Reject the Premise
I have compiled a preliminary and ever-expanding list of recommended reading for the intersectional feminist-minded. Sometimes it’s difficult to know where to turn when self-educating so I hope what you find is helpful.
Let’s cure a pound of patriarchy, shall we?
We must reject the premise:
You have no right to my body.
You have no right to my pregnancy.
You and your god may have whatever relationship you like, but do not involve me in it.
I recently read The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America by Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer. It was published a couple of years ago but since I have spent more than a decade advocating for reproductive justice, yelling at the top of my lungs that Roe is falling but no one is listening, it’s a bit triggering to get into the Monday morning quarterbacking of it all. That said, I found this book to be an important contribution to the world in the understanding of how we got here. Understanding the path taken can help guide us out of this mess.
I listened to the book while embarking upon a variety of home projects and household tasks but it wasn’t until the end that it became blatantly clear: no one ever rejected the premise. I mean, not “no one,” obviously, but no one with enough power rejected the premise. SCOTUS never rejected the premise. Congress never rejected the premise. Presidents never rejected the premise. Adding insult to injury, the Constitution actually DOES reject the premise, but that means absolutely nothing if not enforced and upheld (I’m fairly certain that is indeed an oath sworn by people in power such as SCOTUS, Congress, and presidents).
What is the premise? The premise is that my body is someone else’s property. The premise is that the State has a right to my pregnancy, and therefore decision-making power that usurps my own. Over the past decades there has been constant debate of “when can we ban abortion? 20 weeks? 18 weeks? 6 weeks?” It was always a question of when during a pregnancy that abortion can be banned, and never IF there is an occasion to ban abortion during a pregnancy. Is there such an occasion? No. At no point during a pregnancy is there a time when the pregnant person is not in full control of their own pregnancy. Using different language this is the actual question posed: “When is it permissible for the state to take over the pregnancy?” The fascist conservative movement deliberately posed 15 weeks as the answer because they knew it would be challenged and thus had a very good chance of being challenged all the way up to SCOTUS. Considering the composition of SCOTUS, they felt very confident that Roe would fall. And fall it did.
The distraction of “when” takes focus away from the question of “if,” and IF is the question we should always be asking. IF is the premise. Yet we live in a world where “if” is a given—“if” isn’t even raised as a question because the working order deems it irrelevant. It’s not if the government gets to decide when I lose autonomy, but rather when does my autonomy transfer to the government. When I am 15 weeks pregnant? 6 weeks? 20 weeks? In states where abortion is illegal, the answer is the moment of the positive pregnancy test. If this sounds like something out of the colonizer and slave trade days of this country, that’s not coincidence: this is the same Christian colonizer fascist playbook. Only the targets change. History teaches us that when Christians stole land from Indigenous peoples in, and brought kidnapped African peoples to, the Western Hemisphere they did so with violence done in the name of “saving savages from themselves,” to paraphrase the racist and fascist notions of the time. People who would not submit and swear fealty to the “one and only true god” (Christian deity, Jesus, etc) were violently beaten into submission if not actually punished by death. Today, in addition to the constant and continued marginalization of Black, Brown and Indigenous people of color, they target cisgender (cis) women and girls, transgender people, and anyone else who isn’t a wealthy cisgender, heterosexual (cis het) white guy. Be mindful that it wasn’t long ago (before 1974) that women did not have full financial independence from men, something unfathomable even to me. So they mean what they say about “making America great again.”1 Great for cis het white men, not so great for anyone else. All the while using the justification “because god said so” and yet no evidence of that exists.
It is a kick to the face that those who would own my body would do so while invoking a moral higher ground. Do you ever notice that the ones insisting they know what’s best for me and my life are the ones with the hubris to know “god’s plan” and “what god wants” and doesn’t want, etc. It is also highly convenient that “god’s plan” is for them to shame me and force me to remain pregnant against my will. What kind of god is that to worship? Just consider the history of atrocities done “in god’s name” over the centuries and millennia. Today we are seeing a rise of more of the same, and yet this is not new.
Too long the “freedom of religion” has been interpreted, practiced, and upheld by law as the “freedom to oppress others with religion.” One of the most notable federal regulations that has come into play in the 21st century in this regard is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA). In a nutshell, the RFRA is supposed to protect individuals’ abilities to exercise religious freedom unburdened by federal regulations. An example is the government banning use of an herb in a religious ceremony. The RFRA was used to protect religious use of this herb and the government was told to go kick rocks [1]. However, depending on the interpretation, as with all laws and regulations, what was intended as a good thing can be used for bad. Just look at Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, LLC: the ruling said that the employer, Hobby Lobby, was not required to comply with the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The ACA required health insurance to cover the costs of contraception, but because contraception was against the Hobby Lobby employers’ religion, the RFRA was used to deem they were not required to pay for their employees’ contraception in their health insurance. Keep in mind: corporations “are people” and so are afforded the same civil rights *mind exploding* [2]. Maybe you, like me, are not a lawyer but maybe you, like me, also see that what is at stake is not religious freedom but rather freedom to religiously oppress. Well, friendly reader, we are not alone as all 4 of the dissenting Justices made this argument: providing employee health insurance is a commercial activity, not a religious practice. Given this central point, I do not understand how this case was not dismissed in a lower court but, again, I am not a lawyer. In the end, the 5-4 decision favored the freedom to religiously oppress others.
“The Court, I fear, has ventured into a minefield by holding that commercial enterprises… can opt out of any law (saving only tax laws) they judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs.”
— Justice Ginsburg, dissenting Burwell v. Hobby Lobby
If your religion “doesn’t want to pay for” health care, maybe don’t offer to pay for employees’ health insurance? If your religion says you can’t use contraception, don’t become a pharmacist who denies others access to contraception. There are options that don’t burden me with your religious fanaticism.
This brings us around to the Dobbs decision that is riddled with religious hubris exemplary of SCOTUS precedent. Of course there is no religiosity spelled outright, but understanding historical context makes it clear. The ideas that “life begins at conception” and “abortion is morally wrong” are derived heavily from Christian religious beliefs. Though supposedly irrelevant, 5 of the 9 Justices are affiliated with Catholicism. I argue: it shows. Justice Alito cowardly asserts that abortion rights are not outlined in the US Constitution are therefore not protected. Huh. Pregnancy isn’t outlined in the Constitution either, so that means it can’t be regulated, right? Alito also asserts that our nation should rely on laws enacted in the 19th century—you know, the century during most of which people did not know that soap should be used for hygiene. “Protecting innocent life” has been declared a state interest, and yet (as I have discussed) the term “innocent” isn’t defined. Again, it is not a far leap to understand that in this Christian context it is understood as a pregnancy. Please note: there is no apparent state interest in protecting the innocent life of the pregnant person, which strikes me as the greater moral wrong. So I got curious and asked the question of the vast amount of information on the Internet: what does it look like to lay out state regulations asserting “an interest” in protecting a pregnancy vs protecting the pregnant person. I know you will be shocked to learn that there is a substantially higher amount of regulations protecting the fetus and not a whole lot dedicated to protecting the pregnant person.
It would stand to reason that protecting the pregnant person would protect the fetus by extension. But, see, they don’t want pregnant people protecting themselves by having abortions. Much better for them to risk their health and lives against their will. Forced gestation and birth has been declared a moral high ground. Yep. But I will concede that it is difficult to protect the pregnancy and the pregnant person at the same time and equally—and that is because PREGNANCY CANNOT BE EQUAL TO THE PREGNANT PERSON. Instead of opting to preserve the dignity and respect of pregnant people, they have opted to strip pregnant people of autonomy and basic human rights in order to uphold a pregnancy as more important. They’ve declared “state interest” and we let them. They’ve prioritized the argument of “when” (eg 15 weeks) while rejecting the question of “if” and we let them. It isn’t even a question of an absence of an assertion, as Alito’s argues. Well, SCOTUS, the Constitution says in plain English that there is NO RIGHT TO OUR BODIES. Did y’all miss that day of law school?
We must REJECT THE PREMISE that there is a right to our bodies.
We must REJECT THE PREMISE that there is a right to our pregnancies.
We must REJECT THE PREMISE that anyone else has ownership over us.
I am currently reading Stony the Road by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and he quotes Frederick Douglass’ speech “Lessons of the Hour” regarding “the Negro Problem.” [3] In short it is the time after the Civil War commonly known as Reconstruction but the context is the failure of Reconstruction and the rise of the Jim Crow South in maintaining racial segregation and the oppression of Black people. This quote struck me as a brilliant depiction of what was happening with racial inequality but my brain also saw it could be applied to what we see with gender inequality, especially through a reproductive justice lens. Certain concepts could be applied to a reproductive justice framework, such as “Southern origin” becoming “religious origin” and the bias being against pregnant people by those who would control them and revoke their autonomy. And this is evergreen: “THE DEVICE IS NOT NEW.” Douglass’ words ring as true today regarding continued racial injustices and most certainly apply to other systems of oppression:
“It is a formula of Southern origin, and has a strong bias against the negro. It handicaps his cause with all the prejudice known to exist against him. It has been accepted by the good people of the North, as I think, without investigation. It is a crafty invention and is in every way, worthy of its inventors…
The device is not new. It is an old trick. It has been oft repeated, and with similar purpose and effect. For truth, it gives us falsehood. For innocence, it gives us guilt. It removes the burden of proof from the old master class, and imposes it upon the negro. It puts upon a race a work which belongs to the nation. It belongs to the craftiness often displayed by disputants, who aim to make the worse appear the better reason. It gives bad names to good things, and good names to bad things…
I repeat, and my contention is, that this negro problem formula lays the fault at the door of the negro, and removes it from the door of the white man, shields the guilty, and blames the innocent. Makes the negro responsible and not the nation.”
-Frederick Douglass c. 1894 “Lessons of the Hour (excerpt)”, as quoted on page 90 of Stony the Road by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Citations:
1. Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente União do Vegetal; Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal, 546 U.S. 418 (2006).
2. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission; Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010).
3. Gates, H. L., Jr. (2019). Stony the road: Reconstruction, white supremacy, and the rise of Jim Crow. Penguin Press.
1 Other world leaders that have campaigned on the slogan “make [country] great again” include Ronald Reagan and Adolf Hitler. Do with that information what you will.
