"Where were you when you found out your rights were being taken away?" is a trending question on TikTok.
Allow me to share.
I was in the backseat of my mother's car, half-listening to whatever she and my sister were talking about. I don't remember what it was. Maybe that's because, at that moment, my phone buzzed from its place under my thigh. I picked it up, wondering if it would be a text from my friends about the parties I was supposed to attend the next day.
It wasn't.
It was an Apple News Alert, and normally, I clear those from my screen without a second thought, but this one I actually read.
The Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade.
Later, I saw reactions on TikTok and Instagram of people crying, screaming, and angry that they were living in a world that actively passed legislation against them, but I just stared. I read the headline once, twice, three times before I looked up.
"They overturned Roe v. Wade," I said, and my voice remained steady even as my heartbeat began to pound.
"Yeah, I know," my sister said. And that was it.
As the realization slowly sunk in, I continued with my day, and my friends posted on their Instagram stories, social media blowing up with the news. It didn't hit me until I started scrolling, started reading and watching and consuming the media that reminded me over and over again that my body is not mine to control.
It didn't hit me until it did, and it was all I could think about. I scrolled past the usual makeup videos and jokes that usually filled my For You page, only watching people talk about Roe v. Wade and what it would mean for people across the U.S. It was tunnel vision, but not by choice, because even though it was painful to see what this world is becoming, it was all I could look at. I was consumed by it. I am consumed by it. I had to be consumed by it because if I wasn't looking at protests or abortion funds, that feeling would sink in, that feeling of complete and utter helplessness.
I'm too young to vote for the people that would have never let this happen, yet I am old enough to feel the effects and the pain of this decision.
I have no say in what happens to me or to the other women and people who can get pregnant.
I tried to calm myself down, tried to convince myself that this was just another case of me feeling too much, too big. I live in a state where abortion will always be legal, my rights protected. Why should I be concerned?
I followed that line of thinking for three seconds before I shoved it out of my mind as hard as I could. Why should I be concerned? Why shouldn't I be? Even if this never affects me or anyone I know personally, there will be people dying all across the U.S. I should not shame myself for feeling too much because there are so many people who do not feel enough. This startling lack of empathy is what allows something like this to happen in the first place, the inability to think of the circumstances another human being could be going through because of your personal feelings on a matter that does not concern you. It is nobody's business what a woman can or cannot do with their body.
And to top it off as this pain crawls into my bones, I see that they are going after contraceptives and same-sex marriage next.
I am used to hearing my rights debated in front of me. It is something that all people who are not white, not cisgender men, or not straight must learn to tolerate growing up. I am used to seeing violence perpetrated against people like me only for it to be ignored. What I am not used to is seeing actual legislation that guarantees my right to exist being called into question.
I am coming to terms with the fact that the world I live in is against me, my friends, and my family.
Because of this, I am moving past the sadness and hopelessness, and I am moving my way towards anger.
This increased tenfold when my mother asked the question, "Why? Why are they doing this?"
As I sat across from her at our kitchen counter, sipping on the chai lattes we'd gotten for an excuse to go out and talk about the horrors occurring in the world, I finally felt the sadness snap its way into a red-hot rage.
My mother was looking at me with these big eyes full of hurt and confusion, scouring the Earth for a reason as to why someone would do this, it broke me to answer:
"Because we are women, and they will always seek to control us."
So where was I when I found out my rights were being taken away?
I was in a place of helplessness, but now, I am in a place of rage.
We've fought this war before.
A final message to those who support women and others who can get pregnant, we've won this fight before. This is not the end.
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