Last night, while traveling home from California, which had just passed one of the country’s most radical abortion measures, I spent a layover in Texas. As I rushed from one airport gate to the next, my phone pinged with election results, and not the results I had hoped for. In a moment of frustration, it cynically dawned on me that the entirety of my day was spent jumping through hoops to get from one abortion sanctuary to another; I would return to Logan hauling both luggage and the expectation of trudging along once again, in the uphill fight for life, with which we in Massachusetts are more than a little familiar — a familiar that sometimes feels like the impossible.
My negative thoughts paused as my feet met an escalator. Descending, I spotted the Dallas skyline out the window. I admired it just long enough for the post-Roe realization to hit me so hard that it honestly left me breathless: it doesn’t happen here anymore!
For the first time in my life, I was standing in a part of America where elective abortion did not exist, where a majority of residents acknowledged the value of human life, and who knew beyond a doubt that women’s empowerment and equality come neither at the expense of their dignity nor their children’s lives. You might call it a “shock and awe” moment. My next thought, paired with a couple emotion-driven tears:
You and I are not engaged in the impossible, nor even the possible, but the inevitable!
Like the first fateful block skillfully removed from a Jenga tower, Dobbs weakened the abortion industry’s foundation. One by one since June, other states have damaged its once solid infrastructure. Blows like these are irreparable, despite what might have happened here — or in Vermont, Michigan and California — yesterday. Indeed, the destabilization has already begun. It’s just a matter of time until these new, seemingly formidable supports are removed, resulting in a collapse.
We can hang our heads in frustration, or we can recommit ourselves to the fight, knowing with all certainty that it is ours to ultimately win.
We can choose to look away, downtrodden and weary. Or we can fix our gaze on injustice that still surrounds us, knowing that if we do not act to eliminate it, no one will.
Today, I invite you to join Massachusetts Citizens for Life once again as we renew our commitment to fight for unborn life and for women and men whose lives are worth immeasurably more than what abortion or “death with dignity” can ever provide.
One way to think about the Beacon Hill reality is to consider it daunting to our life-affirming efforts; a would-be resourceful partner that, instead, forces us to work alone. Another way to think about things is a counterintuitive one. That is, we can acknowledge the unique privilege we have. The power to change our state’s culture lies in no one else’s hands but yours and mine. The men and women elected to serve the Commonwealth over the next few years refuse to remove blocks from the most evil tower ever constructed. So you and I get to be the ones to do it. And I, for one, can’t wait for the crash.
With the help of pro-life allies across the state who did win last night, MCFL plans to draft and file life-affirming bills at the start of the next legislative session. Then, alongside constituents like you, we will firmly request a response from those who represent us, our preborn children, our ill and elderly. We will not accept silence as an answer because the justice inherent in human rights won’t allow for it.
Love does not succumb to depressed immobility. Love doesn’t shrink from exposing the truth. Love provides a way forward. Right now, it might seem like that way is uncertain, the Frostian road “less traveled.” Yet, as Frost asserted, choosing that road will have "made all the difference.”
With gratitude for your continued partnership,
Myrna