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We are .............
The Department of Homeland Security has been quietly detaining and abusing pregnant people for months now. Reports of abuse include: shackling pregnant people around their stomachs during transport, denying them medical care during miscarriages, refusing to give them enough sanitary pads when they bleed heavily after miscarrying, refusing to give them clothes that fit their pregnant bodies, not taking them to the ER after accidents that put their pregnancies at risk. Hello: we live in a black site where the state is crushing the bodies of brown women and brown families with impunity and calling it justice. These are just glimpses. What is happening outside of our line of sight? What is happening that we will never know about? Not everything that is hidden will be uncovered. We’re responsible for all of it.
Last Wednesday, we hosted a conversation at Verso Books with Laurie Bertram, co-founder and executive director of the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund. She was brilliant—literally, a light shining in the dark—and razor-sharp, gifting us with wide-ranging insight about the present and future of reproductive healthcare in Mississippi. Medicaid in Mississippi is so cruel, she said, that there’s a cap on the number of doctor’s appointments you can have per year: 12. The maximum number of prescriptions that Medicaid will pay for at a time? 5. It falls to reproductive justice organizations like the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund to fill in the gaps: “If you can think of something that someone would call social services for, they call us for that. Social services are failing people.” And where is the white church? Where are the pro-lifers? Laurie told us that she hears from black pastors who say that they are approached by white pastors every few years, asking them to get involved in the pro-life movement. One black pastor said to her, “I ask them the same question every time: When are you going to start caring about live black babies?” Crickets.
If there’s a person alive who still thinks that the term “pro-life” is anything but a bludgeon for enforcing limits on which lives have value…………….
P.S.: Give your money to the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund, every day they are providing abortions funds and also Plan B, diapers, condoms, car rides to the clinic, ETCETERA.
P.P.S: Roe vs. Wade is vulnerable. There’s virtually no place in the country where people can access abortion without harassment. The courts won’t save us. The Right is emboldened. But so are we!! Join us in the streets to counter the antis and tell them what we want: free abortion on demand, no apologies. August 4, 7:45 am, Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral. The Facebook event isn’t public because we’re trying to keep it sneaky, but message us here and we’ll connect you.
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