Independence Day? Texas controls my womb.
When in the course of human events we find ourselves backsliding into somebody’s fun-house version of progress, when our hard-fought equal station is less equal than the day before, when we’re governed by people who deprive us of rights without our consent, thanks to the political chicanery known as gerrymandering, we must, as the forefathers wrote, submit these truths to a candid world.
Here are the truths, candid world.
Women in 2022 are not paid equally for equal work. We’re charged more for everything from disposable razors to mortgages. In states such as Texas, we are taxed each month for tampons and pads. We are underrepresented in Congress and on Wall Street.
We are more likely to endure rape, domestic violence and workplace harassment. Even if we earn as much or more than our male spouses, we’re often still stuck with the majority of housework.
And now, in roughly half the states in the nation, millions of women have lost control of their own bodies, their own reproductive health care, their own destinies after the Supreme Court overturned the case that ensured the constitutional right to abortion. Today, it’s abortion rights and if you listen to Justice Clarence Thomas, tomorrow it could be birth control and same-sex marriage.
This Independence Day, I’ll be thinking a little harder about what that word really means. Yes, there are a great many freedoms we enjoy in this country along with a standard of living that’s the envy of most nations.
Last week, many of us felt our “equal station” suddenly move beneath our feet. One day we had a right. The next day it was gone. A decision as intimate, physically fraught as childbirth was handed over to a conservative Legislature dominated by men who have never so much as endured monthly menstrual cramps, let alone the life-altering, body-morphing journey of bearing a child.
As a woman, an American and a Texan, I keep asking a question in my head: how can I be equal when my womb — legally — is subjugated to the whims of a governmental authority?
Those immortal words in America’s first founding document — life, liberty, pursuit of happiness — what do they mean now for a Texas woman who has been raped and finds herself legally required to carry a child born of violence or incest? The rarity of those instances does not give any politician cause to disregard them.
