Dear U.S. Supreme Court justices who voted in 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade,

I’m not here to give niceties or dance around the topic so I don’t hurt your feelings. I’m here to speak for my fellow women and tell you that you’re wrong. You’re oppressors. You think that women should have no control over what they can do with their reproductive systems, and you have no right.
I hope you know what you’ve done. I hope you realize that you signed the death certificate of thousands of us around the country. I hope you’re ashamed.
Approximately 50% of people in this country have a uterus. 168.6 million people have had a fundamental right stripped from them.
Here is why: Mississippi asked you to. Their Gestational Age Act, banning abortion after 15 weeks, clashed with Roe v. Wade’s viability standard and a case was made that the whole thing should be overturned for “state’s rights.”
State’s rights, what an excuse. What about my rights?
We are taking our rights with or without permission. According to the New York Times’ Margot Sanger-Katz and Claire Cain Miller, “many women in states with bans have ended their pregnancies anyway, by traveling to other states or ordering pills online.” So, fine. Your plot is foiled. We’re still getting abortions.
But I have another question for you: do you know the danger we face? A threat of financial ruin if we are “caught” going out of the state to get life-saving care. Texas has passed what is essentially a bounty-hunter law, permitting citizens to sue pregnant women who they know have traveled. The risks of buying abortion pills from unregistered websites. According to Life Line Pregnancy Center, “the potential for receiving sub-standard medications or unexpected ingredients is higher when ordering from an unknown online source.”
But that’s not all: one in every fifty U.S. pregnancies is ectopic. What happens then? Will those women be forced to march to death by a ruptured fallopian tube that could have been avoided, if only abortion was legal? Tell me: how many more of us are going to die?
In the first six months of 2023, 20-25% of women who would have otherwise gotten abortions were forced to carry the baby to term. Justices, it’s a tragedy. A terrible fate for many with a uterus in the United States. I’m begging you to change your mind. Give us our rights. Save our lives. With the two year anniversary of June 24 coming up, and no change made except that towards a future where women are no longer free, it is even more imperative that you listen.
This is not the land of the free anymore. Now we must be forced to be brave.

Sincerely,

A girl who just wants her body to belong to her