Roe v. Wade

Occupy Democrats – Post from Gail Mollett

Thomas Clay Jr. – May 3, 2022

May be an image of 2 people and people standing

“I have never uttered these words before because my mom swore me to never tell anyone. I think she’d want me to tell it now because in the end, all secrets stink. I had two brothers who were never born. My mom and dad dated when they were teens and dad knocked mom all the way up, twice. My mom looked like Marilyn Monroe in her youth. Several men at her funeral mentioned that she was the most beautiful woman they’d ever seen.

I was surprised my dad told me that as a teen after they’d been to war with one another. Mom was 16 the first time she had an abortion. She was lucky because Granny saved her money and bought her the tickets to go to New York to get it. Aunt Mickey married a big shot there so it was all easy peasy. Though my Granny was an evangelical, she knew the realities of being a teen mother and she wanted a better life for my mom.

The second one was almost the same. She went to New York quietly and came back. I never asked my dad if he knew but I suspect my Granny always hated him because of those two pregnancies. Mom told me she was lucky because she knew another girl who got pregnant and tried to use some Lysol to terminate her pregnancy. When that didn’t work, she perforated her uterus with a coat hanger. She bled to death.

Granny knew about this too which is why she didn’t get all high and mighty about it. You have to understand that I was as close to my mom as any other human being. We trusted each other. She told me everything. It was about two weeks before the cancer took her when she saw how ugly and spiteful my sisters were towards me and said, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t keep your brothers but I wasn’t ready to have them.’

It was the most intimate moment because she’d never told me they were boys. It was the moment when the reality of her impending death hit me like a bomb. She’d lived ten years past the three months they gave her to live and in that moment I knew she was telling me her deepest secret. I could feel the burden she carried floating away. In the moment, I was grateful I got to say all the things that mattered to her and that she said those things to me. I know how lucky I am to have known unconditional love. There is truly nothing like it. I miss it more than words can convey.

Mom was always a fighter. My mom was the kind of feminist that made Gloria Steinem look like Phyllis Schlafly. She was a 5’4” category 5 hurricane. Captain of the cheerleaders, she was loud too. I remember in 1976 when we went out to Poplar Level Road to the Board of Education when teachers were on strike in Louisville. She had her bullhorn leading everyone around the building. I got a blister on my foot and she carried me around hollering like only she could. She was a pistol.

When I awoke this morning to the news that Alito has written the majority decision to strike down Roe vs. Wade, I thought about what her NSFW response would be. All them Republican senators are lucky that she’s dead. She did not like men telling her what she could or could not do much to the chagrin of my Grandpa.

I cannot remember a day since I ran into Mitch McConnell in 1986 at a cocktail party where I did not absolutely hate the man. When Robert Bork was justly voted down to be a Supreme Court Justice, Mitch McConnell swore a blood oath that night that he would never lose another Supreme Court appointment and to the full horror of American women and corpse worms, Mitch has kept his blood oath.

If you are a semi-conscious sentient human being, it is important for you to understand now, at this moment, you are at war with the Republican Party and it is a just cause. It is important that we recognize our enemy and to not grant them the comfort of our silence.

So let us first recognize what overturning Roe v. Wade means. It means in no uncertain terms that if your mom or sister or wife are violently beaten and raped in the 30-odd states run by Republicans and they get pregnant, they have to give birth to the rapists’ child. If that happens in Oklahoma and the rape victim goes to a sane state to have an abortion, she can be sued by the rapist’s family. She will have to pay them $20,000 if she terminates her pregnancy. If any teenage girl is raped by any family member, she must give birth. If she tries to abort an incest baby, she will be prosecuted for murder.

In Alabama they are currently drafting legislation to make abortion a capital offense. There are no exceptions after 15 weeks. If you have an ectopic pregnancy, well it was nice knowing you, you die. It is important for now and forever to understand that literally *everything* a Republican says is a lie and it is meant to deceive. When Republicans bemoan ‘activist judges’ it is specifically because they only want *their* activists judges.

Remember how Republicans kept talking about cutting down on the ‘frivolous lawsuits’ but do not give a damn about Devin Nunes suing an imaginary cow? Or Trump suing to try and keep the people from knowing what he did while in office?

It’s because Republicans lie about big things and small. There is nothing valid in anything they say because they lie constantly. Marjorie Traitor Greene talked about Trump implementing ‘Marshall law” multiple times and when she’s put under oath and asked about that, ‘she doesn’t remember’. When they are caught lying, they lie even more.

Do not tolerate some ‘both sides are the same’ imbecile either. Democrats protect rights and Republicans strip them away if they offend their religious beliefs because they don’t care about the constitution! It’s like the Bible to them, they only care about the parts they like and throw the rest out because they don’t care. If you are upset about Republicans granting more rights to an actual corpse than living and breathing women then you have to stop pretending like the forces of evil are not determined to make the United States into the Gileade Margaret Atwood warned us about.

We have extremists Supreme Court Justices now who are more than willing to toss out the constitution because to them biblical law supersedes the constitution and that is exactly why Leonard Leo started the Federalist Society to get these perfectly coached Christian dominionists on the court.

Neil Gorsuch, Bret Kavanaugh, Sam Alito, Amy Barret and Clarence Thomas all testified that Roe v. Wade was ‘settled law’ in their confirmation hearings and each and every single one of them said that because Leonard Leo coached them to say that and whenever they were asked about some other case they were coached to say, ‘that case could be revisited by the court and it would be inappropriate for me to comment’ which isn’t an option to avoid answering questions you don’t want to answer.

They lied, all of them. They are political actors as dirty as Mitch McConnell bemoaning how people are talking about justices being political when they’re not. It’s a lie. They are gaslighting you. It is the only thing Republicans know to do.

When was the last time you heard any Republican say, ‘oops sorry I was wrong about that.’? It doesn’t happen because all of these cold-blooded miscreants think they are warriors in God’s service trying to bring the prophecy of the book of revelations to pass. They WANT war. They want all of the worst things in that disgusting book of fiction to happen like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Religious extremists have been on a crusade against Roe from the beginning and now they have succeeded in imposing their primitive religious beliefs on the entire nation under the moronic notion of ‘states rights.’ All women in the United States are now second class citizens who do not get to enjoy the bodily autonomy we grant a corpse because we still respect the right of a corpse to keep its organs. The reason our founders made the separation of church and state their very first amendment is because they fully understood that religion and civilizations cannot coexist for long.

It took 240 years for Republicans to forget this very bloody fact and here we are at war with religious zealots on the Supreme Court who have abrogated 240 years of constitutional law in lieu of Catholic doctrine. Every single one of the justices voting to overthrow Roe are Catholic. And make no mistake either that Catholics believe that any form of birth control is abortifacient and that will be next up on the agenda and it’s going to be outlawed by the Republican states because Republicans have never and will never give a damn about individual liberty. They care about fighting for their god who they believe is good and righteous; which god is Satan.

It is right that women should be terrified of losing their right to bodily autonomy. As a partisan man, I rejoice at this grievous mistake the Supreme Court will make. The storm that will come this November will change the body politic forever. Republicans will not retake the house now. Two senators keep Joe Biden from appointing the four additional justices to fix this injustice by the Supreme Court majority who were put there by a vast minority.

This can be fixed if women are angry enough to convert their anger into votes. The storm is taking form tonight and it will build into a Republican calamity of epic proportions come November. Let that passion and fury nourish us all until then.”

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Author: John Hanno

Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Bogan High School. Worked in Alaska after the earthquake. Joined U.S. Army at 17. Sergeant, B Battery, 3rd Battalion, 84th Artillery, 7th Army. Member of 12 different unions, including 4 different locals of the I.B.E.W. Worked for fortune 50, 100 and 200 companies as an industrial electrician, electrical/electronic technician.