Choice
Dear xxx,
...I have not been a good e-mailer-slash-potential-friend-slash-love-interest-slash-as-the-young-people-say-"whatever."
I'm sorry for that. I'm in the midst of one of those times in life when I feel tossed about in a storm. My boat is too small. My oar is cracked. And yet I'm too stubborn to settle for any port. I keep trying to get where I was going. Sigh. (Growl.)
I would be amused by myself if I weren't also so busy bailing and paddling and checking my charts to see if I'm anywhere near still on course.
Sigh again. (Growl again.)
Reproductive rights: this is one of the things in life I am deeply passionate about. Were I a senator, I could filibuster about it until my tongue dried up like a dream deferred.
Since I am not the junior senator from Massachusetts just yet I have to settle for passionate e-mailing, rousing dinner party conversations--preferably with people who agree with me--and the occasional public speaking engagement.
A couple of years ago, I had one of those moments of beautiful clarity, when the words all come out right and the light is shining on you and the audience is hanging on every word--no, not hanging, but rather something more uplifting. perhaps buoying under every word?--anyway, it was a room full of people who were mostly my age or older. And I reminded them that for most of us, our mothers did not get to choose. This stuns me every time I think about it. My mother is only 54. She's young. Her youth is not that far off from mine. And yet, she did not get to choose. It's stunning.
I know you know this--thank god, good for you, bravo, yay--but it's amazing to me how near those years are and yet how few of us really get what that means. us, being women. us, being men. us, being pretty much everyone alive in this country (for crying out loud).
Anyway, I was hosting this event, and said to the room that I would give up my life if it meant that my mother could go back to her 19th year and choose. And I meant it. I would. I feel that strongly about it.
I think, actually, that my mom wanted to be pregnant. That she wanted to have a baby, who turned out to be me. But I find the result of her choice to be irrelevant. The point, really, is that her right to choose supercedes my right to exist. And I will bare knuckle fight anyone who wants to convince me that this isn't true.
So, I told this to a bar full of 200 women (and a handful of others), and then I said that since I can't go back in time and give my mother options, i consider it my duty to live this life as fully, as bravely, as brilliantly as I possibly can, and to do all in my power to make sure that my daughters and their daughters and their daughters' daughters have the right to choose--to choose healthy birth control, to choose consensual sex, to choose when and how and what they will do with their bodies when it comes to sex and pregnancy and child bearing (and everything else). (Frankly, I don't even think the state should be able to tell adults that they should have to wear seatbelts or helmets, but that's a whole other rant.)
In retrospect, I think before I agree to give up my life in exchange for my mother's right to choose, I would want some sort of rider attached that said my giving up my life would give all women (at the very least in this country and in every country where we impose our fiscal and moral and military will) full access to reproductive rights til the end of time.
Since, like you, I abhor the exclamation mark--one of my favorite teachers/editors once told me that every person should be given only three exclamation marks to use in her/his lifetime and I *love* this idea--I hope you will understand the implied exclamation mark when I say I'm glad you're doing this work. And I look forward to hearing more about it...
[e-mail; 2006]
...I have not been a good e-mailer-slash-potential-friend-slash-love-interest-slash-as-the-young-people-say-"whatever."
I'm sorry for that. I'm in the midst of one of those times in life when I feel tossed about in a storm. My boat is too small. My oar is cracked. And yet I'm too stubborn to settle for any port. I keep trying to get where I was going. Sigh. (Growl.)
I would be amused by myself if I weren't also so busy bailing and paddling and checking my charts to see if I'm anywhere near still on course.
Sigh again. (Growl again.)
Reproductive rights: this is one of the things in life I am deeply passionate about. Were I a senator, I could filibuster about it until my tongue dried up like a dream deferred.
Since I am not the junior senator from Massachusetts just yet I have to settle for passionate e-mailing, rousing dinner party conversations--preferably with people who agree with me--and the occasional public speaking engagement.
A couple of years ago, I had one of those moments of beautiful clarity, when the words all come out right and the light is shining on you and the audience is hanging on every word--no, not hanging, but rather something more uplifting. perhaps buoying under every word?--anyway, it was a room full of people who were mostly my age or older. And I reminded them that for most of us, our mothers did not get to choose. This stuns me every time I think about it. My mother is only 54. She's young. Her youth is not that far off from mine. And yet, she did not get to choose. It's stunning.
I know you know this--thank god, good for you, bravo, yay--but it's amazing to me how near those years are and yet how few of us really get what that means. us, being women. us, being men. us, being pretty much everyone alive in this country (for crying out loud).
Anyway, I was hosting this event, and said to the room that I would give up my life if it meant that my mother could go back to her 19th year and choose. And I meant it. I would. I feel that strongly about it.
I think, actually, that my mom wanted to be pregnant. That she wanted to have a baby, who turned out to be me. But I find the result of her choice to be irrelevant. The point, really, is that her right to choose supercedes my right to exist. And I will bare knuckle fight anyone who wants to convince me that this isn't true.
So, I told this to a bar full of 200 women (and a handful of others), and then I said that since I can't go back in time and give my mother options, i consider it my duty to live this life as fully, as bravely, as brilliantly as I possibly can, and to do all in my power to make sure that my daughters and their daughters and their daughters' daughters have the right to choose--to choose healthy birth control, to choose consensual sex, to choose when and how and what they will do with their bodies when it comes to sex and pregnancy and child bearing (and everything else). (Frankly, I don't even think the state should be able to tell adults that they should have to wear seatbelts or helmets, but that's a whole other rant.)
In retrospect, I think before I agree to give up my life in exchange for my mother's right to choose, I would want some sort of rider attached that said my giving up my life would give all women (at the very least in this country and in every country where we impose our fiscal and moral and military will) full access to reproductive rights til the end of time.
Since, like you, I abhor the exclamation mark--one of my favorite teachers/editors once told me that every person should be given only three exclamation marks to use in her/his lifetime and I *love* this idea--I hope you will understand the implied exclamation mark when I say I'm glad you're doing this work. And I look forward to hearing more about it...
[e-mail; 2006]
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