Abortion Summer
The South Dakota abortion ban is cruel to women and girls, especially the 13% who live below the poverty line. That is its distinguishing characteristic, and that is why it offers a chance to educate the nation.
I wish I had the means and the courage to go there myself. I was still a teenager, living at home with mom and dad, during the Freedom Summer of 1964, but I talked to some of the only slighter older veterans when they returned. In our armchairs, we remember the glory and the crowning achievements of the Civll Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act passed the next year. I
The memory of Freedom Summer is one thing, but the actual experience was mostly just plain terrifying. If you're going to South Dakota, read this diary from 1964 so that you know what you could be getting into. You'll see why I say, at 57 at any rate, that I lack the courage to go myself. I got my chance to face tear gas and police batons during the anti-war movement a few years later.
Now I am not aware of any mobilization to South Dakota, but I can't believe that none is underway. If I can see the urgent need for it, so must others so think. And there are organized groups with more money than SNCC and SDS who can surely train volunteers in organizing and non-violent civil disobedience.
South Dakota is not a large state, but it has 100,000 girls under the age of 18. I use the term, "girl," advisedly here because I have two daughters just out of their teens. Observing them and their friends during adolescence, I know they were simply too vulnerable, too young and too innocently kind-hearted to face the impassive and pitiless power of the state without help. Yes, the women (and, indulge me, the girls) of South Dakota must lead the fight for their freedom, but they should not have to do so alone.
Male legislators should obviously not be making health care decisions for women, but the opposite is not true. Men (and boys) have a duty to fight this cruelty.
GO to South Dakota.
I will not be there, but I know that others of my generation, braver than I, will join you if they have to go on crutches.
This must not stand.