More Than An Abortion Ban: The Rippling Devastation of Losing Roe v. Wade

This is not just legislation or politics, these are our lives, our futures, our basic rights to be seen as equally human.

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I want to be coherent, but I’m not sure I know how anymore. The words that rise up within me don’t feel like enough. My feelings crash over me, violent waves in an ocean of incredulous tears. Rage. A twisted stomach. A fire in my heart. Shock (but not surprise, not really). Despair. Disappointment. Confusion. Disbelief.

At the same time, I feel impotent in my devastation. I know I could research, I could provide lists of statistics and logic and real women with real experiences and tell you stories of ectopic pregnancies, and 11-year-old rape victims, and devastating choices. But none of that matters.

Layla now lives in a country where she will grow up with less rights than her mother and grandmother. In a place where her second-class citizenship has been enshrined by the highest court — her life deemed less important than her potential to carry a pregnancy.

And while it’s undeniable that the most marginalized among us will be the most impacted by abortion bans — exponentially so, in fact — that does not mean that everyone else is safe. No one is.

Jessica Valenti

Our lives, deemed less important. Less important than we already were, with wage gaps, and abysmal maternal mortality rates, and our unacknowledged pain. With a growing list of people and things who have more rights than a pregnant woman: gun owners, rapists, corpses.

This is not how it’s supposed to work.

This Isn’t Just About Abortions

Here’s the thing, it’s not just about abortions. It’s not just about the red states, the places with trigger laws where women with scheduled appointments are being turned away, the women who will die without access to the medical care that would save their lives.

A panel of the highest judges in the land has just told us, point blank, that we are second-class citizens. This isn’t a political issue. It’s not policy. It’s morality. It’s a gross removal of basic…