It’s September 2018 and there are men screaming at feminists on Twitter about how women have equal rights, and that we are just whiny babies. I have run out of energy to defend my views because I feel like a broken record every time I say that women often face adversity, harassment, and unequal treatment compared to their male counterparts.
Right now, I can have my feminist views, and the men screaming on Twitter can have theirs, and we can agree to disagree. But, if Judge Brett Kavanaugh takes his place on the supreme court, it’s not just a difference in views anymore — it’s the very real possibility that women’s rights will be rolled back.
Even though Lisa Blatt stated that since “the Presidency and the Senate are in Republican hands, Judge Kavanaugh is the best choice that liberals could reasonably hope for in these circumstances”, I am still afraid.
A few of my close friends have had abortions. Some for financial reasons, some for mental health reasons, and some just because they weren’t ready to bring a child into this world. Right now, as scary and taboo as that choice is, it is still a choice they have the right to make. If Judge Kavanaugh is confirmed to the Supreme Court, and he casts the decisive vote that will overturn Roe v. Wade, women may not be able to make this choice safely anymore.
Women’s Marches have been full of signs that state that “we refuse to go back to coat hanger abortions”, or that we refuse to go back to only having access to unsafe and unsanitary abortions, and it never occurred to me how easily this could happen until the appointment of Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
Whether one morally agrees with abortion or not, it is not their right to be able to make a choice for other women — to force these women into having unsafe abortions or carrying a child they do not want or cannot take care of. People’s “pro-life” politics often end once the baby is born. No one cares about the mother.
No one cares about the child anymore. If they need welfare, suddenly they’re mooching off the system, and people are saying “don’t have kids if you can’t afford to raise them”, but if the option to safely terminate the pregnancy is revoked, what choice do women have?
They can either care for a child that they do not want and cannot take care of; they can put the child up for adoption, or they can have an unsafe abortion that could lead to not only their death but the death of their unborn fetus, which defeats the purpose of overturning Roe v. Wade anyway, and that’s what scares me—women may die as a direct result of the choices this man makes as a lifetime appointee of the Supreme Court, and, if my personal experience with people who believe in this conservative rhetoric counts for anything, his supporters will say they deserved it.
