Fifty Years of Freedom and Independence
Janet Kuypers
2/16/24
On the 22nd of January in 1973,
the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, 7-2,
that unduly restrictive state regulation
of abortion is unconstitutional.
Texas statutes criminalizing abortion
violated a constitutional right to privacy,
implicit in the liberty guarantee of the
Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment.
...What I wanted to point out to you is that
a Texas woman was forced into these restrictions,
and The Supreme Court agreed
that the state could not intervene with 1st ,
and in many cases 2nd trimester abortions,
or abortions when a woman’s life is in danger.
50+ years ago, a woman protested Texas’
repressive laws, laws against women, and won.
So, in Texas, they tried to repress women’s rights.
On 1/22/73, a trial, started by a woman in Texas,
gave women some of their rights back.
In 1992, the Supreme Court made it clear
that restrictions on abortion are unconstitutional
when placing an “undue burden” on a person
seeking an abortion before the fetus is viable.
The Court even said in 2020 that a Louisiana statute
(which was almost identical to Texas’ 1970s attempts)
was also unconstitutional.
But a 2018 Mississippi state law banning most abortions
was passed, in the hopes that the Supreme Court,
approaching 50 years later with conservative Justices,
might overturn Roe v. Wade with Dobbs v. Jackson,
which was only about whether bans on all pre-viability
abortions are unconstitutional. In February 2022,
a leak from the majority opinion from Justice Samuel Alito
wrote the Court had voted to uphold the Mississippi law
and overturn Roe v. Wade by June of 2022.
It’s now over 50 years, and women thought they gained
these rights, but how far have we really come, baby,
as some now call a clump of non-viable cells a baby
and women are now slaves to the state again.
For after the passing of Roe v. Wade on 1/22/73,
it wasn’t destroyed on my birthday, 6/22/22,
but 6/24/22, when Dobbs v. Jackson was passed,
overturning Roe v. Wade. As soon as it was passed,
11 states’ “trigger laws” restricted or banned abortions
immediately after the elimination of Roe v. Wade
and the subsequent banning of women’s rights.
Wade recognized that the decision
whether to continue or end a pregnancy
belongs to the individual, not the government. But...
It’s the government’s choice now. Not yours.
Thank you to the states who want to take away the rights
of the individual — the living, breathing individual,
to give to a clump of cells no larger than a paper clip1 .
In these states, so much for the raped 10-yea-rold girl
who, after this trauma, can’t have an abortion in her state2 ,
or, oh well for the woman, even after doctors declare the
fetus inside her is nonviable, doctors still can’t remove it,
and when the woman has a miscarriage later at home
on 9/22/23, she is actually charged with a felony3.
Here in Texas, and all these southern-leaning and once
slave-supporting states, their loathing of all woman-kind
has never changed. Over 50 years ago, women fought
to get some of their rights back, in Texas, and they won.
But, “conservative” hatred fermented so long, it took them
half a century to find Justices who would so ignore the law.
The Constitution’s 9th Amendment spells our rights out:
“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights,
shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained
by the people.” 4 They spell it out in the 14th Amendment’s
Due Process Clause, that your “fundamental” rights are
not specifically enumerated elsewhere in the Constitution,
including the right to marry, the right to use contraception,
and the right to abortion. 5 But why worry about the law
in multiple places in the U.S. Constitution, when your
desire to thwart woman’s rights has been denied to you
for so long that your percolating hatred finally explodes.
—
I have worked to help protect women for over half my life.
I have helped people after rape, violence, and abuse, but...
for even longer, we’ve kept that gushy deep-in-our-heart
feeling we women have had all of my sentient life, at
least when it came to our government not interfering
with our basic bodily rights. And then, they wait
for their chance to pounce, thanks to those conservatives
who prefer to keep us under their thumb so personally
that we now feel even less safe with our own doctors
than we did before. Now we’ve lost another place
where we should feel safe. Another nail in our coffin,
more dirt over our grave. You bury us before we can live.
After this overturning, after these trigger laws,
after more and more cases
where women were so subjugated,
I wrote my Testament outlining these injustices.
I went to bookstores, bars, FM radio interviews,
even cafés in some of the most repressive states
in these United States, told my story,
and I thought I was making a difference.
I thought I could write it all down,
put it all in a book, put it on a shelf,
and feel like I’ve accomplished something.
But, have I.
I can share the news of what these laws have done
to people of all genders, races, and classes.
Then what.
Just sharing the news of the offenses
when they cannot reach the ears
of those who choose to not listen,
this makes me ask what progress have I made.
If we protest, and no one is there to hear it,
then what are we accomplishing,
writing until our fountain pens run dry,
scratching until we lose our fingernails,
until our fingertips are sore and bloody
to uncover these truths
and scratch out the error of their ways,
or screaming our protests out into the wind
until we feel our voices are all but lost.
How are we making a difference.
I know I keep asking questions,
but my futility in getting answers
forces me to end my questions with periods
and these questions become statements of fact.
So, after all I’ve seen,
and after all the changes that have happened,
with more pronounced and more violent laws,
and seeing the real effect of the “execution”
of these “pro-life” laws... when “pro-life”
is the most ironic term I’ve ever heard:
their stance doesn’t support life and only
represses half the population instead...
But, after seeing these changes,
I am loath to say
that even though they took our tights away,
our only choice is to fight to take it back,
any way we know how.
I’ve seen the people rioting,
I’ve seen the protests,
I’ve seen the marches
with people holding posters high in the air,
I’ve seen the articles,
I’ve seen the books,
and it still seems, after all this time,
that our resistance is futile,
but, what choice do we have.
Because, we can’t give up.
Who knows... Maybe someone,
someday,
will eventually listen.
1 https://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/commentary/2022-05-04-few-words-on-abortion.php
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Ohio_child-rape_and_Indiana_abortion_case
3 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brittany-watts-the-ohio-woman-charged-with-a-felony-after-a-miscarriage-talks-shock-of-her-arrest/
4 https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/constitutional-amendments-amendment-9-enumerated-rights-people
5 https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/articles/amendment-xiv/clauses/701
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