A YEAR OF PAIN

Greetings. I am a voting constituent in rural west Texas. What a difference a year makes. I’m talking about today’s anniversary of the fall of Roe v Wade in case you’ve forgotten. A year that you should not be proud of. A year that has shown that women are bearing the brunt of your decisions about what they can and cannot do with their own bodies and their own lives. A year that shows women dying from lack of medical care that just a year ago would have been routine. A year that shows health care professionals caught up in a quagmire of unclear language written by lawmakers, not doctors, that basically negates the Hippocratic oath they took. An oath now superseded by fear. Fear of making the wrong decision based on vague legislation. A year of fear of vigilantism enabled to pit neighbor against neighbor, family against family. A year of law after law being passed to further impede access to life-saving healthcare by making acts of assistance felonies. By prohibiting travel elsewhere to seek help. By criminalizing our right to personal freedom across the board. A year where women have had to suffered and die in order to attempt to achieve clarity in the courts as to what is and isn’t allowed in their most personal decisions. To attempt to clarify vague bans, mandates, and language written by ideology, not knowledge. There is a medical staffing drain going on. And it will continue. People across the country…families, doctors, students, employers, employees, are all making decisions to either move, or not, to relocate, or not, based on abortion bans. Every day more women in Texas are experiencing life-threatening effects of GOP actions. Which means outrage is growing daily as more and more people experience first hand what red state legislation is doing to their lives. To be pregnant in Texas is a game of Russian roulette. This is only the beginning of the ever-increasing ripple effect of ripping a basic right away from half the population. But you and yours continue to double down on actions that the country, and your own constitutes, do not want. “We will not settle for a country where women are second class citizens and forced to stay pregnant against their will. We will speak out, organize, march and do whatever it takes to restore the right to abortion, and make sure every woman can make her own decisions about her body, her family and her future. Women will not be silent. We will not be ignored. Women will keep speaking up, telling their stories, making their voices heard, especially at the ballot box.” Watch this space.