A liberal colleague—someone terminally ill yet kept working to the end—shared with me, of all people, what may have been her final thought about American politics: “All my life, I’ve seen the political pendulum swing to the left or to the right. It never stays in the middle.” Strange words she seemed intent on departing to me, an acquaintance more than a friend. I didn’t realize politics was on her mind. Maybe she sensed a kindred spirit. She was at the head of the Baby Boomers, I at the end. Whatever the reason, this seemed a final statement, and she wanted me to know her Big Lesson … from living in this nation.
Right she was about the political pendulum. I’ve realized it, too. Republican leadership finds it necessary to cement moral beliefs into law, and Democratic leadership jackhammers such restrictions to govern with a free and open mind. So I was not surprised to find in my lifetime that abortion would become illegal again and no more a woman’s right.
Aren’t we aware of America’s hateful history regarding women? Hanging them for witchcraft. Throwing them in jail for midwifery and treating sick neighbors with herbs. Writing into law the legal age of consent for ‘women’ to be age 10. ! Making contraceptives illegal and later only available to married women. Laying on thick the double standard between the sexes. Permitting sexual harassment at work and anywhere else. Terminating employment when a female worker is pregnant (even if married). Forbidding women to open bank accounts or credit accounts without their husband’s signature. Making women change their last names when married. Allowing men not only to send their wives to asylums for ‘hysteria’ but granting divorce for any reason and leaving former wives homeless and penniless.
Yeah, we’ve come a long way, baby.
What life on earth has shown me is: When it comes to human relationships, nothing ever changes. Girls chase the boys who do not like them. Guys pursue gals for sex. Pregnancy sometimes occurs among sexually active teens. Unintended fathers rarely stick around through marriage or fatherhood. Some grandparents, perhaps feeling guilty for mistakes made in raising their teens, end up raising their grandkids. Teens who get pregnant and keep their children end up in a cycle of poverty they will never break. And the daughters of teen moms often end up the same way. The same-sex parent’s influence runs deep.
Sorry to sound cynical, but cynicism is why Roe v Wade was approved across the nation 50 years ago. Abortion was going to happen no matter what. For some, men and women, boyfriend and girlfriend, religion and unborn human life go out the window when money is the issue: big money to not only pay doctor bills but hospitals, insurance, food, diapers, medical care, education, clothing, furniture, formula. The statistics about abortion found that more women than men opposed the procedure but most women who sought abortion already had at least one child.
The facts of life
Money is the bottom line in a lot of human decisions. That is another Big Life Learning Lesson for me. If you want to solve a mystery, ‘follow the money’ will usually lead to the answer. Why would a woman have an abortion? Follow the money. Women are, more so than men, the practical ones.
So after the political Right finally overturned Roe v Wade, word was they were plotting to go after women who had abortions over the past five decades and then somehow have the time and money to look for any woman who had a miscarriage—because of another old hypocritical American belief about women are to blame for a miscarriage. The Right could not be gracious about their big political, social, moral and religious victory. Seems they are out for blood … just like our American ancestors in 17th century Puritan New England.
My other Big Life on Earth Lesson is about judgement, always against women. That’s what all the witch hunts were about, sticking it to women. A modern look into the real reason for the witch hysteria is, you guessed it, about money and land ownership and men in their communities lusting after women’s (often widows’) literal treasure. Now the Right has us thinking that a new witch hunt is underway, this time seeking any woman who pursues or has ever had an abortion—and here in Texas ‘awarding’ the snoops $10,000 of MY tax dollars per conviction.
The mistakes young people make, always as I previously said, come with lifelong heartache, not always an unexpected pregnancy and the birth of a child but more often a lingering cynicism—that love itself is an illusion. Many songs about being used and cheated and just as many about romance lovers swear will last a lifetime. Love, whether from one or both in a romantic relationship, can and does lead to a new life. The circle of life, the outcome of sex, is beautiful … but not always, not for every single person or all couples.
This far into the 21st century, Americans are not about to stop loving who they love, being who they are, making love to whom they want. We’d like for cooler heads to prevail when it comes to sex. But that’s not human nature.
Abortion is an issue that many Americans have worked to overturn. Their belief is life begins at conception, now at fertilization. My God. So Puritan-sure of themselves. My point is: Life is a Mystery. The detected heartbeat law, passed in half the states to prevent early abortion, is before the heart is formed. So what is making the beat, visible in a sonogram at six weeks? The elderly with Alzheimer’s Disease are alive as far as a beating heart, yet they are not living.
Americans love to entwine politics with high moral philosophy like when life begins and when life ends. That’s why just as many people who are anti-abortion are also anti-euthanasia, ending a comatose life on machines. And yet the same crowd supports capital punishment for the criminally condemned.
Judging is what Americans do best whether women (who make up more than half the population) or racial and ethnic minorities, the poor, the homeless, the addicts, the insane, the unsanitized. American laws regress and progress perhaps in equal measure: Eisenhower to Kennedy, Johnson to Nixon, Bush I to Clinton, Clinton to Bush II, Bush II to Obama, Obama to Trump. Banning abortion no matter the circumstance—butting into millions of women’s and girls’ lives with no business to do so—is regressive. It’s judging women and girls and lives most people have not lived. Why is the scripture “Judge not” overlooked, overruled? We were a better nation when we did not judge abortion. People are better off tending to their own affairs instead of others who they do not know or care about.