Blog for Choice – There, but for Roe...

Today a bitch celebrates 36 years of Roe v Wade. I hope to see my fellow St. Louisans at the Ethical Society on Clayton Rd. (6p-9p) at our local anniversary event (hint, hint and triple hint).

The Blog for Choice suggested topic this year asks what my top pro-choice priority is for President Obama and the new Congress. That’s a hard one since this bitch has many a top pro-choice priority of our new government – reform our global HIV/AIDS policy, pass and fund the Prevention First Act, return comprehensive sex education to our nation’s schools and reform health care…and a whole lot more.

But a question asked by RH Reality Check caught my attention – what Roe does and doesn’t do.

I’ll take the second portion of that one and dive the hell on in!

Roe v Wade doesn’t make everyone give a damn.

It doesn’t guarantee that we will get active in our communities…live our values…take a stand...lobby or march or write our legislators.

The existence of Roe v Wade doesn’t automatically make pro-choice activists out of everyone.

It does, however, give those of us who do give a damn something to fight for…to build on…and to defend.

But oh how I wish Roe had magical powers.

Because beyond the legal challenges and policy battles are the real people who too often feel the harsh impact of all that shit.

There are the teens denied access…the poor denied choice…lesbians and gays denied parenting rights…women denied meds…and thus Roe v Wade is denied fulfillment.

If Roe did possess magic it would be able to make individuals connect their lives with the reproductive justice movement…their pharmacy experience with a pharmacy denial bill…their infertility treatment with those refused access because of sexual orientation…their choice with the insult that is a coercion bill…their limited income with those denied choice because of the limitations of their bank account.

Then there'd be a greater appreciation that there, but for Roe v Wade, go us all.

But for a movement...but for those who are active in it...but for those who will become active today...and the others who will lift their fists tomorrow and proudly declare that they are pro-chocie activists in the struggle for reproductive justice.

But for January 22, 1973.

But for Roe.