On The Vine: Being a person with a uterus in the Heartland
Are you numb?
Unlike before it seems unmistakably real; inevitable even — but it still hurts all the same, no?
Did your world stop turning, your blood boil, your mind go blank? Mine did. I feel numb, but too overly stimulated — inundated? The fervor is fervoring.
Did you read it? The language they used while justifying the impassive raid of women’s rights, and in the process drawing the impressions of question marks around the right to contraception, same-sex intimacy and marriage, and interracial marriage.
I don’t have the words really though, so I’ve invited The Star’s Hannah Wise to share some of hers.
Certainly by now you’ve doom scrolled and seen headline after headline about the leaked draft U.S. Supreme Court decision that could possibly overturn Roe v. Wade and make abortion access a state-by-state decision.
It is impossible to separate the fight over abortion rights from the experience of growing up as a person with a uterus in the Heartland.
I grew up in Wichita, Kansas, the city that many consider to be ground zero to the abortion wars. The political fight over reproductive rights has been a steady hum in the background ever since.
The summer before I was born, Operation Rescue descended upon Wichita’s abortion clinics “flinging themselves under cars, sitting by the hundreds at clinic doorways and blocking women from entering as they read them Scripture,” according to a New York Times report from 1991.
Throughout my childhood, I watched protesters gather outside of Dr. George Tiller’s clinic on East Kellogg with signs that I did not fully understand.
Tiller opened Women’s Health Care in 1975 and performed late-term abortions there until 2009 when Tiller was shot and killed by Scott Roeder. The doctor was murdered inside Reformation Lutheran Church where he was serving as an usher during Sunday services. My high school classmates who attended the church heard the gunshots.
At The University of Kansas, I met people whose lives had been saved by having access to birth control, safe abortions and compassionate medical care. I remember feeling anxious walking into the pharmacy to buy Plan B for the first time. I also remember the love, support and Thai food my friend shared with me afterwards.
I have not had an abortion, but I have no question about what I would do if I were to become pregnant. It is medically unsafe for me to experience pregnancy; the reason why isn’t something you’re entitled to know reading this newsletter. It is simply a fact of my life that I will likely never have biological children and that is OK.
Medical care of any sort is deeply personal. Finding a care team that will support you can be difficult. Appointments can be stressful, anxiety-inducing and traumatic. Affording health care in the United States is an entirely different can of worms. Insurance companies, drug interactions, finances and geographical burdens already dictate what type of treatments are available to patients.
The politics, emotions and stigma around reproductive health make everything about these personal decisions that much more difficult.
There are real systemic issues people in Kansas and Missouri are faced with when it comes to deciding what they will do if they experience pregnancy: high maternal mortality rates, difficulty accessing affordable health care, a lack of affordable housing options, rising food costs, and so much more.
Abortion is certain to continue to be in the news. The Supreme Court will likely decide on Roe v. Wade later this summer. For now, abortions are still legal. There are five clinics in Kansas and Missouri provide abortions of any kind. If you have other questions about abortion rights, our reporters want to hear them.
Thank you for reading, and thank you to Trey for inviting me to write to you this week. I hope that you are all able to find time to take a deep breath in the coming days. Practice empathy. Listen to your neighbors’ stories. Be kind to others and especially to yourself.
Beyond the block
Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights, draft opinion shows
By now you undoubtedly know... Politico’s Josh Gerstein and Alexander Ward first reported the story:
The Supreme Court has voted to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, according to an initial draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito circulated inside the court and obtained by POLITICO.
The draft opinion is a full-throated, unflinching repudiation of the 1973 decision which guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights and a subsequent 1992 decision — Planned Parenthood v. Casey — that largely maintained the right. “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Alito writes.
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” he writes in the document, labeled as the “Opinion of the Court.” “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”...
A George W. Bush appointee who joined the court in 2006, Alito argues that the 1973 abortion rights ruling was an ill-conceived and deeply flawed decision that invented a right mentioned nowhere in the Constitution and unwisely sought to wrench the contentious issue away from the political branches of government.
Alito’s draft ruling would overturn a decision by the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that found the Mississippi law ran afoul of Supreme Court precedent by seeking to effectively ban abortions before viability.
Roe’s “survey of history ranged from the constitutionally irrelevant to the plainly incorrect,” Alito continues, adding that its reasoning was “exceptionally weak,” and that the original decision has had “damaging consequences.”
“The inescapable conclusion is that a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions,” Alito writes.
Read this too while you’re at it...
Around the block
Draft Supreme Court decision would end nearly all abortion in MO, raise stakes of KS vote
Johnathan Shorman and Daniel Desrochers write for The Star:
Abortions in Missouri will become illegal in all but the rarest of circumstances, under a draft U.S. Supreme Court opinion striking down Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that legalized the procedure nationwide.
Missouri passed a law in 2019 that makes abortion almost entirely illegal if Roe is overturned, part of a measure prohibiting abortion after eight weeks of pregnancy that’s currently under legal challenge.
In Kansas, the draft raises the stakes in an upcoming fight at the ballot box over abortion access. Voters will decide on Aug. 2 whether the state constitution protects the right to an abortion.
The explosive leak of the Supreme Court’s draft opinion — authored by Justice Samuel Alito — sent shockwaves across the country when Politico reported its contents on Monday night. The draft, which could change before the court publishes its opinion in June, nevertheless appears to show a majority of justices support returning the matter of abortion to the states.
The consequences in Missouri, where a single clinic in St. Louis performs abortion, would be swift. A Missouri law, under legal challenge, bans abortion in all cases except to save the life of the mother if Roe is struck down. It contains no exceptions for rape or incest.
More from The Star...
What questions do you have about abortion rights in Kansas and Missouri?
‘Fight back’: Abortion rights rally held in KC after leaked Roe v. Wade draft opinion
Only five clinics in Kansas and Missouri provide abortions. Here’s how to access them
If abortion is banned in Missouri, can you travel to Kansas or another state? What to know
How a Kansas City abortion doctor’s fight for liberalization of laws cost him his life
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This story was originally published May 5, 2022 at 3:25 PM.