Skin In The Game…

By Sharon Synowsky

A (male) friend-of-a-friend said to me, half-jokingly and 100% insultingly, that I should “back off the whole abortion thing” because I am “well-past getting pregnant” and “you don’t have any daughters, so you got no skin in the game.”

Uh-oh

I slowly turned my head to face him, and I said,

“Yes, I’m post menopausal. Yes, I have two grown sons. But I have more ‘skin’ in this ‘game’ than my mother, grandmothers and every other woman before me did. You see, they were fighting for a right we hadn’t been given yet.

Women today are fighting to get our right to choose BACK.

You have never had to fight for the right to vote, the right to marry, the right to choose what you do with YOUR BODY. You are a white man, by whom and for whom the Constitution was written. Your rights, and the rights of your sons, grandsons, great-grandsons, and so on, are guaranteed.

My great-grandmothers couldn’t vote. My grandmothers couldn’t make decisions about their own bodies. My mother couldn’t open a bank account or get a credit card in her own name, she needed a man to cosign. Because of the women who waged battle before me, I have had all of those rights my entire adult life.

I will have daughters-in-law, granddaughters, great-granddaughters, and so on. They should have AT LEAST all of the same rights and freedoms I have had, not LESS. Pregnancy should not be a potential death sentence for them. If my future daughter-in-law needs to end a pregnancy to save her life, I want her, my son and the doctor to be the ones making that decision. If she is raped and gets pregnant as a result, I want the decision whether or not to continue the pregnancy to be HERS. If she and my son aren’t ready to start a family, I want it to be decided by THEM. Not Sam fucking Alito, Clarence fucking Thomas, or Donald fucking Trump.

And why should we think the rolling back of the right to choose will be the only right SCOTUS and the Evangelical right intends to take away? Why should we trust that SCOTUS won’t roll back civil rights? Why should we trust SCOTUS not to overturn Loving and Obergefell?

When my future granddaughter asks me what I did in this topsy-turvy moment in history, I will be able look her in the eye and tell her I fought for her. What will YOU be able to tell yours?
You see, Pal, this is not a ‘game’, it’s a fight.

And I most definitely have ‘skin’ in it!”

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