Last weekend I walked past a pro-life rally taking place in central London and I felt myself burning up with a rage so white hot that I knew I was going to have to write about it. As the speaker took to the stage, amidst rapturous applause at being announced as coming all the way from an ‘abortion-free Texas’ I took a look at the not massive, but not modest crowd that had assembled to wave their placards about human rights beginning in the womb and I heard myself curse out loud. As I walked up past Downing Street, towards Trafalgar Square I was followed by the sound of the speaker’s voice. Each pompous, ridiculous thing he said was followed by cheering from a surprising amount of young people and a surprising number of women.
I got mad. I felt myself burning up and my rage teetering on the edge of panic. How dare anyone try to suggest that they have the right to decide what a woman should do with her body, her future, her life. How completely backwards it feels to be even entertaining these kinds of situations when the fight for women’s rights has been, and continues to be, such a long hard slog.
Women literally make people with their bodies. How unbelievably, incomprehensibly amazing is that?! It makes me crazy angry that we’re still not treated with the respect that suggests we can make legitimate, conscientious decisions when it comes to our own bodies. Don’t even get me started on how we still can’t walk home alone at night.
There are so many reasons that a woman might decide not to continue a pregnancy. So many legitimate and responsible reasons to make the hardest decision a woman can make. Pregnancies can be borne out of so many completely horrendous situations: rape, incest, violence. How unbelievably selfish of anyone to suggest that any of those women should continue a pregnancy and give birth to a child because it’s what YOU think is right.
Pregnancy is still incredibly dangerous. Many of us go through unbelievably scary, life in the hands of the doctors and nurses times whilst giving birth. Lots of women suffer complications during pregnancy and many still die during childbirth. For some women, having a child is worth those risks and for some women having a child is the risk itself.
What about the women that have made a genuine, well thought out, much anguished over decision that they should not have another child or any children at all? With so many people currently facing not being able to heat their homes and feed their families, another child coming into the mix would push many in desperation. And some of us have realised, through much internal turmoil, that we’re just not cut out for raising children; we’re too selfish; the world is already massively over-populated; we’re not able to properly take care of ourselves and that the most responsible choice to make is to not regret having a child that we did not want or cannot care for.
There are already too many starving, mistreated, unloved, lonely children in this world and that’s what made me really mad. These people standing there shouting about the rights of a foetus they’ll never know; that they’ll never have to take care of or sacrifice for or pay for. How many orphaned children have these people fostered or adopted? How many refugees have they invited into their homes? How much work have they done to support education, to end child poverty, to support foodbanks and fight against child trafficking? Where is their support for these precious human lives once they’ve been spat out into a world that doesn’t give a shit about them?
Speaking to my partner later that evening he dismissed the movement as having no real political traction over here. I pointed out that he might feel differently if it was hundreds of people rallying about what he might be forced to do with his body. It’s impossible to explain to a white, straight, middle-class man who had the luck of the draw to be born in England. It’s not his fault. He’s just never had to experience what it feels like to have your private parts discussed as though you don’t have ownership of them; to be told how you should feel and behave when it comes to your own life; to not be safe.
There are a lot of things to be scared of at the moment. There are a lot of things to be angry about too. There are so many things that are so remarkably corrupt and horrendous that I’ve found it totally overwhelming recently. I haven’t been able to write about any of it because I’ve had to distance myself from the potential trauma of it all. You can’t fight it all. I don’t know what to do. Which cause do I put my energy into? So, guiltily, I’ve kept my head down. I’ve turned up my privilege and turned off the news. I’ve got on with life and ignored it all for a while but I can’t ignore it when it’s shouting at me in the street.
I don’t like being shouted at.
Hearing the horrific, damaging, terrifying nonsense of these misguided people bouncing off the walls of Parliament Square shook me back into being angry and pushed me back into writing about what I’m angry about today. It feels like I’m confirming my status as an ‘hysterical woman’ to say it out loud but when I see things like these rallies it feels like modern society is only a few bad political decisions away from a real-life Handmaid’s Tale. I think it would be foolish of us to dismiss it. We must see it, call it out and confirm that we will not tolerate it.
Now, someone pass the smelling salts and fix me a small sherry!
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