I originally published this poem on National Poetry Day, with the theme of ‘Choice’, in the more poetry-related blog on my main website. I’d written the poem in response to the passing of a law in Texas that criminalises anyone who helps a woman to get an abortion.
This chipping away of human rights, and especially of women’s rights, is happening in all kinds of places, not just America. Yesterday — it’s important to remember this, as a friend pointed out to me this morning — someone chose to leak a 96-page report by the US Supreme Court, detailing the reasoning behind their 5-4 vote to overturn Roe vs Wade.
Roe vs Wade, of course, is the legislation that enshrines the right to a medical abortion in women’s constitutional rights. And Planned Parenthood vs Casey, which they also want to overturn, ruled that a woman doesn’t need her husband’s permission to have a termination.
I can remember my mother telling me that up until 1972, she needed my dad’s permission in writing to get contraception. The same legislation that enabled her free choice also enabled single women to possess birth control on the same basis as married ones. 1972! And Roe vs Wade was only in 1973. Never forget.
The leaked report, written by Justice Samuel Alito, says:
Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division.
Of course, it’s a dead cert that getting rid of them will create unity, right? And it further says:
We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. It is time to heed the constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.
It was drafted in February, and it was leaked yesterday, and there are 60 days remaining before it can be published — that is, become finalised. This is a window. The protests are happening and will continue. Someone leaked it for a reason. The thing to remember is that this is not something the American people have voted for, any more than the Polish people voted for the draconian anti-abortion law imposed on them by their far-right government, from which at least two women have already died. And any more than British people voted for Patel’s Police, Crime, Courts & Sentencing Act. Something like 70 per cent of Americans support women’s right to choose legal, safe terminations.
The upshot of all this is that we need to remember — all of us, not just in America — that our rights are recent, that they’re not enshrined in centuries of tradition; they’re just seedlings. That they were granted only after being fought for, and that they aren’t the norm worldwide. Our civil, sexual, racial, workers’, environmental, human, women’s, LGBTQ, and whatever other rights you care to mention, unless you’re a white property-owning man, are highly provisional. It only takes a few crooked zealots at the top to throw us back into a past that isn’t, after all, so very long ago. They, not each other, are the ones we need to fight. Like our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents did.
What happens if this legislation goes through? The same as if Putin wins in Ukraine: it won’t stop there. It’s totalitarianism.
Anyway, here’s the poem. It incorporates some phrases from Patchen, and is modelled a bit on the old song, The Streets of Laredo.
From Lines by Kenneth Patchen #17
Rock-a-bye poor ladies, the world was ever cruel and wrong.
This time it goes down singing a cruel cowboy song:
there’s a pretty little lady in the State of the Lone Star,Â
in a state of do and re-do, and she’ll have to travel far,
and her heart is cold as clay, in a cloud of white linen.
And her heart is hard as clay, for the state says she’s sinnin’
but ‘sin’ is a form of moral threat and has no place in law.
Her heart is cracked as clay. And she can’t travel. She’s poor.
Your problem is one of sex, says Man in Stetson Hat, who has none.Â
She thinks, that’s funny enough to break my heart, if I still had one,
but the blood’s been drained away from it and she knows she’s alone.
She sings, Boxers always hit harder when there are women around.
There’s a bounty-hunter keeping watch to sue whoever helps her —
she must speak in code for ’transport’, ‘money’, ‘blood’, and ‘shelter’.
You can sit down and listen, but she’ll keep her story short,
because anyone who sympathises with her could end up in court
— and the thing about a civil suit is, it keeps the state clean.
It’s divide-and-conquer, it’s dirty tricks, it’s the sub-routine,
It’s informers, it’s Stasi, it’s the shame of the county,
and no man’s life can be beautiful if even one man gets this bounty.
O Lady, poor lady, please sit pretty tight
while help’s smuggled in by stealth of night —
too late for you, maybe, but maybe not to late for your sister
tell her, just sit tight till the soul plasma gets here.
You’re just a young lady in the backstreets of Laredo,Â
O young lady in Laredo, with your life still ahead —
But this re-do is a no-do, and your coat-hanger’s waiting —
and this law will still be working if you wind up dead.
I really enjoyed this. Roe v Wade, people! Something fundamental is going down.