My Story With Roe
By: Sophie Ma ‘24
Content Warning: This article involves references to sexual assault and misconduct.The Academy lists a number of resources on https://www.exeter.edu/about-us/our-com-mitment-safety. If helpful, please seek confidential help at the National Sexual Assault Hotline at +1 (800) 656-4673, HAVEN 24/7 hotline at +1 (603) 994-SAFE (7233), or Counseling and Psychological Services through the Lamont Health and Wellness Center: +1 (603) 777-3420.
Over the summer, while attending workshops held by Planned Parenthood, coordinators encouraged us to write to local newspapers and publications about abortion. Enthusiastically, they told attendees that each of us has a story related to abortion, even if we have never personally had one ourselves. I wanted to agree, but at the same time, I felt like the exception: I had no story or experience with abortion to justify why I felt so strongly about protecting Roe. I do not know anyone close to me who has had an abortion, I have personally never needed an abortion, and I seemingly had no compelling or moving personal story I could tell to tug on someone else’s heartstrings.
Despite this, my feelings for the issue are rooted deeply within me, and as I’m writing this piece, I realize I do have a story after all. I want to preface this by saying that the purpose of this opinion piece is not to inform anyone about a specific methodology that lawmakers and politicians should follow to redeem the current state of the United States. Instead, I want to tell a story. I hope that regardless of your stance on abortion, you will read what I have to share.
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My story began before I was born.
In the early 2000s, my mother lived in Beijing and worked day and night on interior design construction projects for her company. She was approaching her 30s at the time and living the best years of her life. When I look at pictures of her back then, I am in awe of the beautiful, vibrant, and impeccably styled woman I see (she was a former fashion student). At the same time, I feel a flurry of mixed emotions: pride for having a mother like her, disbelief from being reminded that my parent was once young like me, and perhaps most importantly, shuffled between those feelings, I feel a slight pang of guilt to have taken that life away from her.
I am the direct product of society’s patriarchal thinking, of the old notion that women should marry and have children before they are old and undesirable. Had my grandparents not pressured my mother to marry and have a child, I wonder where I would be today. Would my mother have chosen this route herself?
Because of my family’s incessant nagging, my mother got married when she was nearly 30 and had me the same year she wed my father. After she gave birth to me, she spent less and less time on her own endeavors until she stopped working entirely, leaving my father as the sole breadwinner of our family. Her identity shifted from the young, carefree, and independent woman she used to be into that of a full-time parent; instead of living for her own hopes and dreams, she worried more and more about what was best for me.
My mom is not alone in her experiences. The expectation of parenthood is forced upon many people in the world, sometimes subtly, sometimes violently. Although my mother has made it extremely clear that she loves me and has never regretted having me, I can’t help but ache for everything my existence has cost. More than anything, I just want my mother to be happy, and if aborting me would have granted that, then I would much rather she chose her happiness over my life.
I have told these things to my mom before. Each time, she has shut me down and firmly reassured me that I am the best thing to have happened to her. When she tells me she loves me, I know for certain that she means it, but not every kid can say the same. To exist knowing you were unwanted and to be unable to experience the full extent of a parent’s love is arguably a worse fate for a child.
Although my mother ended up happy, somewhere in the world, there is a person who married and gave birth out of societal pressure and deeply resents their child. Somewhere, there is a person who is still a kid themself and has never fathomed the trauma of childbirth and pregnancy. There is a person whose pregnancy induces miserable feelings of gender dysphoria. There is a person who had their contraceptives tampered with. There is a person who simply doesn’t want a child and is happy living for themselves. Why should any of them be forced to go through the traumatizing ordeals of pregnancy and childbirth?
Parenthood is hard. My mother’s story— and the story of my childhood— have shown me that. My mom made sacrifice after sacrifice in her career, personal life, and health to ensure I had a happy childhood. When I was six years old, my mom threw away her life in China and enrolled in community college in the United States — something she continued to do for the next nine years — so we could obtain a visa when a green card wasn’t possible. While my dad worked in China, my mother raised me alone, all the while balancing classes in a language she did not speak. I have seen her worn down to a breaking point, I have seen her cry, and I have been her shoulder when she had no one else. I have seen firsthand how hard parenthood can be. So when I think of a world where parenthood isn’t a choice, I am scared.
My story continues when last year, a mere week into my first term at the Academy, Nancy Jo Sales released her Vanity Fair article. I remember receiving the email from Principal Rawson on my way back to the dorm (“I am writing today to address issues raised in an article published in Vanity Fair and to provide information about the process we follow each time…”), opening the article, and making it halfway through the horrific stories Sales recounted before I stopped reading. I felt nauseous. I couldn’t make it back into my dorm before I collapsed on the red plastic lawn chair outside Bancroft and called my mother, distressed and crying, while I grappled with what I had just read.
I finished the article later that day, in the quiet of my dorm room, still a little nauseous and filled with sadness for the traumatic things people have experienced in the hands of their assaulter (and then throughout the reporting process at the Academy). In the weeks and months to come, in between protests, a wider campus conversation about rape culture, and vigorous efforts from student leaders to change the culture and response around sexual assault, an occasional thought would come into my mind: if something awful like that does happen, at least I can get an abortion.
It wasn’t much comfort, especially considering that sexual assault doesn’t necessarily lead to pregnancy, and that even if I could get an abortion, it still wouldn’t erase the trauma of the ordeal. However, to think about being forced into pregnancy and having my rapist’s baby on top of being sexually assaulted was far more horrifying, so I clung to the minuscule reassurance that I would always have access to abortion.
Eight months later, I opened another news article to find out that the Supreme Court planned to overturn Roe v. Wade. The little comfort I had from Roe’s protection was shattered, opening the doors to a new terrifying reality: a reality where one assault, one mistake, one unfortunate situation could leave me with no way to free myself from my own body. Once again, I called my mom and cried.
The overturning of Roe v. Wade not only foreshadows an ominous future for all uterus-havers in the United States but also threatens same-sex marriage, interracial marriage, and access to contraceptive devices. The right to privacy — which sets the basis for Roe v. Wade — is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, but it’s something that’s been codified in decisions over and over again for the last several decades through the due process clause in the fifth and 14th amendments. That very same right to privacy is the basis for many other rights, such as the right to decide aspects of your child’s education, as well as the right to contraceptives and same-sex and interracial marriage. In undoing Roe, the door opens to a series of problematic possibilities threatening everyone’s personal autonomy, not just women and people with uteruses.
Driving this point home, Justice Clarence Thomas— one of the five Supreme Court Justices that voted to overturn Roe v. Wade— has already said that other rulings similar to Roe, including those around same-sex marriage and the right for couples to use contraception, should be reconsidered as none are directly stated as rights by the Constitution (POLITICO 2022). Although the Respect for Marriage Act (which protects same-sex marriage) has passed in the House of Representatives as of July 2022, its fate in the Senate remains unclear. From the precedent that overturning Roe has set, however, I have bleak expectations for its future and the future of the United States.
As a young queer woman of color, I am scared that everything I know will crumble. I am afraid that one day, I will be on my way back to the dorm and open an article telling me I cannot marry the person I love because of their gender. I’m terrified that I will come out of class one day and find out that I will no longer have access to contraceptives, which protect me from more than just pregnancy but also life-altering diseases and are commonly used to regulate menstrual issues. If the Supreme Court could overturn Roe nearly 50 years after its decision, then no precedent or right is truly out of the question, and that alone terrifies me. If decades of progress can be erased in a fraction of that time, what else is to come?
The actual issue does not lie in whether or not my mom, someone else, or myself receives or doesn’t receive an abortion. It lies in the freedom of choice and the violence of forced birth, as well as the implications of the Supreme Court taking away a right because it isn’t explicitly written in the Constitution. After I called my mom the day the draft leaks came out, she listened to me cry and reassured me that if worse came to worse, we could always go back to China for an abortion. Although this relieved a small portion of my anxiety, it also highlights an important issue: Roe being overturned impacts low-income and minority populations the most. Criminalizing abortion isn’t stopping abortion completely; it’s simply removing access from underprivileged communities. Wealthy people and people with access to resources will still be able to work around these obstructions, while people in poverty— especially people of color— are left to reconcile with the worst of the issue.
At the end of the day, abortion bans are not black and white. They do not just impact childbirth, and overturning Roe has implications beyond simply the matter at hand. To many people, parenthood is a beautiful gift, but that is not the case for everyone. Individual belief should not be the reason for dictating other people’s bodies. Instead of considering the loss of a potential life, consider the pain that real people like me feel right now. We are living, breathing humans with people to love and dreams to fulfill. When you criminalize abortion access, you are not saving the “lives” of unborn fetuses but hurting masses of communities and people like you and me.
