Opinion: The Problem With "But I'll Be Okay!"

Reexamining self-preservation in a post-Roe America

Today as I gently washed pureed sweet potatoes out of her ears as she screamed and screamed, I realized I’m a little jealous of my baby daughter.

She may have no control over her bodily functions and spend most of her waking hours trying to eat germ-ridden non-foods (like used paper towels and dirty leaves), but at least she has no idea what’s going on. She’ll have no memory of the day that the US Supreme Court decided that women actually aren’t guaranteed the right to control what happens in their body, after all. Maybe by the time she’s old enough to understand anything, we’ll have figured something new out.

I’ve spent a lot of time distracted today. I’ve been on my phone. I’ve been doomscrolling. I’ve been trying to calm myself down. I’ve been trying to calm other people down. But I don’t know if “calm” should be the goal right now.

I’ve received dozens of panicked text messages, a couple of panicked emails, and one panicked phone call from my sister, who was fielding several panicked messages from her friends who want to know whether or not they should be panicking about the Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, the ruling that overturns Roe v. Wade and Planned Parnthood v. Casey and strips the right to abortion from millions of Americans.

How bad is it? Is it really bad? Will it impact me? What do we do?

I get the impression that what people want on a day like today is reassurance that things aren’t really that bad, that there’s a plan, that even though some people over there in red states will really have a hard time, over in the blue states and blue cities we personally will be fine, because no matter what happens, we will be able to use whatever privileges we have to circumvent whatever barriers lawmakers put between uteruses and their owners/stewards.

But now is not the time to lean into comfort. It’s time to face reality and, right now, that is that the Supreme Court just torpedoed a right that many women of reproductive age in the US took for granted. I know I did.

It’s important to understand and acknowledge that systemic inequalities that lead to worse health outcomes for marginalized people, especially when it comes to issues relating to reproductive justice and abortion access. But, as I’ve worked on the reproductive rights beat for the last decade-plus (since my first job writing pseudo-anonymously for the website Jezebel) I’ve noticed that this differentiation has bred something resembling a complacency in the most privileged. A lot of people– in social media, in plain old media, in my inboxes– seem to have a belief that the loss of reproductive rights is something they’re witnessing happening to other people, that it’s something that won’t happen to them personally.

I’m guilty of “But I will be fine”-ing, too. I’ve spent my adult life in Chicago, New York City, and Los Angeles, three places full of women convinced that they will be fine. I have friends in DC, Denver, Portland, Boston, Madison, Minneapolis and Austin who are also pretty sure they’ll be fine. I also want to believe that I’ll be fine. Confirmation bias makes Pollyannas out of us all, but we just Pollyanna'd ourselves back to 1972.

I don’t care who you are or where in the States you live, this impacts you. It doesn’t matter if you live in a blue city in a blue state. It doesn’t matter if you’re rich, or highly educated, or well-connected. You are not safe. You are not special. Neither am I.

Here’s an example: If I got pregnant again, I probably wouldn't want to have an abortion (I'm not clamoring to have another kid just yet, but, I'm also 38 years old and have no idea how much longer this body would be reproductively cooperative). If, during a theoretical wanted pregnancy, I happened to be in a state with an abortion ban in place and I were to miscarry, I may have trouble accessing life-saving medical care. If the fetus I was carrying had a serious birth defect that would make it impossible to survive outside of the womb, I could be forced to carry that nonviable pregnancy to term. If I were to discover that I was dealing with an ectopic pregnancy while traveling in or through a red state, I may not be able to access care I need in order to not die. For that matter, there is not an infinite supply of doctors who will perform abortions, and so if I were to need abortion or miscarriage-related care, even in my blue state of California, I would have to contend for very limited and in-demand appointments with women from nearby states where abortion is suddenly banned– places like Utah, Arizona, Idaho, and Texas.

Of course people on the margins have been feeling these effects for years, and I would never suggest that privileged women should center their own experiences in the conversation; I’m merely suggesting that the most privileged among us stop seeing themselves as immune to the effects of our creeping theocracy.

Dobbs is so much bigger than simply allowing states to outlaw elective abortions. It touches all aspects of reproductive choice, including IVF, emergency care, and miscarriage care. Justice Clarence Thomas, in his concurrence in this case, even suggested that the court should revisit Griwsold, Lawrence, and Obergefell– the cases that guaranteed Americans the right to access birth control, engage in same-sex relationships, and marry somebody of the same sex, respectively.

They are coming for your rights. Yes, yours.

Is it bad? Yes. Will you be fine? Maybe not. What’s the plan? Regroup, and then treat this like something that actually impacts every single one of us. Because– directly or indirectly– it will.

Image via Shutterstock