In Defense of Working-Class Women and Families: A Response to the Overturning of Roe v. Wade
Originally published on Facebook and Instagram on Saturday, June 25th.
Earlier this week, we held our monthly Women’s Circle, an intimate space where working-class African American and immigrant women gather to share our experiences and support one another. This month’s focus was on reproductive rights: participants shared their painful experiences with fibroids, cysts, endometriosis, and other complications left untreated due to lack of access to medical care. We discussed pregnancy discrimination — times we’ve lost work because we’re expecting a child — and the high rates of miscarriages for women who work in physically demanding jobs without health and safety protections in the workplace. Our members, many of whom are also active participants in their faith communities, understand that a Supreme Court decision to overturn our right to privacy over matters dealing with our personal health is an attack on our lives, families, and our ability to navigate nearly impossible choices — with little to no social safety net, only threats of increased punishment and surveillance.
It is clear that yesterday’s Supreme Court’s decision is not a reflection of the sentiment of the majority of the people that live in the United States, but sadly it is the reflection of an increasingly extremist powerful minority. This ruling extends far beyond making abortions difficult to access; it is about criminializing, humiliating, and repressing poor and working class women and mothers. We refuse to cower in fear or lose sight of our commitment to our projects for self-determination over our bodies, our labor, our homes, and our land. We are grounded more than ever in the necessity to build mass organization led by working class women and families.
What we see all over the world from popular movements that have been able to expand reproductive rights — which includes not only the right to access a safe abortion but also the right to dignified housing, high quality healthcare and childcare, good jobs that pay living wages, clean air, water, fresh food, and green spaces — is that while these rights won’t be handed to us or won overnight, they can be won and guaranteed through a process of struggle, organization and movement building, and cohering the necessary forces for exerting political power and the will of the majority.
We are up to the challenge. We will use this tragedy as a call to action: to build deeper with our communities, to listen to and defend our communities who will be most targeted and harmed by this ruling, and to continue to fight to win the society we need and deserve.
