A Painful Anniversary

Roe is 51, and we have lost so much.

Photo by Manny Becerra on Unsplash

Yesterday was the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that confirmed the right to abortion across America. Roe was overturned a year and a half ago by a right-wing Supreme Court majority currently moving at full speed to radically reshape American law and society. And so it’s hard to feel anything but sad and angry on Roe’s birthday.

I’ve been watching clips of my friend Jessica Valenti’s testimony before Senate Democrats on what has been lost since the Dobbs decision overturned Roe in June 2022. It’s worth reading her remarks, or watching clips of them. Jessica does an incredible job at articulating just how devastating the past year and a half has been for women nationwide, and what costs we are set to pay in the future. One part of her testimony hit me hardest, and that’s when she talks about having an unintended pregnancy in the aftermath of a birth that nearly killed her. She had serious complications with her daughter, who was born months early. When she had a subsequent pregnancy, her little girl was just a toddler. And, Jessica says, doctors basically told her it was a roll of the dice: Maybe she’d get lucky and be fine; maybe, though, things would be worse the second time around.

The circumstances in which Jessica found herself are not unusual for pregnant women. Pregnancy is a physical condition, not a math problem: There are no guaranteed outcomes, and no perfect percentages that apply across the board. There are always a million different factors at play, a million subtleties of different bodies and different healthcare providers, and so much depends on small decisions — and so much can go wrong very, very quickly.