"With Sorrow"
Author: Avital O’Glasser, MD
– Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, June 24th, 2022
With Friday June 24th’s majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, five decades of protection for reproductive rights came crashing down. With dozens of states awaiting this decision, with dozens of states passing or planning abortion bans or severe restrictions, the landscape of access to safe abortions in this country is scarred and destroyed.
With sorrow
This–in a country that already has horrendous maternal and childhood mortality rates. This–in a country without universal healthcare. This–in a country with a political faction that that proclaims they are “pro-life”, but do not support paid family leave, access to desperately needed formula, anti-racist or anti-homophobic policies, or life-saving gender affirming care. This–in a country where a vocal contingent so loudly proclaims “my body, my rights” about vaccines, masks, or COVID precautions–but does not respect or protect a woman’s right to choose regarding “HER body, HER rights”. This–in a country where a gun has more freedom and rights than a woman. This–in a country, where at least until today, “respecting a woman as an autonomous being, and granting her full equality, meant giving her substantial choice over this most personal and most consequential of all life decisions.”
With sorrow
Women will die. People with uteruses will die. Women will lose the reproductive freedom that is protected by access to safe abortion, which itself protects access to education, professional development, future income potential, financial security, and the change to build generational wealth–as well as access to protection from domestic and intimate partner violence. Women will also lose access to abortion following rape, incest, tragic pre-natal diagnoses, and life-threatening pregnancy complications. Women who lose access to abortion “will incur the cost of losing control of their lives”. And, in a another sick, paradoxical twist, abortion bans may prevent access to IVF and fertility treatment.
With sorrow
And it won’t end with abortion. In a concurring opinion, Justice Thomas wrote, “we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.” If you haven’t been paying attention, those are the cases that protect contraception, same-sex relationships, and same-sex marriage. Even the dissenting justices have issued their Cassandra cry: “No one should be confident that this majority is done with its work. The right Roe and Casey recognized does not stand alone.” What other personal liberties and rights, especially for the most vulnerable amongst us who are constantly under attack, are at risk?
So, with sorrow, we shed our tears, beat our breasts, wail our laments. With sorrow, we say, “we told you this would happen!” –in 2016, and with every up-ticket and down-ticket election since then. With sorrow, we hug our daughters, text our friends, and try to keep moving through the day. With sorrow, we think of those harmed today, tomorrow, and in the years to come. And with sorrow, we plan our rage, activism, and advocacy–and how we will fight to protect our rights and our safety.
Because, with sorrow, we know that today’s Supreme Court decision will not end abortion in this country, but it may very well end access to SAFE abortion in this country.
Because, with sorrow, we know that the attack on our rights does not end today–but neither does the fight to protect them.
Because, with sorrow, we band together to strengthen our reserve and our resolve.
Because….with sorrow, we dissent.
About the author: Avital O’Glasser, MD, is a hospitalist at Oregon Health & Science University and the editor of the WIMS blog (Twitter: @aoglasser).
