All of these issues are connected. I know most of us know that, and that it is hard to have everything out on the table at once, but the book bans, the freak out over CRT and freer gender expressions, the discourse over freedom of religion that assumes everyone is Christian.. needs to be taken on the whole.

I usually try to understand other positions on issues like abortion, especially having had different feelings about it in my youth that did frame what I did with *my own choices*. Back then, I had not educated myself on implications, and the way monied interests manipulate culture wars. But also, my feelings were about influence, not legislation. Even back then, I thought to be “pro-life” was about making a world where women would have support and care. I was naive. Even the most sincere people celebrating what this Court is doing seem to have no vision or passion for care that extends beyond their own circles.

I’m hanging on to my moderate-ness by an unraveling thread, because I’ve ‘believed in’ aspirational democracy as the best hope we have. Regulated capitalism has seemed to be a hybrid vehicle capable of taking us farther along that “arc that bends toward justice” — but y’all….

The above is an Instagram post I wrestled with posting, in the wake of the overturn of Roe v. Wade, but feel it is cowardly to share just other people’s words and memes about such serious issues, or to just read as friends pour their hearts out about the matter. I paired it with a video of a self-described “white Christian” woman speaking to, I think, a school board. She eloquently expressed the distinction between trying to make kids feel bad, and educating kids (and everyone) in ways that affect how we govern and behave from here on out.

Abortion rates drop when there is sex education, access to contraception, and support for families to get out of poverty. If someone is not for such policies it seems to me they are for higher rates of abortion, but want to be seen as part of a certain political club.

I believe I’m a better mother because I seriously considered whether that was the right choice for me. I had that option, to weigh the sacrifices of following through with an unplanned pregnancy, which included the option of marrying someone I was in love with and had a good chance of making a life with… someone with the resources to support the decision. Contrast this with the Court’s decision to allow basically everyone to carry a gun everywhere, I would not have lived to become a mother had there been a gun in the often terribly violent home I grew up in.