The Day They Overturned Roe

I doubt what I’m about to write is going to make anyone feel better.Let’s just be clear about that. 

"We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled," Justice Alito wrote in the opinion Justices Clarence Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett all backed. "The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision. . . ." 

Justice Thomas also called on the court to revisit other decisions in his opinion agreeing with the majority ruling. He explicitly called on the court to overrule Griswold v. Connecticut, on the right to contraception; Lawrence v. Texas, on the right to same-sex intimacy; and Obergefell v. Hodges, on the right to same-sex marriage.

I am currently working on a Jewish reproductive justice curriculum for a 5 lesson unit. When I agreed to this project, I thought I should also write a blog post about Judaism and reproductive justice . . . or maybe a few posts, since reproductive justice as a topic is broad and complex, covering not only abortion but also forced sterilization, access to contraception, birth experience, health care access, comprehensive sex and sexuality education, and more. Then this morning as I welcomed folks into online morning minyan, someone shared that the ruling had just been announced and Roe had been overturned. 

I had intended to open minyan this morning thinking about bodies and the ways we move our bodies when we pray. I wanted to reflect on the ways we invite the community to rise - “all who are able,” “if you are able,” “in whatever ways you are able,” “in body or in spirit” (all unsatisfying invitations for me, by the way), and why we stand for some prayers and not others in the first place. Is it custom? Jewish law? And anyway, it’s still Pride month, and for me Pride has a lot to do with the experience of being an embodied soul. 

Body talk still felt relevant after we all heard the news, but first it felt to me that we needed to hold space for whatever we were feeling - individually and collectively. So, I asked, and folks wrote in the chat: Scared. Angry. Depressed. Overcome with sadness. Not sure what to do now. Numb. I don’t even know what to say. 

We took a breath.And we held one another. And we prayed.Just like we do every morning. 

After minyan I stayed another thirty minutes for anyone who wanted or needed to process together for a while. An 83-year-old woman spoke of memories and history and the pain of watching what you’ve spent your life fighting for vanish. Someone about my age talked about feeling numb, that at this point news makes her emotionally shut down for a while - not on purpose, it’s just what her brain does to cope. Someone shared her fear that somehow the protests and the work that will come from this, the lawsuits and the movement, will get blamed on us - on Jews. Many people nodded. Someone said something like, “because this is about religious liberty, and our being religious and wanting access to abortion, somehow that’ll make us targets.” 

Blood libel is always just below the surface, I thought. Even when we aren’t naming it. Even when people don’t know what to name it. 

We said Shabbat Shalom, and we each turned into our own day. 

Let’s set aside the political camps of Life and Choice for now because, frankly, I don’t personally believe that - from a Jewish perspective - either is sufficiently about life or choice. Not actually. As I understand our tradition, if we were actually about life - even specifically about fetal life - we’d be doing more about rape and child abuse and domestic violence, we’d be doing more about housing and food insecurity, we’d have established a living wage as our minimum wage, we’d be railing against forced sterilizations, we’d have affordable access to quality childcare, we’d have comprehensive sex education, we’d have access to affordable medical care, we’d have access to birth control, and we definitely would not have homeless pregnant teens who have been kicked out of their homes because they are pregnant. Meanwhile, again as I understand our tradition, if we were actually about choice . . . well, we’d be doing many of those same things, right? Because, for example, while Judaism requires the termination of a pregnancy to save the life of a birthing parent and allows for abortion in other circumstances, financial hardship isn’t one of them. Why not? Because financial hardship is a socially solvable issue. At least, the Torah and the Talmud seem to think it should be. 

Once upon a time I was on the board of the Minnesota Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, but it’s been a long time since I felt like there was space for me - as me, and not as a teacher or facilitator - in any conversation about reproductive justice generally or abortion specifically. The truth is, I’ve been pretty sure no one wanted to hear what I, personally, have to say about abortion. Maybe one of these days I’ll say it, or write it, anyway. For now, I don’t think overturning Roe is truly about abortion. I mean, it’ll absolutely have a heavy abortion-related impact on a lot of people, and I know there are many people who are devastated today. My not being even in the slightest bit surprised by the decision notwithstanding, I know for many people today is harder than yesterday. I see you. 

Still, I don’t think abortion is the endgame.Just ask Justice Thomas. Remember, he explicitly called on the court to also overrule the right to contraception, the right to same-sex intimacy, and the right to same-sex marriage.

I don’t think contraception and same-sex intimacy or marriage are the endgame, either. I think everything is going to continue to get worse for a while. Maybe for the rest of our lifetimes. I think we need to say that outloud. 

Rabbi Daniel Bogard wrote today: 

“Two thousand years ago Rabbi Tarfon looked out at his world and saw his people devastated by generations of Roman occupation and destruction; he saw justice subverted at every turn by a politics determined to bend the people to its will; and he lived in a reality where real, substantive reform and change was the project of generations, with no illusion that the work could be accomplished in our lifetime.

And yet, Rabbi Tarfon looked out at the insurmountable task of repairing a world starving for dignity, and made us swear that no matter how hard the work, no matter how impossible it might seem to sway the currents of history, that we must never stop trying.

“You are not obligated to complete the work”, he said to us nearly two-thousand years ago, “but how dare you even think of desisting from it.”

I’m holding on to Rabbi Tarfon today, as I hold back tears while thinking of the world our children are inheriting from us. I’m trying to remind myself that despondency is no justification for nihilism; that we were created just for this moment and just for this work; and that the generations yet to come are counting on us to do the slow, often dispiriting task of building the world that our grandchildren deserve.”

My question is, What are we going to do as we live in and through these times? How are we going to be in it with one another? Assuming we are in the midst of a project of generations, how will we sustain ourselves and each other?

I swear, no matter how hard the work, no matter how impossible it might seem to sway the currents of history, and I’ll add no matter how cynical I am and how futile it all feels, I will never stop trying. Shabbat Shalom.