The United States Supreme Court just overturned
Roe v Wade and people are mourning their own 
bodies while others celebrate. The only sense I can 
make is that line: "you're beating with a book everyone 
the book told you to love," but then I remember that 
Jesse Lacey groomed two teenage girls and I remember 
that we were probably the same age when my best friend 
was groomed by her high school internship supervisor and 
she told me he was just so lonely and his wife was cheating 
on him until she found out he had kids and maybe the age 
gap was more canyon than creek. And then I remember 
our religion group project on abortion when I looked my 
former-preacher-now-teacher in the eye and asked him 
if he was sure it was always wrong. Read him the article 
I found about the little nine-year old girl forced to carry
the spawn of incest. Read him the words she said when 
asked how she felt about having a baby:

"Will I have to share my toys?" 

He told me it would still be a sin. 
He slashed our final grade and any tenuous thread 
I believed connected faith and morality. It would
take another year before I would learn that my body 
produced natural lubricant when sexually aroused, 
probably another three before I learned what a clitoris 
was, five more before realizing it's normal for women 
to feel sexually aroused. I learned all of these things 
in bedrooms from nice boys who knew more about 
my body than I did and what if they hadn't been nice? 
Would I even know how to judge? Do I now? And all 
I can think is how much my body has had to rely on 
the niceness of men when my daughter asks me: 
"What are you thinking about?" I'm thinking thank god 
you live in a country with the right to abortion (for now). 
A country with decent sex-ed. Thank god your daddy 
is nice. Thank god you were born to a family who will 
teach you so you don't have to rely on the capricious 
charity of men. But then I remember that I don't owe my 
gratitude to a deity who can drown his misbehaving children 
and somehow retain the right to condemn a person for 
deciding not to have them in the first place. Instead
I give her the sharpest weapon I have.
Instead, I give her the truth.