Fifty minutes after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, I sat in my therapist’s office. It was difficult to speak. All the idioms are fitting. I felt like I’d been hit with a ton of bricks. My soul was crushed.

A good chunk of that session was spent in silence. Tears periodically fell. I shook my head a lot. I will never understand man’s need to take people’s rights away, to keep someone under their thumb, the need to control another person’s life.

I made a post a couple of days later. I’ve written several about abortion over the years. A couple of weeks later, an acquaintance was sitting in my living room. This person spoke the following to me:

“Irene, I read your blog post and I’m sorry that happened to you. But aren’t you angry that you let doctors cut up your baby and murder it?”

“No, I am not angry,” I said.

It wasn’t murder. The person told me I was wrong to murder my child. I got angry. No one has a right to tell me what I can and cannot do with my body. It also wasn’t a baby. It was a clump of cells. I was 14 years old. I’d been raped by my cousin. Fuck anyone who thinks they can make that decision for me.

I wholeheartedly support abortion. Women aren’t out there willy-nilly having abortions. Spend some time to learn the facts. The Dobbs decision is harming reproductive health and freedom. It has also led to a spike in newborn deaths.

I respect your right to choose to be pro-life, however, you are not in the majority in this country. You certainly do not have the right to come into my home, my car, my pretense and call me a murderer.

Any person who chooses an abortion is not a murderer. They are making the decision for one of many reasons. I do not get to make that decision for them.

I will, on the other hand, aid and abet abortion in whatever way I can where ever it is necessary. I have driven women to the clinic, provide funds, and provided a shoulder to lean on. I will do so again.

To call upon one more idiom, I hope the republican party goes down in flames.

To those who are fighting with me, I see you. I support you. The majority are with us even if it doesn’t always feel that way.