Research Notes #21

Choice

Oct 04, 2021

Welcome back!

This past Saturday large groups of pro-choice people marched in cities across the United States. My partner and I were planning on attending the Nashville march but had last-minute anxiety over the crowd factor. I was sad, at first, but then realized that marches are great - and totally necessary to show the size of the movement - but what we do the other 364 days a year is even more important.

Kudos to those who did march this weekend - I hope you were able to stay mentally and physically safe in those crowds. Thank you for showing all the support and let’s continue that forward to reverse the tide of Conservative politics that is trying to push the United States ever more right-wing, daily.

In honour of the marches - and equal rights in general - I’m dedicating this issue to information about getting involved to accomplish the ‘liberal agenda’ of equality for ALL. Enjoy!

Marching is great, but have you thought about organizing?

This past week, I noticed this type of rhetoric floating around the internet. The march on Saturday was put together by the same group that led the 2016 Women’s March, and so there is always the question of white woman feminism and whether the marches are truly intersectional. And after the marches are done, what next?

I finally completed the Mariame Kaba book, We Do This ‘Til We Free Us (seriously I don’t know why it took me so long to get through it - my reading speed has tanked since mid-2020) and there were some great words of wisdom throughout. The ways in which she organizes are intersectional and collective. A quote that hit me as both true and current was when Kaba states, “We can’t do anything alone that’s worth it. Everything that is worthwhile is done with other people.” This really shows the need for collective action in all areas of our lives, but especially in movement organizing.

As Mayor India Walton states in an interveiw on the Bad Faith Podcast, we need to “[allow] folks the space to grow…As a movement we need to come to an understanding of what the fundamental basics are, but then provide a little bit of flexibility and nimbleness and allow people to get there, because it takes time. We don’t want to lose people in the process.” I agree with Mayor Walton in that the movement can sometimes be exclusionary when people haven’t already come to the table with all the tools to understand intersections, and this does not mean that we let people off the hook who aren’t attempting to ‘get there’, but leaving space for people to grow is important.

Having said that, the women’s march this time around seems to have been a lot more intersectional. Since I wasn’t on the ground in Nashville, I cannot say for certain, but I am hopeful that we are moving toward the truly intersectional nature of feminism that is necessary to rally and secure our rights. If we don’t work together now, we will certainly lose together later.

What is next?

A pew research study from 2019 showed that “a majority of Americans (61%) continue to say that abortion should be legal in all (27%) or most (34%) cases” (pewresearch.org) and it appears that that number has potentially increased in the last 2 years. That is one of the many statistics that shows the current push to overturn Roe v. Wade is being proposed and won by a minority of the population. Jessie Van Amburg, does an excellent job breaking down these statistics even further on wellandgood.com.

After the Texas 6-week abortion ban was passed in August, the Supreme Court refused to intervene, allowing it to go into full effect. Since then, the House Democrats have brought forth and passed the Women’s Health Protection Act with a vote of 218-211, only one Democratic House member, Texas’ Henry Cueller, voted no, along with all the Repbulicans. But this bill, which would codify the protections of Roe v. Wade into federal law, still needs to pass the Senate, where it was received on 27 September and read in on the 28th and 29th. Now it waits for the assigned legislative session to proceed.

Things are in the works at the Federal level, but what about State to State? The Guttmacher Institute has been tracking all of the current bans across the States and the chart at the bottom of this page shows current information as of 1 September, when the Texas ban went into effect. This clarifies a point for me that was confusing because while I was living in Huntsville, Alabama, the Governer (Kay Ivey) signed a ban on abortion at conception with exceptions only for the life of the mother. That seemed more restrictive than the Texas law, but the reason why Texas is considered the most restrictive now is that they are the first State to put a ban into effect that was not immediately enjoined. All bans up to this point, until Texas, have been enjoined, either permanently or temporarily, by court order.

Texas slipped through precisely due to the current make up of the Supreme Court. This is what the anti-choice people (and I say anti-choice because people who believe in endless war, no gun control, removing money for poor folks, and keeping kids in cages at the border, DO NOT deserve to be called pro-life) have been working toward for years. Bit by bit, inch by inch, ever since Roe v. Wade was decided and the right-wing of the Repbulican party was co-opted by white evangelicals. But that is a post (or series of posts) for another time. All this to say that we need to mount a stronger campaign against the forces that will remove our autonomy as people with uteruses. We need to stay strong, march, organize, and take action to create a better future for all.

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