Blog for Choice Day
It’s officially Blog for Choice day again, and in the afterglow of the Obama administration, it might be easy to think that we don’t have to worry about Roe v. Wade anymore. That things are great, time to go back to being happy.
Not yet.
The balance of the Supreme Court is still weighted in the wrong direction. We still have a lot of work to do, and yes, we’ve taken a step in the right direction.
Choice also means more than maintaining Roe v. Wade. As Sylvia wrote, we need to fight for comprehensive sex education. We need the right to choose not only when we will or will not have a child, but when and how we will be sexual, and we need to know that no one but ourselves has the right to judge us for those choices.
My top pro-choice hope for the Obama administration is of course overturning the global gag rule. We’ve seen and heard much about it, but it remains undone–for the moment. And I can hope that moment won’t last much longer.
But I want much, much more than that.
I am celebrating still, beaming at the television at the mention of President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But I do not forget that there is still work to be done, that the inauguration of Obama was the beginning of a journey, not its end, and a call for us to work harder, because look, after all, at what we’ve already achieved.
So today, I think about the choices that have opened up to us in the past few days, and about the ones that are still in danger. And I prepare for the fights ahead.
I also hope that we progressives don’t put too much on his back. It’s an awful lot to expect one president to be able to undo the decades of conservative attacks that began in the 1970’s. A big thing is that the Democratic party needs to grow a spine and return to its progressive roots; we will need their help in confirming Supreme Court justices and Federal judges that will balance the court system; that’s a process that sadly will take decades.
If the Dems don’t grow that spine, I hope that we US citizens will form a truly progressive party. That’s going to take a huge amount of work, and will probably require changes to give minor parties a voice.
Yes. We can’t sit back and expect Obama to fix everything himself–I’m already beyond frustrated with the people who are complaining that he hasn’t fixed their pet cause in his first day and a half.
He needs support, and pressure. Optimism doesn’t have to be blind.