Sponsored link
Monday, December 9, 2024

Sponsored link

News + PoliticsI was there when Roe died. My heart is shattered.

I was there when Roe died. My heart is shattered.

Some celebrated. I thought of the women I know who have been assaulted and just lost a basic human right.

-

I was outside the Supreme Court the moment Roe v. Wade was overturned. I’ve been sick to my stomach since.

I have nothing to add to the conversation around Roe v. Wade that hasn’t been said more eloquently by someone more qualified. Here are the facts: abortion is now banned, severely limited, and/or criminalized in 22 states. In those states, only safe abortion has been abolished, and in those states, women will die, disproportionately women of color and those below the poverty line. Women will be imprisoned for miscarriages and put on trial for deeply personal, private, and devastating moments of their life. This we know is coming.

I have lived in the DC Beltway through controversial elections, devastating mass shootings, joyful highs of progress, and gut-wrenching lows of seeing it rescinded. When a major news story breaks, people flock to the District to celebrate or grieve together. When I’m home, my reflexive response to massive news is to go process it in DC.

Protests and champagne in the streets of DC

On Friday morning, the day we knew the decision overturning Roe would be released, one of my closest friends and I went to the Supreme Court.

I don’t know what I thought we’d walk in to. I wasn’t prepared for a celebration.

There were pro-choice protestors, wearing green and taking turns pleading through desperate tears, telling their own traumatizing and violent stories to reiterate abortion’s necessity both as a medical procedure and a viable option to anyone able to get pregnant, because pregnancy is nuanced, people are nuanced, and life is complex and heartbreaking already.

The majority of the people on First Street were in abject joy. They held signs depicting gravestones reading “Roe, 1973—2022.” The first chants we could hear were gleefully calling for its head. Many, many young women made up the anti-abortion crowd, some of them women of color. Capitol hill interns (“Hillterns”) flocked in from the next-door Capitol building in awkward suit jackets, visibly trying not to gravitate toward the side they agree with. The media presence was, for once, stronger than police presence (at first). Cameras and reporters swarmed young women jumping up and down in joy and on their knees weeping hopelessly.

At 10:11 AM, the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision was released, and Roe v. Wade was gone. Cheers erupted like a time bomb. Someone popped champagne over the crowd. Those 100 feet away wearing green wasted no time before calling out, “Illegitimate!”

Time was a blur from there. People cried, people rejoiced and gloated. The song “Fuck You” by Lily Allen was blared over the anti-abortion protest’s speakers on repeat (a song whose singer would reprise it with Olivia Rodrigo at the Glastonbury music festival Saturday night, in dedication to the five justices who overturned Roe).

What I couldn’t stop thinking about in that moment was the numerous moments in my 19 years when a woman I love has called me to tell me she’s been sexually assaulted. In that moment, there’s nothing to do but cry with them and sit there in those intense, visceral, indescribable feelings, most poignantly, devastation that nothing you can say or do will help. I’ve helped friends make contingency plans in those scenarios, if, god forbid, they ended up pregnant.

I can’t stop thinking about those phone calls, and what state they came from, and if that state would no longer support her in seeking an abortion in the worst-case scenario. I can’t stop remembering the sound of them weeping in devastation over the phone, feeling helpless and worlds away from them.

My heart was and remains shattered beyond my wildest belief.

JJ Lansing is a Media Studies student at the University of San Francisco.

48 Hills welcomes comments in the form of letters to the editor, which you can submit here. We also invite you to join the conversation on our FacebookTwitter, and Instagram

Featured

Screen Grabs: An Iranian family explodes under authoritarian pressures

Mohammad Rasoulof's secret 'The Seed of the Sacred Fig.' Plus: 'The Bibi Files' indicts Netanyahu, 'Dahomey' liberates seized artifacts.

Supes approve TAY housing—but Dorsey makes it easier to evict the vulnerable residents

Supe forces drug-free conditions on leases of formerly homeless, transitional age youth.

Lurie faces massive budget problem—and his first defining political test

Balance the budget on the backs of the most vulnerable, or look for revenue solutions?

More by this author

Blue skies, Blue Angels—and not many members of the public—at Feinstein memorial

More cops than mourners as the late mayor and senator is remembered fondly by her friends.

This time, it’s Nashville. I have lived with this horror my entire life.

I am of the lockdown, hide, run-for-your-life school-shooting generation. Since politicians can't seem to act, I fear for the next generation.

The White House Correspondents Dinner: A view from the inside

An 18-year-old media student reflects on the good, the bad, the celebrity culture—and making fun of the powerful
Sponsored link
Sponsored link

You might also likeRELATED