None of us are safe until all of us are safe

While the decision to strip my constitutional right to decide what to do with my own body was not surprising, it was still somehow shocking. We’ve known this was coming, and not only since the documents were leaked in May. This has been a meticulous plan in the making since Roe was first decided nearly fifty years ago.

It was decades in the making, but Trump will get the credit.

I mean, what else could we expect after a president who grabs women by their genitals and staged a coup stacked the court with three nominees critical to the majority opinion? 20% of the sitting justices are men accused of sexual assault, and one of them has a wife who may have supported said coup.

So no, not unexpected. In fact, predictable. But still devastating, particularly for women of color and poor women. And, in many states now, adolescent girls who will be forced to carry pregnancies resulting from rape and incest to term.

For my entire reproductive life, I have known that I could access safe and legal abortion services, should I need or want them. As much as I tried not to, I did take my autonomy over my own body for granted all these years.

This lack of bodily autonomy is so familiar to trans people - to any queer people - to people of color, the list goes on.

And we know it won’t stop here. Birth control and marriage equality are up next.

So, in the interests of action, and not handwringing (throwback to the hilarious white dismay in this SNL skit of Trump’s election night), here are some far wiser words and counsel from Nursing Clio - because, truly, none of us are safe until all of us are safe:

“A post-Roe world is a new world. We’re not returning to some point in the past; we’re facing an uncertain future. The first step to facing that future is organizing networks of mutual aid. The problem is huge, but the solutions to reproductive injustice have always been local and practical. Here are a few things you can do right now to protect yourself, find support and create it for others.”