You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.”
– Maya Angelou
The great and wise words of Maya Angelou couldn’t be any more perfect for the subject I’m talking to you guys about today. It’s been mere days, but it still feels as fresh and painful as the day it happened. When women lost their right to their own bodies. The day Roe v. Wade got struck down. Many of us are still dumbstruck by the ludicrousy and the absolute audacity of the Supreme Court to do this to women everywhere in the United States.
Now, what exactly is Roe. v Wade some of you may ask? It was the case on January 22, 1973, that finally let women have the right to have a safe abortion. Note, I say safe abortion. Abortions will still happen even with this struck down. But they will not be safe for women anymore. Many states have banned the ability to walk into a women’s medical center and set up and receive an abortion. Because of this, many women will be now forced to either die because of complications that could have been solved by abortion or by seeking other methods that are highly unsafe and unhygienic in general. Those of you who are old enough will know exactly what I’m talking about. An atrocious and deadly method using a coat hanger.
People of the belief that Abortion denies lives to be born and is a form of murder are obviously not considering the fact that not only do we live in a world now where when our children are of school age they have a high risk of being killed in a school shooting. That’s more murder than anything else. How can you expect a mother to raise a child only to suffer the utter heartbreak of losing them in a situation like that?
Also, how can you expect someone to become a mother because they were either raped or it was a case of incest? That causes great emotional trauma to the woman plus, in those cases, for example, incest, a child’s brain can not and will not develop fully because of the mixed genetics. Several studies show that possible genetic diseases can develop from cystic fibrosis to much more series cases. They can even end up with several life-threatening birth defects that will cause the newborn to die within a few months. Don’t believe me? Here’s the exact article that I found. Scientific evidence proves itself time and time again. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3419292/
As for the case of rape, not only does this cause women to have emotional trauma, the damage done during such a violent and horrid act can damage a woman’s uterus and outer tissue. So emotional trauma–with the constant reminder of what happened to her, and physical trauma–the damage that has been caused to her, can lead to a miscarriage. And if an abortion is not done when a woman has a miscarriage, she will die.
So what are we going to do about this? Well, all we can do is stand up and fight. Delete all of your period tracking apps, pay for women’s hygiene products in cash, and use a strong end-to-end connection of a VPN when doing searches. We will not be silenced. This is an atrocity and women should not be sent back to the seventeen hundreds. So we need to continue to speak out and continue to yell in their faces about this because dammit women are not things we are people who deserve the same rights as men. We are humans.
Stay strong ladies. Keep safe and keep up the good fight.