By Sean Yoes, AFRO Baltimore Editor, syoes@afro.com
“Our laws make law impossible; our liberties destroy all freedom; our property is organized robbery; our morality is an impudent hypocrisy; our wisdom is administered by inexperienced or malexperienced dupes; our power is wielded by cowards or weaklings; and our honour false in all its point. I am an enemy of the existing order for good reasons…”
-Preface to Major Barbara, by George Bernard Shaw
This is a true story.
A few years ago I met a young woman with sparkling eyes, a dazzling smile and a magnetic personality. At the time, she had a whip smart 12-year son, a charismatic, handsome boy. And that boy loves his mother.
Subsequently, I saw a photo of them, mother and son gazing at each other; the love between the two unconditional, unbreakable.
Sean Yoes (Courtesy Photo)
Tragically, every time the mother looks upon her son’s face, she sees the countenance of the man who raped her more than a decade ago, technically her son’s father. Despite the circumstances of her pregnancy, she chose to have her baby.
Thank God she did, thank God she had the choice.
It may seem antithetical to make the case for upholding Roe v. Wade with the story of my friend who made the choice to have her son, but it is not. The point is not the choice that she made, the point is she had the right to make a choice.
However, there are 25 White men in Alabama that want to make sure she and millions of other women across America don’t have a choice in what they do with their bodies. Those Republican Alabama lawmakers crafted legislation that makes it all but illegal for a woman to have an abortion under any circumstances, short of the life of the mother being in jeopardy. After a volatile and at times, a surreal and absurd debate, the legislation, which also calls for abortion providers to be jailed for up to 99 years was signed into law by Gov. Kay Ivey last week.
The draconian and potentially deadly actions by the Alabama legislature triggered a seemingly choreographed series of legislative actions across the nation aimed at severely restricting the reproductive rights of millions of American women.
Their goal is clear, to overturn Roe.
So-called “pro-life” zealots have been methodically attempting to chip away at abortion laws around the country, biding their time for this moment. And their moment came when Donald John Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States.
It has been well documented that Trump, prior to dying his hair blonde and publicly taking on the mantle of White nationalism, was a pro-choice, liberal Democrat, who traveled in the company of other high profile liberal Democrats.
But, in recent years Trump took on the mantle of king of the Birthers, prior to descending the escalator of Trump Tower June 16, 2015, beginning the catastrophic campaign that led to his ascendancy to the White House. During his brutish candidacy Trump fully shed his liberal skin and pledged to as president supply the Supreme Court with conservative judges who would overturn Roe. White Evangelicals finally had their man in the grotesque form of a man who once bragged on tape that he could “grab them by the p—y,” with impunity.
Yes, their goal is to overturn Roe, but their ultimate goal is to control women’s bodies.
Pro-life is a dubious moniker wielded like a cudgel by those like the 25 White men in Alabama, who I suspect are painfully and fearfully aware of the fact that White Americans will be in the minority in less than 50 years.
The truth is everybody is pro-life, because everybody really wants to live. The world would be a better place if we were all really pro-woman.
Sean Yoes is the AFRO’s Baltimore editor and author of Baltimore After Freddie Gray: Real Stories From One of America’s Great Imperiled Cities.
