Disabled by the court

 

   I recently read an article in the Los Angeles Times about more women deciding to be sterilized in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision doing away with the nation-wide right to abortion.  With many states – not California – enacting stricter and stricter laws against abortions, a notable number of women are taking the dramatic, irreversible step and not taking any chance of getting pregnant and then not able to get an abortion. 

   One woman quoted said she’s “pissed” about having to get this done because of “losing bodily autonomy.” Being sterilized, as drastic as it is, at least gives a sense of control over one’s own body. 

   I finally get it. 

   I have always been for a woman’s right to an abortion.  But it was always somewhat abstract, a lofty ideal of freedom.  It was just about being able to choose. 

   I say “just,” because now I see that it is about so much more. 

   It’s about bodily autonomy, about having that control over one’s own body.  These women, women who are now unable to get an abortion, are now helpless, trapped, without control – so much so that some are doing away with the ability to get pregnant. 

   They have been rendered disabled.

   As someone who has been significantly disabled all my life and then suddenly quite a bit more disabled later in life, I can relate to feeling helpless, trapped, reliant on others, with little control, especially with this being all the more the case in the last several years.  I know what it’s like to be robbed of ability and to have to depend on others (not so much what they decide, in my case of disability).

   What’s more, after reading this article, I, as also a gay man, am all the more concerned that, based on the reasoning in this ruling and comments by Judge Clarence Thomas, the federal right to gay marriage and even gay sex may be in question, on the line. That may seem far-fetched now, but that’s what we thought about the right to abortion not too long ago.  Yikes, indeed!