‘We don’t want this war but we won’t go back’ on abortion rights

Although I was born in the time before Roe vs. Wade, I lived my adult life believing I was granted the inalienable rights my brothers enjoyed. I was free to determine my own destiny, to the extent any human being is allowed that privilege.

Last month, Roe vs. Wade was overturned in a partisan obliteration of 50 years of settled law, and my rights as a full-fledged citizen of this country crumbled.

Now, I fear for our future.

Pro-life? Whose life?

You might celebrate the overturning of Roe versus Wade, thinking it will save babies, but if so, I see a plank in your eye that has narrowed your vision, and I beg you to pluck it out. You refuse to see any scenario beyond your own experience, leading you to make sweeping generalities about pregnancy that lack the nuance of nature, humanity, and God. You fantasize about your power to protect life, but this desire for control results in a tragic idealism that will lead to great suffering.

The hypocrisy boggles the mind: give me my weapon of choice, my off-script hydroxychloroquine for covid, my right to not wear a mask to protect others’ health. Those choices — regardless of the effects on the lives around you— are justifiable, but the right to control what happens to my own body is not?

The break in logic is staggering.

Instead, give your fellow American — the child of God and a person in her own right — the dignity to determine her fate, with informed consent from her doctor.

Pregnancy is not a benign condition

When comparing the US maternal mortality rate of .0238% (2020) to the skydiving death rate of .00028% (2021), the chance of dying in pregnancy or childbirth is 85 times higher than jumping out of a plane. Would you force someone to do anything else that risks disability or death—without his or her consent? This is not pro-life. This is conscription.

Willfully blind, you turn from the reality that some people become pregnant but know birthing a child would be unsafe or unhealthy for them, because they are critically ill, or have a medical condition that could make a pregnancy dangerous or fatal. Perhaps the pregnancy is not viable. Maybe the pregnant person has cognitive disabilities or mental illness or is homeless.

Perhaps she is still a child herself.

Spare us your morality tales about women and sex—which are never about men, somehow—and humbly accept the unassailable fact that pregnancies do occur because of rape, sexual abuse, incest, or birth control failures.

Politicians who write these forced-birth laws do not know the complexities of medicine, understand its ethics, nor appreciate the position of healthcare providers who have a Hippocratic oath to uphold and a medical license to protect.

As uninformed legislators strive to control every permutation of every pregnancy, their clunky laws—and the ensuing enforcement—become more ludicrous and cruel.

What now?

When I talk with young adults—conservative, liberal, and moderate—bodily autonomy and privacy is a unifying point at which they say, “We have had enough. This is short-sighted. This is wrong.”

But as we were brutally reminded recently, it is not enough to say, “enough.”

Young people, I implore you now:

Voting out forced-birth candidates is the first step. Don’t be distracted by shiny political objects, like wildly fluctuating gas prices, designed to divert attention from the most important prize, your personhood and privacy.

Recognize this issue for what it is—a devastating infringement of your rights with a direct impact on your future. This slippery slope descends quickly into arbitrary discrimination. If this right to self-determination is taken today, what will be taken tomorrow?

This could be the spark of a real civil war. The rights of 51% of us cannot be selectively restricted without ramifications. The resulting divide will pit families against each other, cost lives, and distract us from other vital issues needing attention.

We don’t want this war, but we won’t go back.

We can’t.

Kay Cox is a wife, mother, grandmother and American who lives in Lawrenceburg.