Today marks 134 days before the next Election Day, and 500 days until the next Presidential Election Day. It seems like a very far time away, but it really isn’t. It will be here before we know it. It is also not too early to become familiar with your local elections and issues happening that will be addressed on the next two Election Days.

Our voting numbers in this country are abysmal. I know we want to represent freedom, and you should have the freedom to decide whether or not you want to vote. However, that should come with a dreading realization that with your one vote, you can change how things are done in this country. Look at Michigan. I am personally for a national day off for voting and automatic registration at 18 as well as requiring all those eligible to vote. We are still using a Presidential election system built on slavery and proportioning electoral college votes on land rather than on people.

How does this affect women’s rights, the presumptive focus of this missive?

The Constitution, the Electoral College, local laws from colonial times were made and written without input from women, from non-landowners, from non-White citizens. Women are still second-class citizens, and yet we expect them to step up and clean up the messes created by those in power (primarily the GOP). Since the GOP have taken over the House, they have passed bills that will have no bearing on everyday people’s lives, mainly because they will never pass the Senate or signed into law by the President. They are only for show to bring back to their hometowns and say they’re working against Washington obstruction even though if they had the votes for these bills to become laws, they would never bring them to the floor.

They’ve “investigated” corruption where there is none, while letting the last President run roughshod over our laws and tradition, lying, stealing, and cheating while his allies and “fans” cheer from the sidelines, all the while being shortchanged in every way in their lives.

This past Saturday marked the one-year anniversary of the Dobbs decision, overturning Roe v. Wade. Women said that this would happen. No one listened to us.

Already now, in the year post-Dobbs, women have suffered and died because they weren’t allowed to receive reproductive care in their draconian states. A ten-year old fled from Ohio to Indiana to receive an abortion. A pregnant ten-year old! A phrase that should never be uttered, but there it is, and she is not the only one in that adolescent age group to have been violated several times and traumatized each and every time from the rape to the notification of her pregnancy, to the explanation of what that means to her ten-year old body, to the realization that she had no options in her state but to carry a baby to term, a baby possibly that would be born at ten percent of her own body weight. To compare that to an average adult of 170lbs, the baby would be SEVENTEEN POUNDS! A ten-year old body is not made for childbirth regardless of what the religious right declares.

Women who have had ectopic pregnancies have been told to wait and give birth naturally. There is no natural birth for an ectopic pregnancy. Ectopic pregnancies that are not terminated end in death for the mother. Every. Time.

Do we want religious people to continue to give unlicensed medical care? We would never allow this in any other situation except for abortion.

Now, they want to change the procedure, so it’s not called an abortion, but regardless of intentional termination, miscarriage, or other medical procedure to remove a fetus before viability, the medical term is ABORTION. Do not let people who know less about a women’s body than a ten-year old redefine medical terms.

I could go on. There have been so many tragedies in the past year due to the Dobbs ruling, including near bleeding to death and the loss of being able to ever have children for some. Many of these pregnancies were wanted, and now there is no future children for some of these women.

There is a new onslaught of banning birth control and sterilization without male permission, while vasectomies and Viagra are offered at will without consulting the female partner.

In reading the Dobbs ruling, you will see how far down Justice Alito reached to into the depths of rhetoric and tap-dancing word salad to rescind bodily autonomy from women by citing a misogynist philosopher and suggesting that we adhere to the letter of the Constitution. That is, of course, unless it involves right-wing wet dreams like guns and suppression of voting rights. He states, “The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision.” He also either is mistaken in his legal opinion or he is deliberately misleading the Court by his suggestion that some rights [including abortion] not mentioned in the Constitution must be “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” As we all know, abortion has been a part of this country’s history for as long as it’s been a country and well before that in all civilizations.

And I haven’t gotten into the appointment of three of these justices by the corrupt former president, one seat stolen by Mitch McConnell, and one appointed metaphorically in the dead of the night when the replaced justice wasn’t even cold in her grave.

This is not the world I want my daughter to live in.

She has less freedom today than when she was born. 2024 will be her first presidential election, and I will make sure that she and her friends know where each candidate stands on the issues, on the law, and on women’s rights and autonomy. I will warn her of the myth and lies of a third-party vote for President.

I, for one will be voting, and I will never vote for another Republican again.

The following links may be helpful in understanding the issues involved in the Dobbs ruling, and visit Vote Save America for what you can do to ensure voting rights for all.

Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (Wikipedia overview)

Supreme Court Ruling in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (PDF download)