While attacks on our rights try to drag us backward, we must dream of the way forward
Supporters of abortion rights rallied in Portland on June 24, 2024, to mark the two year anniversary of the Dobbs U.S. Supreme Court decision that ended the legal right to an abortion. (Emma Davis/ Maine Morning Star)
This week we recognize the two year anniversary of one of the most profound rollbacks of our rights in modern history. The Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization U.S. Supreme Court decision was part of a long march of work to erode our right to make decisions about our bodies.
As you know, each restriction, objection, and barrier passed makes access harder, and in many cases nearly impossible, for those who need an abortion — particularly for Black, Indigenous, and women of color; trans people; poor people, and rurally located people, and those in states where access to cast free and fair votes is denied or restricted.
And it’s not an accident.
The Dobbs decision looked to the U.S. Constitution for guidance — a document written by and for white, land-owning men. The needs, lives, and experiences of women and people of color were explicitly unaddressed and unprotected in that founding document. Women were not considered citizens, and women of color were not seen as citizens and were more often than not enslaved.
By looking backward they are looking to preserve the power structures that have kept a few people in, and most of us out.
And it’s part of a growing tide of misogynist violence. Sexism and misogyny pervade our systems and our lives — and there are those who are trying to pull every lever they can from the courts to capitalism to grow their patriarchal vision. Threats and attacks against our trans and queer community, violent threats against women in leadership are on the rise. These include everything from death threats against policymakers to the casual frequency with which we see ‘F- Mills’ bumper stickers. Online and in real life, these racist and misogynistic attacks are so normal as to not even be seen and understood as such.
These attacks are trying to drag us backward, but we must dream of the way forward. To resist that tide, we need to not only name it when we see it, but expand our understanding of what changes will truly usher in gender justice.
Public policy is still one lever that is working to make meaningful, powerful change to expand gender equity in Maine. In the last couple of years, the Maine Legislature has expanded access to MaineCare after giving birth from 60 days to 12 months, eliminated mandatory nondisclosure agreements that protect sexual harassers, reshaped Maine’s childcare systems, expanded access for gender affirming care, and funded the first staffer at the Maine Women’s Commission. And of course, we passed Paid Family and Medical Leave — the most significant change to the lives of caregivers in 40 years.
These changes are leaps forward, but we can’t be satisfied. We are correcting centuries of patriarchal, white supremacist policies that expected women and people of color to be the unpaid and underpaid backbone of our economy.
Feminist public policy starts with all of us. We at the Maine Women’s Lobby will be working to turn out feminist voters, to usher in a more feminist Maine Legislature, and next session, to keep trying to build the dream: protecting and expanding reproductive health care, workers rights, tribal sovereignty, building our care infrastructure through childcare and PFML, and most of all, demanding that our government invest in these systems.
It is rage that got so many of us out into the streets. The theft of our right to control our own bodies is the spark that lit the flame. But it must be hope that keeps us out here, building a fuller vision of what our lives can be and mean.
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