Disquietude

 

 

Feeling about as comfortable right now as Stinky in submissive pose towards the iguana in our yard. It's not entirely the overturning of Roe V. Wade either.

That's made for a pretty effed up few days, reading through the decision and fearing for what it may lead to. For the record I could never have an abortion, but at the same time I could never make that same decision for anyone else. This is a personal decision that should only be between a woman and her health care advocate.

I'm afraid that this overturn will cause a trickling down effect of tragedy. Women who need a D&C for a wide variety of issues not related to purposely ending a pregnancy might find it impossible to find trained providers. They may die in the process. I think back about how many I have had because I had the type of endometriosis that needed a D&C a few times a year to end severe bleeding. This was why I had to have a full hysterectomy nearly twenty years ago.

Add in the possibilities, the stated probability by Justice Clarence Thomas, that birth control would be scaled back and/or banned and you have even more of a possibility of roiling rolling tragedies looming on the horizon.  He's also made noise about ending same sex marriages.

The perfidious actions of the new Supreme Court Justices has emboldened some of the worst elements of our society to spew their noxious views about to the masses with increased impunity. One of these is a cousin of my husband. He's posted memes in the last few days on social media demeaning transgendered folks. The most offensive meme states that the transgendered are mentally ill and that their parents are child abusers for allowing them to act upon their supposed mental illness.

The other cousin, Cousin B, posted that Cousin A was hurting people with his vile words and had clearly not done his research. Cousin A knows that Cousin B has a gay adult child, but I am guessing that the news that the child (in their 40s and one of my favorite people in the family) has in the last year come out as trans hasn't trickled down. Cousin A and his Super Evangelical Christian pals have doubled down on the awful to Cousin B now, a nasty dog pile on his words.

I've been tempted to laugh this off, ice down the cokes and pop the popcorn because neither cousin is a nice person. This is one of those situations where you just want to see the carnage of the mutually assured destruction, right up until you realize Cousin B is rightfully defending their beloved child against a braying jackass.

I think this is the big take away of our awful time, the most troubling people with hateful views feel emboldened by recent events to be even more awful. The only hope on the horizon is that Cousin A and pals haven't considered that the actions that make them gleeful may well spell the end of the Republican Party in the U.S. The next few elections might not go their way after they stripped a fundamental right of bodily self determination away from half the population and we're pissed off about it.