Just what we need: Another cis White man chimes in on Roe v. Wade
It’s been a rough couple of weeks. As if the last three years haven’t been enough, in one term (and largely in the last weeks), the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) issued, as the New York Times described it, “far-reaching decisions that will transform American life.”
They overturned Roe v. Wade and stripped Americans with uteri of autonomy over their own bodies, despite 50 years of established judicial precedent and the beliefs, ethical discernment, and needs of a clear majority of US citizens.
They stripped the federal government of its authority to address climate change, even though the ruling had to revive a moot case to do so.
They dramatically expanded the role of religion in public life, brushing aside the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause and the clear evidence of a radical minority’s desire to implement an Evangelical theocracy and laying the foundation for religious apartheid.
And, in the wake of terrible mass shootings and on the eve of another, they interpreted the Second Amendment to guarantee individuals a right to carry guns, despite the actual original text and context of the Amendment or the history and currently-being-lived experience of the incidence of gun violence.
Across the board, the vulnerable and marginalized just got more vulnerable, further marginalized. The foundation for legal protections for the poor, for people of color, for queer people, for people with minority political beliefs, for people with physical, developmental, and cognitive disabilities, and for any who find themselves facing a “good guy with a gun” just got shaken, quaken. While all of these rulings regress to some extent, the overturn of Roe is an especially devastating shift, and it demonstrates that “established precedent” is, apparently for six sitting Justices who otherwise (or at least conveniently) deride moral relativism in service of originalist interpretation, a relative and flexible term.
It certainly is a relative term for five sitting Justices; otherwise, their responses insisting on deference to the Supreme Court’s tradition of stare decisis and the “established precedent” of Roe v. Wade that they articulated during their Senate nomination hearings were blatant lies. Justices Coney Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch echoed now-Chief Justice Roberts’ clear statement that “It’s settled as a precedent of the court.” Alito was more coy, citing a vague commitment to stare decisis, but none of us should be surprised by Thomas’ vote and supporting opinion. When questioned about the precedence of Roe, he cited his empathy and compassion for women “subjected to the agony of an environment” in which women in dire straits only had access to unsafe illegal abortions. “On a personal level,” he explained, “certainly, I am very, very pained by that. I think any of us would be,” but he wouldn’t answer the question of precedence because “I think it would undermine my ability to sit in an impartial way on an important case like that.” At that moment, somewhere in the Senate chamber, Mitch McConnell squirmed with glee, seeing the first brick laid on his road to NeoCon Utopia, or what others might call “fascism.”
It’s easy for me to process this news by jumping to the “big picture,” to the abstract. I’m eager to identify the cultural ramifications that we can anticipate from these rulings and to wonder how this moment in American history will nurture or poison the generation, but by doing so I’m avoiding the very personal, very direct impact of these rulings. When it comes to Roe, I am twice removed from relevance in the debate. My cisgender male body isn’t going to get pregnant, and I’m not getting anyone pregnant any time soon. Or ever. So, in short and what too many cis men forget, it’s not about me. That said, it does impact and involve me, and it requires my response because it directly impacts — because it has already impacted — people I love.
When I was 14, a friend confided in me that she’d gotten pregnant in 8th grade and that her boyfriend (a classmate) punched her in the stomach repeatedly to abort it. I fixated with horror on the image of my friend being savagely brutalized and degraded, but after sharing this secret with me her face revealed relief and her shoulders relaxed.
When I was 16, a friend shared with me that he would be taking his girlfriend to a clinic a few days later. Neither of them felt safe talking to their parents about it or asking other family members for help. They concocted plans that explained their absence for most of the day without prompting questions and that, they hoped, would give her enough time to recover. Explaining the situation, he was stoic and purposeful. Even at 16, he assumed the role of the dutiful partner who was ready to step up and be strong. He asked me if he was doing the right thing, but I couldn’t focus on anything but the pain in his eyes. “I don’t know,” I said as his lip started to quiver, “I’m not even sure that’s the right question to ask right now…but are you ok? Is she?”
When I was 23, while a handful of us sat around drinking a bottle of wine, a friend described her trip to Planned Parenthood the previous week. “He was great,” she said, looking at and referring to her gay best friend who sat on the couch next to her. “Held my hand the whole time.” I’d always admired their rapport — they’d be gushing about each other one minute and rolling their eyes the next. When one’s mood sank, the other’s lifted. But this time, when she paused and her eyes darkened, he didn’t immediately bubble with quips to bring her back up to the surface. He smiled a bit, maybe embarrassed by this revelation of tenderness. His eyes welled, but before any of us could attempt to affirm or console him, he recovered by brushing it off and cracking a joke. I don’t remember what he said — I only remember the darkness in her eyes, the tears in his, the heaviness in the room, and the awareness that, with ears, a bottle of wine, and a safe space away from the world, the rest of us could help them carry it that night.
When I was 35, a friend told me about the difficult decision she made to terminate a pregnancy, facing the intersection of a variety of complicating factors and pressure from her medical team. It’s a choice she never imagined she would need to make, but in sharing her experience with me, she wasn’t asking if it was the right thing to do. She was — she is — smart, thoughtful, discerning, and critically conscious of the practical, ethical, and personal impacts of her decision. I was most worried that some people close to her would struggle with it, but I was (delightfully) surprised to hear that she faced no emotional backlash, no direct judgment. Those folx, even the most pro-life among them, recognized that she was not the choice she made and that caring for her in this moment was more important than dropping a package of guilt, remorse, and what ifs in her hands.
For the record, I don’t open conversations with a prompt like, “So, has anyone terminated a pregnancy lately? Wanna talk about it?” Instead, something about me made these people feel safe. I think it’s my own particular personality, a mix of sometimes-too-much empathy and lots of practice in listening. I don’t discount that my sexual identity was part of why I was invited into these moments — at some level, I think these folx recognized that I had no stake in the game, that I could be more detached because I would probably never find myself with such a choice. It’s a reasonable assumption, too, that a gay man or anyone whose sexual or gender identities are marginalized and degraded by the mainstream (or by a vocal, disproportionately powerful, and radical minority) might understand what it’s like to be forced to make a choice that one shouldn’t have to make, what it’s like to be treated as second class and risk demotion to third or fourth or risk persecution and even prosecution should the truth surface, what it’s like to see your humanity on trial in courts, from pulpits, and on the nightly news.
Unfortunately, gay men don’t have a great track record for standing up for women. Casual misogyny is an unfortunate component of gay culture, and in moments of social crisis we gays are pretty good at finding our spotlight (and pushing women off stage). I’ve heard lots of buzz in the last few weeks that the overturn of Roe puts a target on other precedents that established rights and protections for marginalized groups. “They’re coming for us next” is the common message, and while that may be true, the jump to worrying about “our” rights once again pushes aside the concerns of women. That’s easy to do when a person doesn’t believe he has a stake in the matter, but here’s the thing: we do have a stake in the matter. We know what it’s like.
I don’t know what it’s like to be a woman, but I do know what it’s like when others, especially others with authority and power, claim ownership over my identity and tell me what to do and avoid with my body.
I know what it’s like when my identity is on the ballot.
I know what it’s like when others invoke psychological or religious arguments against my own self-knowledge and lived experience.
I know what it’s like when faced with a choice to let go of my dignity or to preserve and nurture it.
I know what it’s like to be hated just for making the choice to be happy.
I know what it’s like to be hated or degraded just for being born.
I know that these experiences lay a foundation for solidarity with women. And I know that when the dignity of women’s lives is degraded, we and the generations that follow suffer. So the opposite must be true, no? When the dignity of women’s lives is uplifted and protected (but not pedestaled), we’re all better off. The goal might be abstract — transforming into a culture that is characterized by peace, justice, equity, and inclusion, that protects instead of denigrates folx on the margins — but the starting point is very, very real: building strong and just relationships, building stronger and more inclusive communities, and cisgender heterosexual White men shutting the hell up.
