The Worst Guy You Know
He decides what happens to your body
Think about the worst guy you knew in high school. The biggest jerk in class, the most ignorant asshole—the guy who bullied other students or made people miserable.
Now imagine he’s the district attorney in your county who decides what happens to women who have abortions. Or that he’s your police chief. Or your state representative.
The enforcement arm of abortion bans is just as important as the laws themselves. Because these are the men who will decide what cases to bring forward, what arrests to make, or how much funds are used for criminalization efforts.
While plenty of people get into local politics or law enforcement because they want to help people—twice as many do so because they like the idea of being able to tell someone what to do. (Sorry, but this is no time to be delicate: we all know people who ended up becoming cops—they weren’t exactly the nicest or smartest guys you knew.) For these men, being able to punish people is a pleasure. And when you factor in how many of them are misogynists, you realize that the chance to enforce abortion bans—to have the opportunity to humiliate and hurt women—is basically their dream come true.
It doesn’t matter that men like this know nothing about pregnancy or the bodies that carry them: They have the same amount of power whether they understand the IVF process or not, the same ability to ruin lives whether they’ve ever heard of an ectopic pregnancy, and regardless if they believe pregnancy can’t result from rape.
The most oblivious, cruelest men you know are the ones who will decide which of us will be arrested, and who among us ‘deserve’ basic medical treatment.
All of which is to say two things:
First, run for something. It can be the school board, the city council, town treasurer—whatever makes sense for you. It doesn’t matter if you think you’re not qualified enough. I promise that you are more capable than the vast majority of ridiculous men currently occupying these positions.
The second is that you need to get to know who the officials are in your town, city, county, wherever. Find out everything you can about your state rep, your district attorney, your police chief—anyone who might have an iota of say over what happens to people who break anti-abortion laws. Find their Facebook accounts and old videos. Look for a letter to the editor they wrote or a speech they gave ten years ago. Keep records of it all: Anything terrible they’ve ever said about women, anything ridiculous they’ve ever said about pregnancy.
These men need to know that if they decide to go after abortion and the people who need them, we will make certain that their name is attached to it forever—along with every horrible, embarrassing thing they’ve ever put out into the world.
We need to make arresting us—or doing anything else on abortion—absolutely fucking toxic. Because, really: Do you think the state representative who told a woman in Tennessee that IVF doctors can be arrested is having a good day today? I don’t fucking think so.
Make sure these men know that if they come after us, they will never have a good day again.
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These men are obvious enemies.
What has caught me somewhat unprepared is the realization that even some men who are our allies and who will vote for abortion rights - even these men may be frighteningly ignorant about both birth control and abortion. They may "support" us but they aren't able to argue persuasively about the issue.
It may be more of an issue with older men, not sure.
I can think back over my life and remember every birth control I ever used, every oopsie, every late period. Even men that I was intimate with, who I would have thought might have retained some memory of how we avoided pregnancy, have no memory. It wasn't their issue. They didn't experience the side effects of BC, they didn't worry, have sleepless nights, didn't cry in relief. They just inhabit a different world.
Exactly. So long as these laws remain on the books we the people need to make it so difficult to enforce them that they're effectively nullified.