! MY CHOICE!” Others are shouting “BANS OFF OUR BODIES!” There are men and women and trans and nonbinary people here. And there are children of all ages and sexes. This isn’t just a woman’s march. Not just a woman’s issue. Unwanted pregnancies affect the lives of everyone.
On this day, we are protesting that leaked document from SCOTUS, which will end Roe v Wade.
My friend Ellen is to my left, carrying an American flag on a tall pole. The flag’s almost taller than she is. She carries it to every protest. She carries it because she served America as a Peace Corps Volunteer, and because every generation of her family has fought for the US armed services. Recently, she told me that she carries it so it “can’t be stolen and warped by the behavior of false Patriots!” Ellen inspires me. I’m old enough to be her mother. Yet she’s the one leading by fiery example.
“OUR BODIES! OUR CHOICE!” “MY BODY! MY CHOICE!” the woman with the megaphone continues to shout. I want to talk to her about protecting her voice. But I can’t, not now. Every shout of “MY BODY! MY CHOICE” sends tears down my cheeks.
I remember that when I was 22, I had no choice. Forced to be pregnant. My then-husband’s hands on my throat. But it couldn’t have been rape. (I told myself then.) How could my husband, David, have raped me?
I was alone then. I was a girl.
I was a woman, who survived.
I was a woman who had been raped by her father when she was twelve years old.
A girl who’d been strangled by her father.
I was unprepared to be a mother.
I don’t want any woman, any girl, to go through what I did. I will do everything in my power to protect women and girls from that fate. When Alito penned his opinion about Roe v Wade, he invoked the reasoning of 17th Century judge who ruled abortion illegal. That judge, Matthew Hale, said that it was “impossible for husbands to rape their wives.” Wives were the property of their husbands.
After David was done with me, he laughed and said, “You’re so beautiful. If you get pregnant now, it’s your own fault. You were too sexy to resist.” I believed him. We women were trained to believe things like this were always our fault!
That memory makes me want to leave this March. I can’t stop crying. But I’m surrounded by friends. Marching with hundreds of people. Not alone.
I’m carrying a sign which reads:
“A heartfelt fuck you to everyone who said I was overreacting in NOVEMBER 2016”!
That sign–made by Ellen–makes me feel powerful. But I’m 77 years old and I’m fucking furious that we’re still fighting this fight. In 1974 when abortion became legal, I thought that the Case was settled and won. I was so naïve then. Perhaps I still am. “OUR BODIES! OUR CHOICE!”
A sister protestor shouts and we repeat: “MY BODY! MY CHOICE!”
And I’m back feeling furious. Fury carries me through the end of the March. Then I walk up to the woman who was shrieking. I thank her and give her my unopened pack of throat lozenges. In her hoarse voice, she thanks me, and asks if I’d like a hug. “Yes!” I respond. After that hug, she looks into my eyes and says, “We won’t fucking stop resisting!” Then she walks off, arm in arm, with her friends.
Soon after, my friends and I talk more about how and why America finds herself in this place. Still. Since that March, I’ve thought a lot about that. Wondered why. Now I understand. Now I see the thing I couldn’t see before. It ALWAYS will happen. People who want to control women’s bodies have always been here. The people who voted for Trump, those who still stand with him, they’re not going away. They’ve always been here. They just kept themselves under wraps until November, 2016.
They don’t want equality. And they avoid curiosity.
But understanding this doesn’t lead me to despair.
It makes me feel stronger.
Here’s the other thing that makes me feel stronger:
Their mask has slipped. Now we see their true faces.
For a long time, they wore a mask of civility.
No longer.
Alito channeling Matthew Hale, and Amy Barrett saying that America needs “a domestic supply of infants” (code for: White infants) shows us they think they’ve won long term. Abusive spouses do the same damn thing. The day after I married David, he refused to let me get my diaphragm, pushed me on the bed, and circled his hands around my throat. That was the day his mask slipped off.
Ohh…during the years we dated, he wore a charming mask. But I didn’t see it. Once we were married, he didn’t need it. The year was 1968, and I was pregnant and trapped. By the time our second child was born, David told me his favorite sex fantasy was forcing a woman to become pregnant. The mask was completely gone then. And I understood that he would never change. Clearly, his ownership of me and our kids was his long game.
It’s the same thing with this country. We now know the truth about what we’re up against. That makes us stronger. Smarter. Better prepared.
Masks off! Fight on!
We’ll take care to protect our voices. And each other.
It’s going be a long, long march here in America.
But there will NEVER be a happy-forever-after ending.
Black writers have been saying this for years:
Angela Davis, Coretta Scott King, James Baldwin.
We didn’t listen.
We so desperately wanted a new heaven and a new earth that too many of us couldn’t see what was always there behind the mask. But there were others, like me, who foresaw what could happen to America if Trump was elected.
Those of us who escaped fathers who resembled Trump, knew long before he rode that gold elevator, taking us all downward with him. I knew it would happen because I’d lived all of it as I was growing up.
In a way, Trump is my father.
My father was a thin version of Trump.
He looked like him, talked like him, and he held the same beliefs.
So when Trump entered the White House, I felt as if my father had risen from the dead, trapped in my house once again. Every misogynistic thing Trump said to women echoed what my brutal father had said to my mother and me. Every day Trump was traumatizing America, it reminded me of the years my father used my body until I finally escaped. Every day—even while Trump he was campaigning–was a flashback to my childhood.
During one of the televised debates, at that moment when Trump lurched behind Hillary Clinton as she was speaking, I felt the teenager inside me trying to protect my mother from my father’s abuse, yet again.
Each day of Trump’s reign, I felt as if I just might go as mad as my mother finally did just before my father sent her to the place he called “the looney bin.” Each new day, I felt more disembodied, and more dissociated. But this time, I was not alone, as I had been during my childhood. I now have a loving and liberal family, and loving and liberal friends. And writing. Yes, my writing. And friends who are artists of all kinds.
During Trump’s reign, I read works by Rebecca Solnit and Mary Trump and Heather Cox Richardson.And I read Women’s eNews. And because of all of this,I could not give up hope or positive action. And I still will not give up hope.
NEVER!
Many more now seem to understand. On January 6, as the insurrection occurred before our eyes, with gallows erected outside, windows broken, and police officers roughed up and bloodied, we all saw it live on television, and finally understood how close we came to losing democracy. And how close we still are to that possibility even now. I am hopeful they are listening now. I am hopeful they are seeing now.
Yes, Trump’s stacked court destroyed Roe v Wade on June 24, 2022.
And, yes, the heartless GOP is banning abortion in every state possible.
And, “Yes” Trump says he’s running for office again, despite the growing indictments against him, and found guilty of sexual assault just last week.
And, “Yes” I am afraid for America.
But I am not alone. We are not alone.
We are stronger than we think.
OUR COUNTRY OUR CHOICE!
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