Abortion: America's Apartheid

The Thursday Thoughts!

It was a typically blazing hot summer in Tallahassee during the months after I graduated from Morehouse College in 1994, and as I settled into my first semester of graduate school at Florida A&M University, I ran into a childhood friend of mine one afternoon as I was heading to my job as a research assistant in Tucker Hall. 

After we exchanged pleasantries, my friend gave me her phone number and that evening, we conversed for what seemed like an eternity in a way that younger generations, the ones who have spent their whole lives only a text message, Snapchat, or Instagram post away from their friends, wouldn't quite understand. Among the news that she gave during that first call was of her new boyfriend, another friend of mine from childhood who was living and working in the city. I congratulated her on that because I remembered that they had been crushing on each other for years, so I figured that fate had finally intervened in their favor. 

A few weeks later, my friend called and laid some news that was hardly shocking by the time I was a 22-year-old college graduate, which was that she thought that she was pregnant. Not long thereafter, her suspicions were confirmed and after discussing it at length with her boyfriend, she was totally confused about whether to have their child—or not. 

For those unaware, my best friends in college sometimes used to tease me by calling me "Oprah Winfrey" because I was always on the telephone helping folks talk out their toughest problems 😆. I always chalked that gift up to being a momma's boy with three older sisters, one who read anything I could get my hands on while growing up, including Essence magazine—which was a part of my mother's Ebony, Jet, and Black Enterprise bundle. It was in those pages that I learned to pay attention to things that some men didn't, including the importance of listening skills when girl friends—or girlfriends—needed an empathetic ear. 

So, when my friend started breaking down her fears of being a 20-year-old single mom, and how she still wanted to be a cheerleader and pledge a sorority, I listened carefully as she tearfully weighed the pros and cons of this very important decision. By the end of the conversation she had made her mind up—she would terminate the pregnancy and get back to enjoying her school days. 

About a week later, my friend called and asked whether I would go with her to the clinic for the procedure; I paused because my first instinct was that my homeboy, her boyfriend, should be in that position. But she told me that while he was paying for the abortion, that he couldn't make it due to work obligations. So, Hobbs being Hobbs, I said "yes" and the next morning, I picked her up from her dorm in my old Volvo and off we went to the center. 

When we arrived, as she filled out the forms and went through what I can only describe as a type of triage, I remember noticing that the workers at the clinic, all women, were staring daggers through me. I shunned my dark side, the one that at that age had no qualms with asking “is there a problem," because I realized that these brave women worked in a tough environment and probably witnessed all sorts of foolishness from mad men, their melancholy patients—or the small but vocal group of protesters that were waving "Choose Life" and "Abortion is Murder" posters right across the street. So, I stayed cool and kept my focus squarely on my friend whose voice seemed confident, but whose eyes betrayed the fear and angst that she was experiencing that morning. 

Thinking that I would remain out in the lobby and bide time until my friend was released, a nurse, an older Black woman, looked at me and said "Honey, it's ok if you come back, too." Well, my choice was made for me as my friend clasped my hand with a vise grip and yanked my then 6'1 230 lb. self out of the chair and right down the hallway with her. 

Her grip never loosened; while decorum prevents recounting the lurid details, I was rather surprised by how quickly the procedure moved from beginning to end. In fact, within the hour of our entering the operating room, we were back at my house as she rested comfortably in my room while I alternated between watching television and playing John Madden on my Sega Genesis in the living room. Several hours later, my homeboy knocked on the door, thanked me for my help, and after waking his lady up, escorted her to his car.

Now, the memory that I just shared was not my first brush with abortion early in life—nor my last among friends and kin. But abortion, truly, is a subject that is touchy…taboo if you will…because the decision is a highly personal one that vexes the emotions of the girls and women who must decide, and sometimes haunts the men who are responsible for the pregnancy—even if unequally strapped with the burdens of having a child or an abortion. 

Such is why I have spent my entire adult life squarely in the "pro-choice" camp because in my estimation, no boy or man has anywhere near the right to tell any girl or woman what to do when they learn that they are pregnant. 

And yet, long before Roe vs. Wade made abortions legal in 1973, and in the 49 years since, there has always been an entitled, self-righteous, condescending, and hypocritical group of men who believe that the Bible endows them with the right to tell women what to do with their bodies when they become pregnant. 

The irony in these so-called Christians is that their same Bible chronicles a God who smote living children just the same as he smote living men and women (remember the Passover and the first born Egyptian boys who were slain by a spirit sent from God to help Moses), but somehow, His modern followers invoke His name when it's convenient to subjugate women by restricting abortion! (Nota Bene: The majority of anti-abortion Evangelicals fully support the death penalty and clamor for war against Islamic states—and possibly Russia—abroad). 

But hypocrisy is as American as baseball and jazz music, so I don't expect anything less from the radical Evangelical right, even if they act in private completely opposite to how they protest and make policies in public.

Speaking of hypocrisy, I had to check one of the biggest hypocrites alive, Florida Republican U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, earlier today on Twitter:

But if there are any silver linings in the fact that Roe soon will be gone with the wind, perhaps it is that Democrats, Independents, and even compassionate Republicans across America will finally see the dilemma that is a vocal conservative minority enacting laws that the majority do not support!

This American Apartheid, if you will, could get worse really soon, what with Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott already proposing litigation to end public schools in his state, another long time goal of a Republican Party that prefers private and charter schools that benefit the rich and the white (except for the ball teams—gotta have some Black folks to run, jump, and tackle).

Finally, just maybe, moderate Republicans like Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, will realize the folly in believing the lies that recent Supreme Court nominees Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett told in their confirmation hearings about stare decisis and respecting Roe as legal precedent, and observe what these ones are doing—like Ol' Hobbs and countless other legal analysts have been warning about for YEARS. If not, the American Apartheid system will only tighten the grip that right wingers now possess and, God forbid, should Republicans take over the House and Senate this fall, America circa 2030 may look an awful lot America circa 1930.