No one is coming to save us
The second anniversary of the fall of Roe in a red state
Two years ago, on June 24, I showed up at a parking lot across from the federal courthouse in Cedar Rapids to protest the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.
I was a speaker and I talked about my sister, whose abortions have saved her life. I talked about my own assault and how getting Plan B at Planned Parenthood ensured I had a future as a writer.
It really wasn’t important what was said. It was important that we were together. And after people spoke, about 100 people walked down to the county courthouse and back, chanting, waving our signs, and politely staying on the sidewalk.
As the protest ended and people made their way back to their cars, a truck, stopped at a light behind another car, got impatient when the light changed and a cluster of people were still crossing the street. The truck’s driver pulled around the other car and drove through a crowd of people, knocking one woman to the ground and running over another woman’s foot.
I documented the incident, gathering pictures, quotes and video, which I shared to Twitter. My tweets went viral and people told us that the crowd had been violent and disruptive and that we’d attacked the truck.
It wasn’t just people online saying this, either. People in town called me to let me know they had empathy but maybe we should have been nicer, more polite. Local news stories parroted the police line that perhaps we’d been asking for it. Perhaps the truck driver had been incited to violence.
The driver was arrested and last year faced a jury trial. His lawyer said he was a victim of violence. That his wife and daughter in the truck with him had been terrified and he was just trying to get them to safety. He was acquitted.
I wondered what would have happened if we had not been protesting for our rights but crossing the street after a farmer’s market, or coming back to our cars after the Saint Patrick’s Day parade. Whose lives are worth protecting?
States with abortion restrictions or bans have higher maternal mortality rates and higher infant mortality rates. Women in states with restrictive abortion laws have lower median earnings; child poverty rates are higher; health insurance for the neediest families is harder to access; paid family leave does not exist and spending on K-12 education is lower.
People are already dying because of these laws — victims of the legislative hit-and-run. When we cry out, it feels like no one is listening.
I remember sitting in my house the day after the protest. I’d tried to go for a run, but I’d had a panic attack on a busy road after a truck gunned past me. I felt trapped. I was afraid. And I wanted to know: Who was going to fix this?
People were leaving the state. Politicians who weren’t openly hostile to reproductive access had little to no power at the capitol. I live in Iowa. No one was coming to save us.
So often the response I hear when I talk about what is happening in Iowa politically is, “Leave.” As if hollowing out the core of the American landscape is a viable political solution. Some people have to stay. Some people want to stay. Leaving is just as complicated as staying. But in the end, the real answer to the problem is not to leave, but to show up.
I think back to that protest in 2022 and how quick people were to look the other way. To rationalize and excuse violent behavior. I think about how Jessica Valenti so often writes that people are already dying right now because of these laws; the rest of us just don’t see it. Or refuse to see it because it affects people who are marginalized in some way, because of their race, their socioeconomic class, or because they are LGBTQ.
Last year, desperate to help, I joined the board of the Iowa Abortion Access Fund. And it’s been incredible to see this community directly support the fund when I put in call-outs for donations. We helped the fund raise many times more this May for Fund-a-thon than we did last year. Our Relay Iowa team raised over $6,000 for the fund this year. That comes from you. I’ve taken the newsletter that has become my job and turned it into a vehicle for change. And I couldn’t do that without you.
And we won’t stop doing the work. This week, Iowa awaits the state Supreme Court ruling on a six-week ban. And no matter what the Iowa Supreme Court decides, the IAAF will keep funding abortion care for people who need it. And we are working with the Chicago Abortion Access Fund to ensure that will happen.
Speaking at a panel for the Iowa Abortion Access Fund, Ashley Garrin, a doula and board vice president of the Iowa Black Doula Collective, said, “In the end, we look after ourselves.” She noted that politicians often say the right things, but so rarely stay to do the work.
Eliza Etten, a young activist I met this year who organized a Women’s Strike protest in Cedar Rapids, told me that she kept looking around waiting for someone more experienced, more qualified, to step up. “But I realized,” she said, “in the end, if I wasn’t going to do it, no one would.”
A state lawmaker I know has said that locally, many Republican politicians have been watching the backlash in states like Missouri and have eased up on their anti-abortion talking points. Iowa Republicans have quietly abandoned an effort to amend the state constitution to outlaw abortion. We have power.
And with no one coming to save us, we have to save ourselves.
Here is some other writing on the two-year anniversary of the fall of Roe that I have found insightful.
Kate Cohen wrote for the Washington Post about what has been lost in the past two years.
And we will never know how many lives Dobbs altered, stunted, constrained and burdened. How many educations it deferred or denied, how many careers it derailed, how many families it broke. Every person who is forced to give birth is a person whose life has been unwillingly, irrevocably changed.
Jessica Valenti wrote about what gives her hope.
The New York Times made an interactive map showing where people have been traveling for abortions. And good grief, thank you, Chicago, and thank you to the Chicago Abortion Access Fund.
There are more abortions happening in America now than two years ago, but they are harder to get.
Abortion access wins when it is on the ballot. But not all states have that option.
If you have any articles about the Dobbs decision and abortion and abortion access drop them in the comments below.
Also, mark your calendars: Tomorrow night, I will be hosting a presidential debate watch party on Substack Chat for paying subscribers!
Think of it like a live Twitter thread except no trolls. I will send out an email tomorrow. We can cry. Make jokes. And try to parse meaning from this political theater.
So it feels like a long time ago, probably when you were “happily married” that I was the model minority. Always worked, always paid taxes, low body count, married, homeowner, kids in wedlock, my husband and I worked for a police dept. (actually I am still this now - even raised two great kids)
Even back then I knew Americans could be shitty but I believed in America. I believe the whole two steps forward one step back trajectory. Then I think Trayvon Martin was killed and Ferguson happened, and I read Ta Nehsi Coates’ “Between the World and Me”.
My perception of the ending is “this is our lives, it’s gonna be our kids lives and it’s gonna be our grandkids lives…..” I was so mad when I read this book for a book club. During the book club, just tears streaked my face the entire time but I had to keep telling my club “I’m okay- just keep talking”. I still haven’t spoke about this book or shared my full thoughts.
I knew what the problem was “cognitive dissonance”. I wanted to believe (I still want to believe) that America is America with some assholes who make things difficult but the book said “Bev, girl, you better wake up! You got kids, you need to prepare them.”
So I wasn’t shocked when Dobbs happened - just grateful my ovaries were out of commission and I have no daughters. I keep reading during this election season that women are mad, that men care too and that they’re going to strike back and I pray they do. But I think the run is over.
Gen X was the great American experience- we got Civil Rights, women getting credit, Title IX, ADA, low mortgage rates, last of Pell grants, gay marriage, all the good things. None of this happened all at once and so many lawsuits had to occur to get things to work half the way they were designed. White people (sorry it’s y’all again) decided after just one generation of trying on equality that it’s too much.
Regarding reproductive rights. I said this before here and you admonished me:
“We are here because of women, the women who live in your community, the women who center men, who thrill in shaming other women, who think what happens to women of color would never happen to them, who think all their pregnancies are miracles, who volunteer to die on the cross of Christian motherhood and House Elfdom.
I really like this site - I hope you won’t ban me. I say this for you and me (because I often need to be reminded): They’re not coming. The men in your community and mine have decided that for now the only actual choice a woman should have is to opt out. Don’t get married, don’t have kids because if you do these things you lose all your rights. If the majority of women accept this , they’ll find a way to force the minority. This is our lives, it’s definitely going to be our daughters - prepare them.
Don’t get me started on race. That speech is worse than this one. Sorry this is long.
So...I have two daughters in Texas. One is an OB/GYN. She is absolutely losing her mind.
There is a special place in hell for non-physicians who presume to know more about the medical treatment of a pregnant woman and her child(ren) than a properly trained (eight to eleven years of specialized medical education beyond undergrad) OB/GYN and related specialty physician. It is a profound tragedy that in the nation with the most advanced medical research and most abundant medical resources in the entire world, we have half of our states enforcing laws that reduce reproductive health care and the care of pregnant women to near-19th century standards. Example: A woman who did not have access for whatever reason to early pregnancy care gets a scan and learns that her 23-week old fetus is missing most of its head. This and other lethal fetal anomalies are quite common. The fetus is going to die, either in utero or as soon as it is delivered. In compassionate states that practice medical standards of care, the mother has the CHOICE to deliver the fetus immediately and end the pregnancy. The procedure is called "an induction of labor." Republicans driven by evangelical extremists call it "abortion." The mother may choose not to deliver the fetus, risking the possibility that the child may die in utero and cause complications or infections until it is naturally expelled. The infection may cause the mother to become infertile or it may kill her. It also may cause emotional trauma. That's the 19th century way. In Texas and most other GOP states that mother is REQUIRED to carry that baby until nature takes it's course. And the OB/GYNs weep. For extra fun let's remind ourselves that today the majority of OB/GYNs are now women, especially the younger ones. Republicans LOVE to hate on professions dominated by women - part of a theme to remind women of their diminutive place in American society (librarians, teachers, nurses etc).
In Ireland ONE woman died of infection after being refused an "induction of labor" for a lethal fetal anomaly and the nation rebelled, enshrining the right to abortion in law. What will it take in America?