The United States Supreme Court just overturned
Roe v Wade and people are mourning their own
bodies while others celebrate. The only sense I can
make is that line: "you're beating with a book everyone
the book told you to love," but then I remember that
Jesse Lacey groomed two teenage girls and I remember
that we were probably the same age when my best friend
was groomed by her high school internship supervisor and
she told me he was just so lonely and his wife was cheating
on him until she found out he had kids and maybe the age
gap was more canyon than creek. And then I remember
our religion group project on abortion when I looked my
former-preacher-now-teacher in the eye and asked him
if he was sure it was always wrong. Read him the article
I found about the little nine-year old girl forced to carry
the spawn of incest. Read him the words she said when
asked how she felt about having a baby:
"Will I have to share my toys?"
He told me it would still be a sin.
He slashed our final grade and any tenuous thread
I believed connected faith and morality. It would
take another year before I would learn that my body
produced natural lubricant when sexually aroused,
probably another three before I learned what a clitoris
was, five more before realizing it's normal for women
to feel sexually aroused. I learned all of these things
in bedrooms from nice boys who knew more about
my body than I did and what if they hadn't been nice?
Would I even know how to judge? Do I now? And all
I can think is how much my body has had to rely on
the niceness of men when my daughter asks me:
"What are you thinking about?" I'm thinking thank god
you live in a country with the right to abortion (for now).
A country with decent sex-ed. Thank god your daddy
is nice. Thank god you were born to a family who will
teach you so you don't have to rely on the capricious
charity of men. But then I remember that I don't owe my
gratitude to a deity who can drown his misbehaving children
and somehow retain the right to condemn a person for
deciding not to have them in the first place. Instead
I give her the sharpest weapon I have.
Instead, I give her the truth.
Amy Notdorft 