Voting For Our Future

A mother’s foresight on the fragility of our rights.

Dear Friends,

I am touched deeply by the support my daughter and I received from so many of you last week regarding her difficult summer sleep-away camp experience. I shared with her each of your comments, emails, and texts. She felt held, loved, seen, and understood. And I felt so very grateful for our village. Thank you dearly.

xoxo, WRW

On to my Little Black Book of hot off the press, favorite finds plus tried and true, time tested treasures.

1. The Bureau De Direction 1930 designed by Jean-Michel Frank is a piece I have only recently come to appreciate the significance. Renowned French interior designer and decorator, celebrated for his minimalist and luxurious approach, Jean-Michel Frank was a leading figure in the Art Deco movement. He collaborated with Salvador Dali and the Giacometti brothers while also designing interiors for the likes of Elsa Schiaparelli, Cole Porter and Nelson Rockefeller. The Bureau De Direction is the desk my husband picked for his home office.

2. Every year witches from around the globe descend on Roger’s Garden in Newport Beach, California, for their annual coven known as “The Gathering”: A spooktacular Halloween boutique steeped in supernatural mystery and magical secrets lurking throughout the overgrown forest where the line between nature and the mystical world blurs. I took the kids and a few of their good friends yesterday. The spellbinding decor, bewitching accessories, and haunting treasures did not disappoint.

   

3. School has started and to combat the inevitable bugs the kids are exposed to in the classroom, we are upping our intake of Pique’s Elderberry Liposomal Vitamin C. And while it is fantastic for our skin, supporting collagen and fighting sun damage, the liposomal vitamin C and elderberry immunity boost is what keeps me reaching for it. We have used this wonder remedy for the past several years as an integral part of our arsenal to stay strong and healthy.

VOTING FOR OUR FUTURE
A mother’s foresight on the fragility of our rights.

Born in the early 70’s, I grew up with my mother telling me, on more than one occasion, how lucky I am to have the right to choose. She would read a newspaper article or watch a movie and staunchly proclaim iterations of “I remember when women couldn’t decide for themselves if or when they had a baby no matter the circumstances. You have no idea how lucky you are.”

These brief, weighty remarks peppered throughout my childhood left a lasting impression upon me, despite not yet having the wisdom nor perspective to grasp the significance of the matter she was addressing. Decades later, living in a Roe v. Wade overturned world, I squarely comprehend what she was not only professing, but also warning me of: The dire prospect of what it means and what is at stake to not have the legal right to make choices over if, and when, we bring another human being into this world.

Her generation, and those prior, knew a pre-Roe world where women’s lives were traumatized by not having control and self determination over their body and thus their life. Women have known sexual assault since the dawn of time. We have known rape and incest. We have known promises not kept, and abandonment, leaving us to raise children on our own, regardless of if we had the knowledge, support, safety, and financial wherewithal to do so. My mother’s generation knew the shame and societal repercussions of having a child out of wedlock. Her generation and those before her knew the terror of an illegal, possibly lethal, “back alley” abortion. They intimately understood the myriad of circumstances a woman could find herself in where bringing a child into the world would be enormously consequential in a detrimental way.

“I am heartbroken — for the teenage girl, full of zest and promise, who won’t be able to finish school or live the life she wants because her state controls her reproductive decisions; for the mother of a nonviable pregnancy who is now forced to bring that pregnancy to term; for the parents watching their child’s future evaporate before their very eyes; for the healthcare workers who can no longer help them without risking jail time.” ~ Michelle Obama

Bringing another human into the world is an exquisitely personal decision. Perhaps the most personal decision a woman makes in her lifetime.

With anti-abortion politicians promising and successfully appointing judges and justices hostile to abortion rights, June 24, 2022 marked the day that the Supreme Court revoked Roe v. Wade, its own nearly 50 year old ruling. No longer would a woman be granted federal protection for abortion, reminding us of what Ruth Bader Ginsburg had stated in so many iterations over her storied career: “If you impose restraints that impede her choice, you are disadvantaging her because of her sex.”

Yes, Ruth, I’m deeply sorry that your brave fight — our fight — for the right to govern our own body continues.

In a Harvard School series on the Supreme Court and its role in American democracy, the highest court of the land, expected to be legal, not political, is described as “guided missiles who will, for legal reasons, execute a political agenda.”

As Jessica Yellen, award-winning journalist and founder of the independent media company News Not Noise reminds us,

“Abortion opponents did not win this victory overnight. They formed the National Right to Life Committee in 1967, before Roe but just after the Griswold case, which legalized contraceptives for married couples. The Federalist Society, which gave legal intellectual heft to the movement, was founded in 1982. These groups and others worked for decades to elect politicians who would fill courts with anti-abortion judges.”

My mother’s fears were not unfounded. Rather they were a premonition. Our rights — women’s rights — are tenuous. On loan, it seems, for they can be revoked.

Rolling back progress, once again the value of a woman’s life, as evident by her legal rights, has been found unworthy even when medically clear her life is in danger keeping the pregnancy.

As Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex put it when talking with Gloria Steinem just days after the reversal…

“This [ruling] is having a very real impact on women’s bodies and lives starting now. Women are already sharing stories of how their physical safety is being put in danger. Women with resources will travel to get an abortion, those without might attempt to give themselves one at tremendous risk. Some will have to source abortion pills from unregulated pharmacies. Others who are pregnant and find themselves in a medical emergency will be at the mercy of doctors and lawyers to determine if a procedure that is needed to save her life can even be done at all. What does this tell women? It tells us that our physical safety doesn’t matter, and as a result that we don’t matter. But we do. Women matter.”

If Roe can be overturned then maybe, just maybe, more is at risk. If we take Justice Clarence Thomas at his word that the court “should reconsider” and has a duty to “correct the error” allowing for same-sex marriage, same-sex relationships, and even contraception, then the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe would be the canary-in-the-coal-mine of what’s possibly to come.

To that point, over the last several years, during which time both the Democrats and the Republicans have held the White House, I have become concerned about many fundamental shifts I have seen take place. Shifts I classify as assaults on our Constitutional freedoms of speech, independent press, medical autonomy over our body (not only our reproductive rights), and to vote in a fair, democratic election.

Insidiously could democracy — a government of and by the people — be at risk, too?

The characterization of the November 2024 Republican presidential candidate is that he favors authoritarian leadership. This profile is based on his disregard for democratic norms, attempts to concentrate power, undermining of institutions, and his often aggressive and divisive rhetoric. These behaviors are seen as threats to the principles of democracy, such as the rule of law, free and fair elections, and the balance of power between branches of government.

The presidential election is two short months away. Let’s pay attention to what matters most to each of us and let’s vote to protect it. To me it is democracy.

As Michelle Obama writes in her book Becoming:

“When we don’t understand our history, we are doomed to repeat its mistakes. In this country, our futures are tied together in a delicate tapestry that we each have a hand in making. Too often, cynicism or indifference makes us feel like we don’t have a say in weaving it, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The more we allow pessimism to push us further into helplessness, the less we will be empowered to help create the kind of country we want to live in.”

These issues belong to all Americans. Let’s vote for what we want our futures and the futures of our children to look like. I hope to see you at the ballot box come November. My mom and I will be there.

Until next week, xoxo, WRW