Being a woman in the U.S. in 2022 is going about your day as pleasantly as possible while feeling like your blood is constantly boiling in your veins
By Emma Tui
Being a woman in the U.S. in 2022 is going about your day as pleasantly as possible while feeling like your blood is constantly boiling in your veins; it’s fielding doubting looks from those who don’t understand the sense of desperate urgency lacing your voice as you try to explain the precipice our nation is slowly tipping over; it’s lying awake at night with your eyes glued to your phone as you read excerpts from every new piece of proposed abortion-related legislation that is quickly becoming unforgivingly restricting.
It’s listening with abject horror as you’re told over and over again that your body doesn’t matter, your personhood doesn’t matter, your life doesn’t matter.
How did we get to this point? How could almost 50 years of legal precedent be erased in a blink of an eye and the swish of a pen? How were four men allowed to suddenly hold deciding power over every uterus-owning person in our country – and how could a woman have betrayed her fellow sisters so egregiously, so callously, and without remorse?
It’s been just a month since Roe was overturned, and every day I wake up with new questions – questions born out of fear, anger, and a deep, deep sadness. Millions of people have been plunged into terrifying uncertainty, and there’s no telling how the situation may worsen over the next few months.
Now that the right to an abortion is no longer protected, red states are in a race to see who can inflict the largest amount of suffering onto their citizens; bans at 15 weeks, 10 weeks, 6 weeks – some even drawing the line at fertilization. There’s talks of preventing women from traveling out state to receive an abortion, and bringing up charges against any who may offer assistance. All of it is exceptionally dehumanizing.
SCOTUS and Republican lawmakers have made their message very clear: I am not a human to them, I am a uterus. I’m an incubator, made to carry a fetus whether I want to or not.
The horrifying reality of the situation is that those who seek to destroy the lives of women aren’t doing so because they care about “the children”; in actuality, they’re selling out the American people all for a power trip and a paycheck – which means that no one (man, woman, or otherwise) is protected under their control.
We are witnessing a turning-point in this country, and reproductive rights are only the first to fall.
United States of America – the land of the powers that be, and the home of the afraid.