A Letter to Those Who Want to Fight

By Kelsey Denny

Today is the 46th anniversary of Roe v. Wade and it has been a particularly painful time to be a woman. I know – when isn’t it a difficult time to be a female? I use the word particularly because there comes a dull ache with choosing to fight the fight that I have chosen to center my lifework around. The experience of pushing a boulder up a hill just to watch it tumble back down at the expense of the lives of women near and far is, to put frankly, heavy. Our President is a perpetrator of sexual harassment. Ohio just passed the most restrictive abortion ban in the country. Lawmakers at both the state and federal level believe that men have a right to sex, regardless of consent. Brett Kavanaugh was appointed to the highest court despite numerous sexual assault allegations and a hearing for Dr. Ford (I believe her, by the way). So yes, it is a particularly difficult time to be a woman. Let’s stray far from sugarcoating and state the facts – there is a war on women perpetuated by and for the benefit of men.

I want to make something clear. Most perpetrators are men, but not all men are perpetrators. To those women who want to dip their feet in this fight, you must eradicate the desire to lead with the argument that this is the fault of “all men.” It is so easy, almost enjoyable, to be able to use “fuck all men” as an end-all-be-all argument when it comes to restricted reproductive services access, and a lot of the time it is warranted! But let’s be not only better than this non-substantive argument, but let’s be the intelligent and knowledgeable women that we are. We need to stop falling to the cop-out answer that “all men are trash” and instead start asking ourselves, “What is it in American society that socializes and entitles men to think that they can make decisions about my body for me?” It is when you arrive to this question that you can see Roe v. Wade for what it really is.

Today women and people everywhere are reflecting upon the history and triumph of Roe vs. Wade, as it enters its 46th year, in the context of what it means to each individual narrative. When I began to really dig into the broad meaning of what Roe has opened the doors for, I found that it is imperative to start with a case that actually came after it. Roe set the legal precedent for cases to follow, creating a constitutional framework that has forged justice and privacy beyond abortion. In the case following Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, the Supreme Court explained the “promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter.” This is Roe. It is about making decisions entailing your personal liberty. It is about choosing when and with whom to start a family or to not start a family. It’s about the right to foster the best possible life that one can through this right to individual liberty. Roe’s reasoning has been used in subsequent cases such as Lawrence v. Texas in which the court decided that the government cannot criminalize intimate sexual conduct between same-sex partners. This is Roe. It is the power bestowed upon people to make their own personal life decisions free of the governmental hand. For me, this is worth fighting for.

To those who want to fight, here is my advice to you. If you choose to step out onto the front lines of abortion rights and birth control access advocacy, expect resistance that gets absolutely unfathomable. I’ve been called names ranging from “lesbian witch” to a person with “no purpose besides satisfying a man’s sexual desires.” They’ll come back at you and it will be ruthless. But if I’ve learned one thing in my short time as an abortion-rights activist, it is that at the very core of every misogynistic man’s argument against Roe is the fact that they want to keep women as subordinate creatures, something incapable of rational thought and of which can be nothing more than a subservient wife. There is no reason to this argument. It is simply, misogynistic and stemming from patriarchal systems. And how nice it feels to know that your argument is so factual and unbeatable that these men can’t find anything else to say other than “well, it’s killing babies. It’s murder.” Unless one has a mere kindergarten understanding of basic biology, then this statement that “abortion is murder” is pretty damn easy to confront. Second, be fierce and fearless. There’s a reason behind why people stand outside of abortion clinics daily terrorizing the women going inside because there will always be those who see women as anything but full participants in society. Remember, you have science behind you. You have the Constitution behind you. They have a fragile complex.

Lastly, find out what Roe means to you. Roe has been challenged and has been deemed “wrongfully decided” by representatives and policymakers across the country and there is a reason why it still stands on this 46th anniversary. That reason is because it is the promise of personal liberty. Roe to me is a painting of women who are holding the boulder steady at the top of the hill, screaming and sweating, refusing to let it tumble back down under the force of misogyny. Because when Roe tumbles down, individual liberty goes down with it. My personal resistance against attacks on Roe will not be immobilized no matter how hard the blow.