Fuck it.
Let’s cry and get angry.
What are your thoughts on Roe v. Wade being overturned?
So I think it has been a couple of weeks, a few weeks, who even knows, since the leaked majority opinion for the Casey case that has been before the Supreme Court, which is going to be overturning Roe v. Wade.
I mean first of all, it is infuriating and it is not surprising.
The right wing in this country has made it clear for the last 50 years that their mission is to outlaw abortion, that their mission is to turn back every ounce of social progress that has been made to make sure that queers are illegal, to make sure that transpeople are illegal, to make sure abortion is illegal like the idea is authoritarianism, the idea is marching towards fascism.
So it is not surprising that Roe v. Wade is getting overturned.
It is infuriating and it is fucking scary.
I’m a person with a uterus.
There are some states now that are looking at enacting laws that would make even IUDs considered an abortion and put you up for jail time.
I have an IUD.
I love having an IUD for many reasons.
One reason is as a nonbinary person, I have the marina which has hormones in it so I don’t get a period and I did not realize until I stopped having periods just how like gender dysphoric periods made me.
Recently, I had like breakthrough bleeding for 10 days and it was the most awful dysphoria experience for me in so many ways.
If this was a country where it was easy to get birth control, where it was easy to get permanent birth control if you wanted it to have like a hysterectomy or your tubes tied or a vasectomy, that would be one thing but this is very clearly about control of bodies that have uteruses.
This is very clearly about control of people who can get pregnant, about control of people they view as women.
It is infuriating. I support the fuck out of every person who was protesting outside the Kavanaugh’s house.
I support the fuck out of every person who is loud and making a big stink about this issue.
And like I read a really interesting Twitter thread about how in this country, the issue with our Constitution is that it is very, very hard to amend.
And there are some ways in which that can be a good thing but the problem is, because it is so hard to amend the Constitution, a lot of what the courts have ended up being is a way to enact popular will when the Constitution cannot be amended to reflect it.
So like for instance, Roe v. Wade is not something that should have been created through a judicial opinion, like people should have bodily autonomy through our legislative process or in the Constitution of our country, but they don’t.
And so, the Supreme Court became the place in which you would take these issues that it would be too hard to amend the Constitution to add and that it would be too iffy to find enough states that aren’t gerrymandered or fucked enough that you could get it passed and it would be a way to create on a national level a way to increase human rights and enforce the popular will.
The problem is, Conservatives have also spent the last 50 years packing the fucking courts at every fucking level.
And the degree to which that was done particularly under Trump is just – it is huge.
And so, Roe v. Wade being overturned in and of itself is infuriating and horrifying for what it means for every person in this country who has a uterus or can get pregnant.
And the opinion that leaked in particular in the way that it described the new interpretation of the 14th Amendment specifically indicates that there – 14th, 13th, I don’t know.
I’m sorry.
Correct me if I’m wrong.
But it specifically indicates that the right to privacy that was the undergirding of so many of the civil rights advancements through the courts in this country will no longer be held to be true.
And so, some states including Texas are already putting together laws that will make queerness illegal so like return the sodomy laws.
Let’s get that back in there.
Lots of states are still pushing anti-trans stuff like Ohio – is it Ohio?
Is it Missouri?
Missouri is putting forward a bill that would make it illegal to be trans medically until you’re 25 years old.
So that’s cool.
When we think about the other rights that were granted under the same interpretation of the right to privacy, it includes things like your ability to access birth control, your ability as a woman or a person with a uterus to get birth control without a man’s consent.
It includes the ability to have interracial marriages.
It includes gay marriage.
It includes the ending of sodomy laws.
So much of the way that we have increased civil rights in the country has been through legislative decisions and that is not a good thing because all you need is one group of Conservative assholes in a lifetime appointment to completely wipe out every civil rights increase that you’ve made in this country.
When I – for several years, I have been debating whether staying in the United States is something that I can do.
I am a queer, trans, disabled person with a uterus.
I am very loud on the internet about being queer and trans like there is no way to unscrew that pooch or to like hide that.
And I think seeing the way that this country has gone is that there is this group at the top particularly in the Democrats who believe that the system can still work and the system is done like the system has died.
There is no working within the system anymore.
And voting doesn’t actually achieve anything because people who will get elected say that they don’t have the power to change anything.
And I don’t know – like I know what it could take to change this country meaningfully.
Part of it would be significantly expanding the Supreme Court, introducing term limits for judges, for Congress people.
Part of it would be about creating ways that we do districting for voting that eliminates this ability to gerrymander districts.
It would be about increasing the way that we have access to voting, so increasing polling stations, increasing mail-in voting, increasing the amount of time people have to vote, making that a national holidays with everybody is given time off.
Really, there are so many things we could do to fix these things and nobody will.
And so, there have been several times over the last couple of years where I have tried to figure out what it would look like to leave this country because I don’t think that the people with the power to stem the tide of authoritarianism and fascism in this country are going to do it.
I hope that I’m wrong but I don’t think that this – I think that things are going to get a heck of a lot of worse before they get any better.
And so when the opinion was leaked for Roe v. Wade and I saw in particular that it was based on reinterpreting the right to privacy, I started figuring out what it’s going to look like if I need to leave this country.
And I figured out a few different options.
And part of that is that I have a fair amount of privilege in terms of being well-educated, being a white person, having fairly stable financial picture, and if I can get out of this country and provide a landing pad for other people to help them get out, I would love to do that.
So the thing about this opinion is that it’s so much more than just abortion.
It’s so much more than just Roe v. Wade.
And I think a lot of people in blue states think that it wouldn’t affect them but the people are on the right, they’re not going to be happy with just a state by state, some states is banned.
Like they are creating laws that you can’t even leave the state to get an abortion.
They are creating laws that will have national impact.
Oklahoma just signed a bill into law, I think it was today, that fully bans abortion completely.
So it’s not – like I don’t see this turning around for the better unless some folks start making very, very different decisions.
And so, I think that this is one of the – like Citizens United I think was the very start of this decline of this way of reinforcing a march towards authoritarianism and fascism in this country through the creation of outlets for lots of dark money through the – I mean they got to get voting rights acts, like all of these things have been building towards it.
Plus, there is like that like Fifth Districts ruling that came down that effectively said that the SEC isn’t actually able to enforce any regulations that they are tasked with enforcing because reasons.
And so like any agency under the Executive branch now based on this Fifth District’s opinion is not – could like be ruled as not able to enforce.
That’s the EPA.
That’s like the FDA.
That’s basically every major government entity that deals with things like food safety, electricity, like all of that stuff could be now sent to the Supreme Court and evaluated whether any of them can actually do their jobs.
So, this is a scary fucking time in this country.
This is – shit is on fire.
The shootings we have in the last couple of weeks, the way the judiciary is responding like everything is just – the pandemic is surging like the pandemic numbers are bananas right now.
And research based on like modeling is showing that the official reported COVID numbers are probably catching 13% of cases.
So like where we are at a point where our numbers are bananas and we are doing nothing and I just – I feel like this is – when you see failing or failed states, the issue is not do they have crises?
The issue is, are they able to respond to a crisis in a way that makes sense?
And our country can’t do that anymore.
Our country has given up on doing anything about the major problems.
And the people theoretically on the left just sit there and they are like, “We can’t. We can’t do anything. Mansion in cinema. Our bad.”
I don’t fucking buy it anymore like I don’t buy it because they aren’t even trying.
There’s not even an attempt.
There’s nothing.
Like Kavanaugh had protesters at his house for a couple of days and they unanimously passed funding and ability to have more guards for Supreme Court justices and you can’t do fuck all about any of these big issues that affect everybody?
Bullshit!
This is going to get me demonetized on YouTube.
Probably may even get this blocked on here.
Who knows?
But when I’m angry, I can’t not curse.
Anyway, so yeah, it’s fucking bullshit.
Fuck all of these assholes on the Supreme Court.
Fuck the people who put them there.
Fuck the people who didn’t stop it.
Fuck the people who are doing nothing and saying that they are helpless as elected officials and we should vote for more elected officials who can also do nothing for us.
