Mother’s Day and Reproductive Rights Walk Hand in Hand

The real world has a sneaky way of intruding on my enchanted life. It’s so annoying.

Seriously, are we really doing this again?

Although in retrospect, I think Mother’s Day is the perfect time to stand on my soapbox and SCREAM to the world.

Mother’s Day isn’t always all about flowers and cards, although it’s nice to be appreciated for our neverending love.

MOTHER takes on new context in this fresh wave of assaults on our reproductive rights.

I don’t particularly care for the word “abortion” even though I’m one million percent pro-choice, because I think that every single right we fought long and hard for is being horrifically and systematically eroded in real time.

Do you know what’s been happening in some of our states? No rights for rape victims. No rights for children who get pregnant as a result of being raped by a family member. What’s next? No birth control, no credit cards, and then rescind the right to vote?

More new repressive and regressive reality:

Eleven-year-old girls are now old enough to…

Legally marry!
—YES, Tennessee HB 233

Be charged with homicide for an abortion!
—YES, Louisiana HB 813

Can learn about racism?
—NO, 31 states pass bills to ban dialogue on racism.

More insanity…the American Taliban now wants to pass legislation in ‘red states’ that will require women to pass a ‘negative’ pregnancy test in order to leave their home states.

Beto O’Rourke said that abortion laws are about “power and control over women” and he’s one hundred percent right.

I’ve shared this before. My mom was a registered nurse who practiced way before Roe versus Wade. Abortions were illegal but that didn’t STOP women from having them; what it did was drive women to back room practitioners or resort to self harm. My mom was on the front lines day after day and this is what she told me about working in a hospital before legal abortions: one infection after another, one hysterectomy after another, one D&C after another, one death after another — women who bled to death, hemorrhaging so profusely with blood loss so severe, no one could stop it.

This is the reality of life before Roe versus Wade in 1973.

Those were some of the reasons why she was an early and fervent supporter of reproductive rights. A majority of those women would have survived if abortion had been legalized at the time.

I’m one of the lucky ones. I CHOSE to have my son. He was planned and loved well before there was even a fertilized egg. However, if I had chosen NOT to have him for ANY reason at all, that also is MY CHOICE. Without government interference and without any religion or man telling me what I can and can’t do with my body. MY CHOICE. My rights.

Probably the most chilling thing about all this is horrible Amy Coney Barrett and Samuel Alito wrote in their leaked opinion that we don’t “need” abortion: “domestic supply of infants for adoption” is their justification for taking away our right to our own body.

This is a real life dystopian Handmaid’s Tale. Basically, they’re attempting to turn us into baby making factories for child trafficking.

My friend Nancy Sinatra (yes, THAT Nancy Sinatra) says, “You know, I’ve been thinking, I don’t want a man, any man, telling me what to do or not do with my body, It’s none of his damn business. Period. I would never tell you what to do with your body so leave mine alone. My body has sovereignty. It’s my temple, not yours so back off!”

From Bruce Miller, Creator/Executive Producer of “The Handmaid’s Tale”
“I’m not sure I can ask actors or crew members to travel and work in a state where an ectopic pregnancy would sentence my employee to death.

Codify Roe v Wade. Once and for all, stay out of my uterus. Organize and march.

Most of all, VOTE.

And Happy Mother’s Day!

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg

First we mourn, then we fight.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg  official portrait

This isn’t the post I had planned for Saturday but we have all heard the devastating news.

On Rosh Hashanah, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Supreme Court Justice, died at the age of 87 from metastatic pancreatic cancer.

I think a lot of us had the same first thoughts; “Oh no, not HER” “Not now.””NOOO!!!”

We surely don’t need her gone, not now, not during this shitshow of a year that 2020 has become.

Hearing that horrible news (tragic for her family but tragic for our country and democracy, too) brought me back to the morning my mom (the original Charlotte) died of the same disease, metastatic pancreatic cancer.

Thanks to medical advancements, RBG was able to live a lot longer after diagnosis than my mom.

Hearing about her death brought up all those same traumatic feelings of loss that I felt when I found my mom had died. She lived with us and we had cared for her during her illness with the help of a great hospice.

I had checked on her at around 5am and she was fine, not in distress, still asleep, so I did a little cleaning and made my son’s breakfast so it’d be ready for him when he woke up ‘cos it was a school day. I don’t know what prompted me to check on her again so soon, but I did. She was still in the same position; she LOOKED like she was asleep, but there was a subtle difference. I had never seen a dead person in my entire 32 years on this earth, but I knew. I knew.

I checked her carotid artery and called the hospice nurse. I woke up Angel Boy (almost 7 years old) and managed to tell him all the right things. Hospice had suggested that I ask him if he’d like to kiss his grandma goodbye, so I did. And he did. That pretty much broke me, but I’m a stoic girl and you wouldn’t know I was broken. I can break on the inside but you won’t see it. Things had to be done so I did what needed to be done. I always do.

I miss my mom. Forever.

But this is about Ruth Bader Ginsberg, a brilliant woman whose entire life was inspirational. Her loss is an epic tragedy.

About RBG’s life, the film “On The Basis of Sex” featured a song written and performed by Kesha. Here’s an acoustic version. It needs to be the anthem of our revolution.
First we mourn, then we fight.

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Here Comes the Change

One day I’ll be gone
The world will keep turning
I hope I leave this place
Better than I found it
Oh it’s hard, I know it’s hard
To be the lightning in the dark
Hold on tight you’ll be alright
You know it’s time
Here comes the change
We’re comin’ of age
This is not a phase
Here comes, here comes, the change
Is it a crazy thought?
That if I had a child
I hope they live to see the day
That everyone’s equal
Oh it’s hard I know it’s hard
To be the right inside the wrong
Hold on tight we’ll be alright
You know it’s time
Oh here comes the change
Oh we’re comin’ of age
This is not a phase
Here comes here comes the change
Hope there’ll come a time when we
We can live in and die free
I hope…