One Week Later

Birth control pills were approved for contraceptive use in America when my mother was 14 years old. And Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in America in 1973. That same year, I turned 4 years old and  became part of the first generation of American girls raised having safe and accessible choices when it came to our reproductive destiny.

Flash forward 40 years.

It is 11:50pm on a hot Tuesday night in Austin, Texas. I am crowded into the rotunda of the state capitol building with thousands of other people who are all wearing orange shirts, scarves and hair ribbons and screaming at the top of their lungs. Around me are half a dozen friends my age, and we are screaming too while we sweat and check news feeds on our phones as the clock nears midnight. My ears are vibrating in pain at the sheer volume of the voices—so guttural and primal and sustained—raised in a deafening unison roar. Then the clock strikes twelve, and impossibly, the volume of the screaming grows even louder. I have no idea if we’ve been successful in killing #SB5, but it damn sure feels like we’ve done something important by coming together and raising our voices in this way. I go home exhausted but too energized to sleep. I am wide awake.

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Flash forward one week.

I’m still hoarse. My hair continues to stand up when I see photos or videos or read well-written accounts of what happened on Tuesday,June 25th in the Texas state capitol building. They are calling it “The People’s Filibuster.” And having been part of it, is still very much with me and many, many others.

The whole thing—and all of the action that has followed—has made me do a lot of reflecting, and I found myself wondering: Why am I so damn passionate about the abortion issue? Why did I wear my headphones listening to Texas state senator Wendy Davis filibuster against anti-abortion legislation on the senate floor almost all day while I was at work?  Why did I rush down to the capitol that night when I saw the 3^rd point of order raised against Senator Davis—and the intense reaction to what was going on in the rotunda—live on the 10 o’clock news? Why did I stand there for hours and hours with thousands of orange-clad strangers who, like me, desperately wanted to be heard that night? Why did I go back to the capitol this week to stand with 6,000 others there to protest the blatantly anti-woman legislation that is back in front of the Texas legislature?

The answer to all these questions is simple: Because this issue—women’s accessibility to safe, affordable LEGAL gynecological services including pregnancy termination—is not only important to women, it says a great deal about how women are viewed in our society. 

A bit of background: When I became sexually active in my late teens, I had access to inexpensive birth control via the Planned Parenthood clinic in the town where I was attending college. I also got regular “well woman” check-ups at that same clinic (required in order to maintain my birth control prescription), and I was able to do all this without my parents’ or my partner’s permission or intervention. To me, taking care of my lady business was simply a part of becoming an independent young woman. It never occurred to me that what I was doing with regard to my reproductive health would (our could) ever be anyone else’s business. Because I had no memory of what life had been life prior to the pill or legalized abortion, I never considered what I was doing a fragile freedom that might be threatened or even disappear. In essence, I’d received all the spoils of a war that I knew little about. And, like many women my age, I became complacent and assumed my reproductive rights were protected. But clearly, I was wrong.

It didn’t happen overnight—the most insidious change rarely does. Over the past two decades, the lines between the church and the statehouse have become so blurred that the foundational principle of the separation of church and state has become little more than a hollow footnote in America. Simultaneously, politicians who run on platforms of “limited government” and “personal freedom” while also advocating for the increased government intrusion into women’s reproductive organs have continued to win local, statewide and national elections. The result of this perfect theocratic storm has been that, little by little, the rights that my grandmother’s and mother’s generation fought so hard to secure are being stripped away. Like many other women in America, I now live in a state where a very vocal, organized, fundamentalist religious minority has managed to bring us to the brink of passing some of the most restrictive anti-abortion legislation in the entire country. Meanwhile, our state leaders and GOP legislators have the gall to smile their lipless smiles and tell us that it’s all for own good. And this condescending “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it… we know what’s best for you” stance is insulting, infuriating bullshit.

Let me clarify that I am NOT “pro-abortion” as I’m sure some would be quick to label me. Come ON!! Who in their right minds would wish that they or someone they love would ever EVER have to undergo an abortion? No one, that’s who. That’s why the bogus-yet-frequently-repeated claim that those of us who are pro-choice are actually “pro-abortion” makes my blood boil. It’s just fucking stupid, and if you say it, I have no choice but to think that you’re an ill-informed, myopic idiot.

I have a young daughter, and the thought of her ever facing the agonizing choices that come with an unplanned or unsustainable pregnancy is enough to make my stomach turn and bring me to tears. As a parent, my ultimate goals are to protect her, guide her toward good choices in her life, and to do everything within my power to ensure she is safe, happy and healthy. And I hope beyond description that she will never undergo an abortion procedure. But as a realist who resides on planet Earth, I also understand and accept that no matter how much praying anyone does, unplanned and unsustainable pregnancies can–and do--happen to females of child-bearing age regardless of their race, address, financial situation, sexual history, religion, marital status, or political affiliation. And yes, that potentially includes my daughter. What I hope for her is to never have to consider having an abortion, but if she does, I want her to have options and access and not be shamed or criminalized for her choice. Period.

The people of my grandmothers’ and mothers’ generations fought hard to ensure that first, women were granted access to birth control and later, that the cloak of danger and criminality that surrounded abortion was lifted. And after years of admitedly taking these freedoms for granted, I now have all of their fight inside me.

Also inside me is the fight of that indignant 19 year old casually picking up her birth control pills at the women’s clinic who cannot fathom why my—or any other woman’s--reproductive choices should be anyone else’s damn business.

Now I have a daughter who is nearly 9 years old. She deserves the same reproductive freedoms that I and all of the other American women of my generation have been guaranteed as a legal right. And Hell yes, I’ve got her fight inside of me too.

So even if the Texas legislature wins this battle, they now have a full-fledged war on their hands. I'm ready for the fight, and I'm bringing lots of people with me.

My Religious Period

My father was the youngest of 5 born into a very strict Pentecostal family. He once told me that, by the time he was 15, he'd attended enough church to last him the rest of his life, so he stopped going--much to the chagrin of his deacon father. My mother was raised in a Methodist household that attended church during major religious holidays, but not much during the rest of the year. Neither of them ever guided me in a religious direction as I grew up.

When I was about 13, I was invited by a friend of mine to attend church with her. She went to a big, impressive Southern Baptist church that had just opened a cool new family activity center that had a gym, an indoor running track, classrooms, etc. Other friends of ours attended this church, and so I thought nothing of it when I agreed to accompany her family to a few worship services. Since my family didn't "do" church, the only way I was going to go to church at all was going to be by tagging along with another family who did.

After a few visits to the church, I started accompanying her to other youth-focused events there, and eventually agreed to go to an over-night "Lock In" with her. For those of you unfamiliar with what goes on during a Lock In, allow me to break it down for you:

Your parents drop you off at the church's family activity center early on Friday evening. There are lots of other kids there your age, some from your school, some from other schools in the town. The chaperones are made up of youthful members of the congregation who you've maybe seen in Sunday school or in the pews and the church's Youth Minister--a (usually male) minister who is young enough to connect with the kids but old enough to command their respect. The evening starts with an orientation and low-down on the schedule and the rules, and then you're set loose to eat pizza, roller skate, play basketball, racquetball, watch movies, do arts and crafts, etc. At about 2 am, they gather you all in the gym and start to talk to you about the Lord. About how we're all sinners, and about how, if we die without accepting Jesus Christ as our Savior, we will go to Hell. The chaperones get up and tell emotional, dramatic stories about how they were "saved," and about how they don't want any of us to burn in Satan's inferno because we were unwilling to accept the gift that God gave us through his Son, Jesus Christ. It goes on and on. There are prayers and crying. There are readings from scripture and more praying and crying. And then they start asking who in that room wants to come to Heaven with them. Who wants to be saved by the blood of Jesus Christ. Exhausted, over-sugared, puberty-addled kids start to stagger up from their pillows and sleeping bags and walk toward the Youth Minister, crying. He asks each of them if they accept Jesus Christ as their savior and will agree to "witness" for the Lord and be baptised into the church. Yes! Yes!! We don't want to die and burn in Hell! Anything you want, Youth Minister! We're young, highly impressionable teens who are sleep deprived and wanting more than anything to fit in. And as we see peer after peer head toward you and agree to be saved and baptised, we get swept up in the moment and say we believe. Oh how we believe, Youth Minister!!

When my mom came to pick me up the following morning, I was a ball of electric energy. I couldn't stop talking about being saved and how I was going to get baptised and how I was going to go to Heaven because I'd accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and I hoped that she was saved so that she could go to Heaven too. She agreed to come and watch me get baptised, but she wasn't sure about the "church 3 times a week" request I made of her.

After the Lock In, I became insufferable. I would "witness" to my friends and family--preaching to them about what my faith meant to me...how good salvation felt...and how, they too, could join me in Heaven if they'd just agree to accept Jesus as their Lord. I prayed obsessively. I tried, with all my heart, to be the model Christian I felt like Jesus and The Youth Minister wanted me to be.

I got baptised during a Sunday evening service a few weeks after the Lock In, and attended church all the time: Sunday school, Sunday morning service, Sunday evening service, Wednesday evening youth fellowship, and Wednesday evening service. My mother dutifully drove me to and from, but never joined me. I even worked as a junior counselor at Vacation Bible School that summer, earning $150 for an entire summer's worth of work. My Pentecostal relatives were relieved that I'd chosen a different path than my wayward father, even if it was with the Southern Baptists rather than their much more conservative (if you can even imagine) church.

My religious fervor continued for about a year-and-a-half and then? I got over it.

Many, many years later, I revisited this whole bizarre time in my life. It felt like someone else's memories had been downloaded into my brain. Was that really me? Was I really that zealous and blindly accepting? What the Hell did my mother think about the whole thing? What made me decrease my commitment to my church and my religion?

Now, when I see others with this kind of fundamental faith and belief in their religion, I find it equal parts scary and admirable. Maintaining that kind of faith and devotion requires a surrender to an intense myopia that I can't even imagine. It requires that you view the world in terms of absolutes: Black and white; Yes and no. There is no room for shades of gray or maybes in a mind filled with the idea that there is only one path to heaven.