The Supreme Court’s decision last year to overturn Roe v. Wade shocked millions of women across America. A provision that subsequent generations of women took avail of never thinking that one day the freedom to make certain life-changing personal decisions regarding reproductive wellness would become endangered or in peril. When the Supreme Court threw out Roe v. Wade and handed the question of abortion rights back to individual states, abortion rights advocates warned that three things were next in succession to the ruling: 1. The banning or restriction of medications used to precipitate an abortion 2. The criminalization of aiding a woman in receiving an abortion, and 3. The possible illegalities of leaving a Republican state to seek abortion services.

Less than a year later, those above footnotes of a 50-year-old agenda are sprouting sustainable legs. On the heels of that landmark ruling comes the controversial decision to ban what some call the ‘abortion pill’ mifepristone by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in a Texas court last week. This places the conversation about women’s reproductive rights at another pivotal place in American history.

With the restriction of a FDA drug approved for women’s medical usage approximately twenty years ago, Kacsmaryk is following the playbook of anti-abortion politicians and lobbyists whose end game is to ban abortions nationwide. Monday the Department of Justice filed an emergency appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals to temporarily stop Kacsmaryk’s ruling from taking effect next week. This ruling has the potential to make its way back to the Supreme Court whose conservative leaning bench may ultimately rule in favor of the Texas district judge’s decision. But first things first. What does the possible banning of the ‘abortion pill’ mifepristone mean for millions of women and their reproductive health? Mifespristone is part of a duo of medications that can be taken to terminate a pregnancy up to 10 weeks or 70 days of gestation. Along with its partner misoprostol, mifespristone can also be prescribed for ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages.

Why has the policing of women’s bodies become a political playground for predominately White male legislators? Is it a matter of religion or a matter of medical science? We well know that medical science is not really respected in the world of politics as the Covid-19 pandemic has revealed. Any time that capitalism and greed come into the picture and share a platform with whatever is in the best interests of humankind, capitalism, and greed wins. Humans become expendable. Right now, women’s bodies are expendable in the hands of conservative White male politicians and their allies seeking to elevate total authoritarianism and supremacy. How could it be anything else? Where it pertains to the bodies of Black women, these same politicians are the descendants of the founders of barbaric and inhumane practices that policed the wombs of Black women with a market price at auction, then kidnapped the fruitage of that womb, raped that womb, and tortured that womb into an early unmarked grave.

Today Black maternity mortality rates in this country are at epidemic proportions regardless of economic and social status. No alarms have been raised; there is not one anti-abortion advocacy group or conservative legislature that has called attention to the startling statistics of Black women dying in labor as compared to their White counterparts, or the deaths of their newborns within the first hours of life. On top of all of that, once a Black child or any child is born in this country, the threat that this life may be extinguished prematurely due to gun violence is another grim fact that has a telling statistic attached to it as well. So, the advocates of pro-life legislation have turned a blind eye to the concerns of women and Americans in general where it comes to abortion rights in this country. It is easier to prey on and legislate a territory that should not be up for political debate than take on the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the escalating national crisis of mass shootings. Polling suggests that what Americans really want their elected officials to expend its energies on gun violence and bipartisanship. However, one side of the aisle has chosen to focus on the agenda of MAGA Republicans which is to simply entrench its new Jim Crow principles or segregationist ideologies and

White supremacist fundamentals into every facet of American society from the White House to the schoolhouse.

White American women, who for some reason appear slow to vote in their own best reproductive interests in the name of racism and party loyalty, will soon discover that fellow comrades like Ginni Thomas and Marjorie Taylor Greene have alternative agendas that do not necessary mesh with their own. What will they do when a simple prescription like mifespriston is universally banned or a procedure such as a D&C is prohibited for ectopic pregnancies or miscarriages when statistics show that over a million or 30% of women in this country suffer a miscarriage each year? I have been on both sides of this discussion. I consider myself a pro-woman advocate. I made the choice to continue my pregnancy as a 19-yearold college student. At 21, I made the decision to terminate a second pregnancy. I miscarried twice, at the age of 25, and then 27. Both were in office procedures. At 36, a high-risk pregnant mother pregnant with twins, my husband and I were told by our obstetrician that the babies I was carrying had a disease that could either cause severe deformities, eventual death shortly after birth, or two stillbirths. One twin unfortunately passed away before the beginning of my second trimester. The decisions made during my childbearing years were made in concert with my OB/GYN and I trusted her wealth of medical knowledge and years of practice. I was fortunate to be able to make decisions regarding my reproductive health with my OB/GYN and not have those said decisions hampered or thwarted by nonmedical practicing lobbyists and conservative-leaning religious authoritarians. But I have daughters and nieces who are at the beginning of, or in the middle of the best of their childbearing years. They will not be as fortunate as I to have control over their own reproductive health and wellness if women everywhere do not vote in the interest of choice: the right to do what is individually best for our own bodies.