(Photo: Clayton Henkel)
When Roe v. Wade was overturned, my teenage daughter came out of her room, crying, and asked me to stop working for a minute and just listen. She said she knew if she ever needed an abortion, I would make sure she had access. “But what about my friends?” she asked. Terrified and enraged at the Supreme Court’s decision, she said she felt the country was going backwards.
Those same thoughts ran through my head just 30 years earlier. When I was a teenager in the Pacific Northwest, my unplanned pregnancy happened while I dealt with my own personal and family struggles. As a 19-year-old full-time college student and new U.S. resident, I was lucky to recognize and leave an abusive relationship. I was also lucky to be living in Washington – a state with very few restrictions on access to abortion care.
My friend Gabby supported me through every step of my abortion: from my decision-making process to scheduling my appointment to the aftercare. The clinic offices never made me feel ashamed. Although I was nervous, I trusted the medical staff attending me, and I didn’t stress about a 72-hour waiting period or unnecessarily invasive ultrasound. The office was professional and compassionate – unlike many “anti-abortion centers” that now feature without pictures of babies and families to elicit unnecessary guilt on an already difficult day.
As a queer, Latine mother, I can’t stand on the sidelines while my daughter’s generation has less freedom than I did and when they are forced into futures they don’t choose for themselves. To be clear, the criminalization of contraception, limiting of sex education, weaponizing access to life-saving healthcare, and the ongoing coercion and sterilization are not the civic or public health traditions I want to pass down to her.
What I do pass down to my daughter is the history and the importance of the Green Wave Movement – the global Latine-led movement for reproductive rights that made abortion access possible in Mexico, Argentina, Colombia. In the Green Wave, it’s reiterated that Latine folx have been having abortions for centuries. We have shared medicines, teas, and passed on our rituals and approaches outside of Western medicine. Our ancestry breaks the taboo and interrupts the shame that keeps us as women, as queer, as immigrant pregnant people silent. We are many.
My daughter, now a college senior, is my moral compass. I aim to create a better world for her and for generations after her. And so, as the election approaches, I want to tell her and maybe all of us: do not lose hope—do more than vote.
Across the nation, a growing number of states—including Iowa, Florida, Arizona, Texas, South Carolina, and Georgia—impose severe early abortion restrictions that profoundly affect women, especially in the Latine community. The 2023 disciplinary action against Indiana’s Dr. Caitlin Bernard also highlights how state level sanctions have serious impacts as patients and providers across state lines. In North Carolina, SB20 restricts abortion care to up to 12 weeks, while other strict yet vague laws cause confusion around the healthcare that pregnant people can get, endangering mothers, forcing them to give birth in unsafe locations and miscarry in public restrooms. These, combined with immigration-targeted bills like HB10, seem to be an assault on Latine lives.
Since the fall of Roe, abortion access has most significantly impacted Latine communities in the U.S. via the intersection of state-by-state legislation, geographic densities and age. Criminalization, punishment, and stigma will only continue to endanger our lives, limit our economic opportunities, and jeopardize our self-determination. Even after the harm of denied care, we are denied justice – like in Texas v. Zurawski. Generations of Latine voters are activated by the racism and sexism perpetuated by state laws, and we demand a fresh start for the whole of our country.
We must stand together as we march towards access to quality, medically necessary care. We must rise to be counted as part of a transnational, multi-lingual, racial, and cultural movement to combat machista culture and dangers of Western conservative patriarchy.
Stigma and criminalization should have no home in health clinics. The right to legal, safe, and shame-free reproductive freedom and care is needed now! Our call to action is clear: no fear in healthcare. May our voices at the ballot box, on social media, and at our kitchen tables be the Green Wave that we need and deserve.
La Marea Verde no para. The Green Wave does not stop.