If there’s one thing America’s brand of racism has taught us black folk, it’s the important lesson of the “workaround.” In order for our race to survive in a system that started by denying the fact that we were even human, and then granting us legal rights in a piecemeal fashion over the decades and indeed centuries, only for those rights to be ignored at will by local courts and even individuals whenever they elected to do so, and still to this very day are rigging systems — especially economic — to keep us at a disadvantage, we’ve had to come up with ways to game said oppressive systems.
Taking on racist laws head on would keep us spinning our wheels, tied up in courts all over the country for years, as we have been, hat in hand, begging for what should be rightly ours simply because we — in spite of how we arrived on these shores — are citizens of this land too. So, while the law was playing out in a glacial fashion in courtrooms, we often took our fate into our own hands via various means, often some in counterpoise to what the unjust laws at the time stated.
So too should the movement for a woman’s right to choose. If the Supreme Court, as it is likely to do when tRump installs another right-wing ideologue on the bench to take the seat formerly occupied by Notorious RBG, strikes down Roe V. Wade measures should be taken to ensure that women retain domain over their bodies while the ensuing legal battle is refought.
Know this: If men got pregnant there never would have been a discussion in America over their right to do as they damn well pleased with their bodies. In a society where white males demand (and receive) the power to maintain the superiority of “the rights of the rugged individual” over all else, there’s absolutely no way any court in the land would tinker with what they claim trumps anything else in said society: even their right not to wear a mask, no matter that not doing so puts the lives of their fellow citizens in proven jeopardy.
Allow me to state unequivocally that I am not “pro abortion,” but instead am “pro a woman’s right to choose.” I sincerely wish that medical researchers would devote more effort into coming up with a male contraceptive so that the responsibility of procreating (or not) is spread more democratically between the sexes. I would relish the day when the need for abortions no longer existed, except in the cases of the health of the mother.
Until then, instead of simply hand-wringing and bemoaning the situation when (and if) the Supreme Court banishes abortion as the law of the land, the movement needs to shift gears and do a “workaround.” Rather than expend untold millions of dollars fighting a terribly wrong decision in court, that money (and more if necessary) should be spent on acquiring at least three hospital ships and stationing them 12 miles outside of the border of U.S. jurisdiction on three coasts and ferrying women in need of abortions out to these safe havens absolutely free of charge. Even the costs of the getting women to the ferryboats should be covered, plus a stipend for their time off work.
Now, if there are good reasons not to do so (other than progressives wanting to bend the Supreme Court to their will while women die in back alleys), I’d like to hear them, but what I don’t care to hear is that the costs would be prohibitive. That would be total, weak-assed, white liberal bullshit — the kind of whining I’m tired so damn tired of hearing.
Liberal American society needs to do what we blacks have been forced to do for centuries: Quit wringing our goddamn hands, take the bull by the horns, and do whatever needs to be done to protect ourselves — regardless of the Supreme Court.
