September 17, 2021
My parents always told me that my siblings and I shouldn’t have to experience something to learn a lesson. As true as that advice is, as a child I didn’t always follow those wise words and found myself touching the iron to see if it really was hot. Unfortunately, the past few months have shown us that our nation has never really taken that advice either. Instead of learning from history and listening to warnings, we seem far too likely to want to touch the iron.
Over the past few weeks, our nation has been taught a lesson about the consequences of our actions. The withdrawal from Afghanistan has made it clear that in September of 2001 we should have listened to the one lone voice and vote of Congresswoman Barbara Lee who tried to warn us of the serious consequences of our actions starting an endless war. For speaking the truth at that time, Congresswoman Lee was ostracized and threatened with violence. Yet, we stand here today as a nation and debate how we allowed ourselves to lose so many lives and spend billions of dollars on a failed policy driven by war. As a member of Generation Z, we are also aware that this lesson will cost us trillions of dollars, although we had no say or vote in creating it.
Then the United States Supreme Court decided to take no action on an emergency appeal by Texas abortion providers to stop Texas Senate Bill 8 from becoming law and going into effect. SB 8 is the legislation signed by Texas Governor Abbott earlier this year that prohibits women from having access to and getting an abortion at approximately six weeks of pregnancy.
Social media has been and continues to be flooded with posts expressing rightful outrage against this new Texas law. Women, physicians, health advocates, women’s rights groups and more are expressing their concerns on how this new Texas law is likely to set off a new wave of restrictions on a woman’s ability to control her own body and the right of physicians to practice medicine without government interference in the sacred patient-physician relationship.
There is also outrage being expressed toward the current members of the United States Supreme Court for deciding to take no action and letting this new Texas law go into effect. Organizations such as the Center for Reproductive Rights and Planned Parenthood have released powerful statements dedicating themselves to fighting this attack on a woman’s right to control her body.
What should be pointed out though is that this outrage is coming although we all understood that a United States Supreme Court that includes Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett was likely to take actions to attack Roe v. Wade. We seem to forget that this tipping point on the Supreme Court was put in place by President Trump’s appointment of Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett.
What is truly amazing is that many are acting as if no one warned us that the 2016 election would have consequences for issues like women’s reproductive rights and voting rights if we didn’t work to stop a right-wing takeover of the government led by then GOP Presidential candidate Donald Trump. As with Congresswoman Lee, we are openly rewriting history and choosing to ignore those who warned us that this would happen if the 2016 election ended as it did.