Hi friends-
Like most of you, I am exhausted and devastated by the Supreme Court’s decision on Friday to overturn Roe v. Wade. This assault on reproductive rights sets anyone with a uterus back 50 years, and re-affirms that no matter how hard we vote, this radical right wing court is coming for the rights of everyone who does not happen to be a straight, white, Christian man. It is hard to feel like we live in a democracy when a man who lost the popular vote by millions was able to appoint three radical justices to lifetime slots on the bench. Women’s rights were just gutted despite Democrats controlling the presidency, the house, and the Senate. These justices were not elected. The will of the people does not matter.
So many horrible things have happened in the last five years that it’s hard to still be hurt by anything new, but Friday felt as horrible to me as any day we’ve endured since Donald Trump became the Republican party’s nominee in 2016. That this court would vote to force unwanted pregnancies is akin to reclassifying women as service animals. It is truly difficult to get out of bed when people in power do not see you as worthy of making decisions about your own bodily autonomy. I was incapacitated by my personal grief over the weekend, but I am so grateful to those of you who were out in the streets.
I can’t write about baseball yet, but here is a round-up of tweets and interviews from current and former MLB players, broadcasters, executives and family members speaking out in support of reproductive rights:
Suzanne @SJohnsdottire
Pro-lifers don't like complexity. At 17 weeks my placenta detached and he was much too small. I thought I felt my baby's frantic attempts to breathe. My OBGYN advised me to terminate the pregnancy, there wasn't much time. But I couldn't.
Tweets aren’t the same as legislation, but all of these people exist or orbit around an industry where speaking out on this vital issue is not without consequences. The NBA and the WNBA released a joint statement decrying the Supreme Court’s decision, while MLB shamefully hasn’t uttered a word.
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I will get back to writing about baseball tomorrow (I think), but today it’s important to acknowledge those in the game who used their considerable platforms to speak out. It’s not lost on me that Black players make up roughly 8% of the men on MLB rosters, but sent about half the tweets I could find in support of reproductive rights. These men know what it’s like to have their rights trampled, and they are valuable allies, even if I wish they did not ever have to live in fear and despair that the system is stacked against everyone who looks like them.
I am sending strength to everyone who is hurting. I don’t have words to make it better. It is hard to keep going, but we have to.
I am in my mid 50s and the older I become the more I realized I was fooled in my youth and as a young adult. I went to a high school with 2200 students - less than 10 were non-white. I went to a Protestant church with a large congregation - there was one non-white family. I went to a public university that was 95% white. I wasn't exposed to people of color, other religions, or other points of view on frankly any topics. My parents were WW II children, born in the early 30s and taught that patriotism & God were the most important values.
It makes me sad, very sad, that it has taken me so long to understand what a complete pile of trash that all was and that I wasn't smart enough to figure it out sooner. But, better late than never. I changed my political affiliation from Rep to Dem when Rick Santorum came on the scene in my state and I have grown and changed markedly since then.
I have two daughters and it makes me sick they are treated as second-class citizens. I am not proud of this country and if anyone brings up the topic anymore, that's what I say to them. How can anyone be proud of a country that demeans women, minorities & LBGTQ, doesn't provide health insurance or proper maternal care, worships guns at the expense of its children and citizens as a whole, and has national level politicians that blatantly lie and support mistruths? I have friends that live in Ireland, England & France - what they see is unfathomable. What I see there is a proper and peaceful way of life.
I’m a retired attorney, but I’m now ashamed that five people who graduated from law school could sign off on such a decision. (Chief Justice Roberts concurred but didn’t sign the opinion.) The legal principles cited, the distorted and irrelevant history on which they purport to rely is absolutely disgraceful. I have zero respect for the legal mind of anyone who could endorse that rationale.
I wish I could say I understand how you and millions of other American women are feeling today, but, of course, I can’t understand it. And, that’s the point isn’t it? Five men and a religious zealot purporting to be a woman made a decision affecting the rights of more than 160 million American women which they had absolutely no right to make.
And, unfortunately, this is just the beginning of the destruction they are going to cause to this country.