A Poem by Dr. Barry Lubetkin / New York City
My daughter cried last night.
Tens of millions of women cried.
The tears were different. Not losing a boyfriend, not failing a test, not a sad movie.
The tears were sourced from the highest court in the land.
“What was it like before Roe?” she asks.
Waiting at LaGuardia in New York, a sanctuary city, to greet terrified young women. Never been out of their hometown.
Money for a taxi and directions to a doctor who could save their future.
Or terminations gone horribly wrong around America, in filthy rooms by unqualified butchers.
Or shame and guilt foisted upon the poor, whose chance of a life of dreams realized died with an unwanted baby’s birth.
Generations of girls and women shudder as their human rights are ignored. Their protest placards scream their anger, their disbelief.
Is this the start
of an Orwellian science-fiction movie,
or can we shut the theater?
Can we scream our rage so loud
that five shepherds of the law
will open their hearts and minds
to the aching needs of those who are already born and alive?
Barry Lubetkin, Ph.D. is the co-director and co-founder of the Institute for Behavior Therapy in New York City. The Institute for Behavior Therapy is the oldest private cognitive behavior center in the United States.
Like it. I favor abortion. They don't talk about the "fathers" involvments. My abortion was due to my partner's .lack of comitment and I felt pushed into it although I am against bringing babies into this world unless they are wanted.
The problem does so much further -- it is endless lawsuits against those who would help women get abortions even when they don't live in the same state, particular discrimination against women of color who tend to be among the most poor and with fewest ties to abortion resources outside of their home state, and most ominously, the opening of the whole constitutional issue of privacy (despite Alioto's claim that the decision is only about abortion) that could affect contraceptive rights, marriage law, and other issues around privacy that were not addressed in the Constitution. One wonders how Justice Thomas would feel if the same legal arguments were used to address miscegenation (which was effectively allowed in the Constitution)?
A time in America that seems almost unreal. Sadly it is real, and if experience is any guide, this is not the bottom.
I'm appreciative of your addressing the poor. The middle class and rich will be able to go to a blue state for a procedure, but for the poor this is a trap.
And it only adds pain onto the injury that this all comes from a minority government.
Very moving word and sadly true.
Once upon a time women had no control over their bodies, their lives. Then we did. And now? We may, again, lose our reproductive rights,
Dr. Lubetkin put words to paper that (sadly) recall days when women were degraded.