02/2006

I don’t know how much more shit about black women I can cram in my head. I’m reading three or four books a week, every single one depressing and horrific. Even the happy ones, they’re still about the lives of black women, which, if you haven’t been paying attention, have never been too fine or too easy. No jet-setting or posh romantic affairs with big shot celebrities, no and-everything-was-okay-in-the-end, and always always always rape.

It’s not as though I’ve ever been extraordinarily peppy to begin with, but when all you read are books called things like “Too Heavy a Load” or “Mule of the World”, oh, and the news, the fucking news of all things I need to be reading… anyway, I’ve been unusually bitter and pessimistic lately, and I’m totally creeping out the co-workers. And okay, the Takashi Miike doesn’t help. I admit I have a problem.

I am now a walking database of conversation-stopping horror. If you would like your guests to leave, simply invite me over, and ask what I’ve been reading lately. You know what’s the best book? Killing the Black Body. You can ruin anybody’s day by flashing that book around. One whole chapter — a whole freakin’ chapter — on “birth control,” as it was, for slave women. I am waiting for the day when I am at the party where the freakish Trivial Pursuit is being played, and I am the only one who knows the answer to, “What did slave women boil in liquid they used to douche to induce a miscarriage?” Ooh! Ooh! I fucking know this! It’s rusty nails, rusty nails!

It’s this, and the news. The news, the news, the news. How kind it was for South Dakota this week to unveil its glorious plan, which shall soon no doubt make them the envy of America and those snobby elitist European countries. Of course, they are only making official what was already practice. In 2000, South Dakota had only 2 abortion providers in the entire state. Here, perhaps, one should mention that “in the state” means “providing to the state,” because one of these abortion providers is the ever stalwart Planned Parenthood located in Saint Paul, Minnesota. That’s right, if you get knocked up in South Dakota, and you’re like 78% of the female population who lives in on of the 98% of counties without abortion services, well, honey, you’ve got quite a drive ahead of you. Fifty miles, at least. And you can rest assured, deep in the heart of this moral upright state, that lone abortion provider is staked and protested on a daily and highly organized basis. This is what gets done with grassroots, kids. Maybe we should think about it, huh?

But don’t you worry — South Dakota is only one bad apple. No need to worry about your wayward uteruses, ladies, or your runaway sperm, fellas. This is an isolated incident, right? America isn’t like this all over. (Oh, husband consent… you’re my favorite)

Oh, sure, that law outlawing abortion in South Dakota will be challenged immediately. But it will take a few years before it inches its way up the courts, a few years in which that 78% of the female population becomes 100%. And then that big sweaty SCOTUS will have its crack at it. And how will they rule?

Well, that depends. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a challenge against the so-called “partial-birth” abortion ban. They’ll have deliberations this fall, and deliver their opinion sometime next year. With the tie-breaking Sandra Day O’Connor out of the picture, we’ll have those dubiously polite young men who sauntered into town and sweet-talked us all, Alito and Robertson. Their votes on this case will set the precedent for the direct overturning of Roe v. Wade in South Dakota. Seriously, kids, that’s it; the battle has come, and it has come in our lifetimes.

So what can we do, you’re asking? Protest? Write letters? Rant on message boards? Write another blog? Start a magazine? God, maybe some poetry!

You can’t do shit.

Alito and Robertson are on that court till they become your doddering old grandfather, schlepping around the house looking for his slippers with a musty funk odor trailing behind him. It doesn’t matter if we’re saving up the energy for a bigger fight. It doesn’t matter if come 2008 Hilary fucks a vibrating Washington Monument on national television and her approval ratings soar. They are on that court, and beholden to no one. We missed our chance. Fully and completely. There is no everything-was-okay-in-the-end. And there is rape rape rape, but never ever an abortion.