Tag Archive for: Wendy Davis

Hang in There, Baby, Change is Coming

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I know a lot of folks who have been feeling what I call “churn.” For me, that is the sensation of being in the middle of a giant wave as it curls, completely underwater and surrounded by movement and sound and sand rolling all around you.  So much turmoil – not all of it bad – and the only thing to do is wait it out, sit tight until the water and debris have crashed over the top of you and you can see clearly once again.  I have heard it attributed to Mercury in retrograde, and I know folks that subscribe to that belief. I honestly don’t know what it is, but I do know that in the last year or so people I know and love have experienced a lot of big changes in their lives, felt huge emotional swings as they follow uprisings in other countries, outbreaks of illness, seeming epidemics of gun and sexual violence, and giant leaps forward for social justice like the swell of marriage equality laws and folks like Wendy Davis and Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders standing up to speak their truth loudly.  I have watched loved ones experience big ups and downs in their personal lives and sometimes it feels as though this wave will never break on the shore, but I think it is imminent.  I have felt optimistic for a long time that all of this churn is heading toward something monumental, some sort of breakthrough for all of us that will eventually offer a clean slate of beachfront upon which we can begin to rebuild. I see strong, smart people working hard to create peace in ways big and small, parents having difficult conversations with their kids and kids stepping up to the challenge.  I see a genuine openness to have lively debates about personal freedoms and community values.  The pushback is fierce from those who are comfortable with the status quo, but that is to be expected and I think it’s a good sign.

Last week when Gloria Steinem spoke to the group at Ghost Ranch, she put it in a way I had never considered before, but I quickly copied her words down in my notebook. They have been bouncing off the walls of my skull ever since like that little pixelated square in the video game of my childhood, Pong.

Gloria said that she thinks it is informative to look at our civilizations in the context of growing up, that if we are afraid to look back historically and have honest conversations about what happened to us in our ‘childhood,’ we are doomed to repeat the same patterns over and over again in the future. In my opinion, we are at a crucial time in our country’s history where we are confronting those patterns and really talking about those things. We are speaking up about campus domestic violence, recognizing the toll that gun violence is taking on our families and communities, looking at the ways that we have marginalized and oppressed entire groups of people over the last hundred years. This churn is stirring up every grain of sand and holding it to the light for examination and the result is messy.  Perhaps the most powerful part of Gloria’s observation concerns the research that shows that women who are victims of domestic violence are most likely to be killed or seriously injured just as they are escaping or just after they have escaped.  She likened this recent uprising of conversation and activism around domestic violence and women’s rights in the United States to our culture readying itself to break free. We are sitting in a precarious spot, in the middle of this giant wave, and we have to remain very aware as we wait for it to break.  We cannot stop now, even though we may be afraid, because we are about to shift into a new place of liberation.  I hope you’ll hang in there for the ride with me.

Have Texas Republicans Gone Mad?

I have refrained from posting about much of the recent hoopla happening in Texas around the 20-week abortion ban (as it is known, although that is a woefully inadequate title, since it has much farther-reaching implications), mostly because it is exhausting to follow the speed at which changes occur. However, I also have stayed away from it because I know that most of my readers are well-aware of my position on this issue and probably don’t need to hear any more about it from me.

That said, does anyone else feel as though we have dropped into another dimension entirely with some of the news coming out of Texas? Like a Monty Python or Simpsons-as-reality show dimension?  For the most part, I try to understand the position of someone who doesn’t believe the same as I do. For the most part, I do my best to put myself in their shoes and try to figure out why they might feel the way they do.  For the most part, I can assert my beliefs without disparaging or belittling those whose beliefs oppose mine.  And I certainly don’t intend to start saying nasty things about the politicians in Texas who are so forcefully pushing this bill, but I do wonder whether they can appreciate the absurdity to which they have resorted?

When a woman is forcibly removed from a hearing on the legislation, where women testifying about their painful personal histories with unintended pregnancies were routinely shamed and slandered by the opposition for pointing out that the “doctor/legislator” running the hearing was an opthalmologist and not an OB/GYN or even a family doctor, things are getting a little crazy.

When taxpayer dollars are utilized to confiscate “feminine hygiene products” at the state capitol building in advance of the vote, but a separate line was offered for those who wished to carry concealed weapons inside, I wonder what the goal is here.  Any woman who happened to be menstruating and wanted to enter was forced to play a little Russian Roulette by discarding her tampons and sanitary napkins at the door and hoping she wouldn’t need a little extra protection before she left.  I’m pretty sure nobody’s going to get harmed with a stray tampon, but an errant (or passionately discharged) bullet could certainly do some harm.

When a politician can sit and say, with a straight face, that sexual education, properly administered by trained educators, leads to horny teens who have unprotected sex, I worry about the future of America.

I can’t figure out whether these lawmakers are so frightened by the uprising they spurred by trying to shut the likes of Wendy Davis (as the mouthpiece for thousands of Texas women who were not allowed to speak on their own behalf) up that they have lost their minds.  Are they so smack in the middle of a fight-or-flight response that they feel like any fight will do? Rational or not? Or have they convinced themselves of their own arguments and they are just as baffled by the women and men who are vigorously and loudly opposing them all over the nation?  Whatever it is, I certainly hope the momentum continues for this fight, that there are honest folks out there who continue to report on the ridiculous lengths to which these rich, white men will go to deny choice to women and girls, and that they eventually get shut down in the next Texas election.  This is one time where I can honestly say that I have lost all ability to understand where the other side is coming from. They are speaking a language I’ve never heard before and don’t care to learn, if learning it means I’ll make no sense to compassionate, rational human beings.

A Testament to Trust

I will admit to watching very little of Senator Wendy Davis’ single-handed filibuster of SB5, a bill that would have seriously restricted access to abortion in the state of Texas. I started to watch it, fascinated by the courage and conviction of a person who would consent to standing without leaning, eating, taking bathroom breaks, or sitting for 13 hours to prove a point.  I felt a certain kinship with someone who is so passionate about women’s reproductive rights that she would endure that much discomfort to represent other women in her state and protect their rights.

I had to turn away when she began debating a Republican Senator who also happens to be a doctor on the specifics of the legislation.  While I didn’t disagree with her responses to him, my idealist response rose up like so much bile in my throat with each exchange.  Each time he asked a question I heard my own words in my head:

Come up with all of the provisions you want. Call them what you want – safety measures, viability concerns, procedural details. I don’t care. My position remains the same: medical decisions belong in the clinic. They ought to be made between a patient and his/her caregiver(s). We don’t tell young men who haven’t fathered children that they can’t have a vasectomy. We don’t tell obese people that they ought (or ought not) to have bariatric surgery. We trust those decisions to be made on a case-by-case basis between the patient and his or her doctor. We trust that the medical professional has the patient’s best interest at heart and that they have been trained properly and that the circumstances are outside of our knowledge. I will not debate ANY abortion legislation with you under ANY circumstances. There is no condition under which I believe health care decisions ought to be made for an entire group of people at once by a legislative body. Period. Full stop. 

It came down to the wire and, at times seemed as though Ms. Davis’ filibuster was all for naught, but the eruption in the gallery prevented the lawmakers from taking a vote and, for today at least, SB5 was defeated.

I woke up relieved and then saw the news on my Facebook page that the Supreme Court had done away with the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8. While neither of these decisions is as sweeping as many marriage equality proponents would like, I feel as though today is a triumph of trust.

The defeat of SB5 means that, at least for now, the majority of women in Texas will be trusted to make their own health care decisions about whether or not to terminate a pregnancy.

The defeat of DOMA and Prop. 8 means that same-sex couples will be trusted to enter in to committed relationships that will be recognized in 13 states.

While I am certain that there is a lot of frantic activity today to mount offensive attacks on women’s rights to choose and marriage equality, for today I will revel in this news.

Hooray for those who would trust individuals to make their own decisions about their own private lives.

Hooray.