Abortion rights activist protest outside of the U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday, May 3, 2022 in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Champions of women’s freedom and reproductive health have been ringing the alarm bells for decades about the threat of overturning Roe v. Wade.

We have marched in protest. We have voted blue. We have donated to Planned Parenthood. We have shared gut-wrenching stories about life-threatening pregnancies that had to be terminated. We have talked about our rapes. We have shared stories about pre-Roe deaths in alleys with hangers.

And there are more of us than the forced birthers. 

By the way, that’s what they are.

And we know it. 

We have called them out on their hypocrisy of being pro-life yet constantly underfunding prenatal health, early childhood healthcare, nutritional support, child care, to name only a few essentials to nurturing a healthy child. 

We knew that most Americans supported women’s freedom to manage their own healthcare.

Because, yes, abortion is healthcare.

We debated.  

We told them abortion rates don’t go down when it is illegal, but more women die when it is.

Because we thought we could reason with the forced birthers. 

We let them placate us with double talk and false assurances. 

We had faith in the Supreme Court. 

Why? Because of the cool robes?

No, because the legal recognition of the Supreme Court meant something to us.

The Supreme Court was where we had moderate success holding the line against misogynists and religious fanatics. 

And, in Senate appointment hearing after appointment hearing, potential jurists assured us Roe v. Wade was settled law. 

The forced birthers told us to relax. They just didn’t want women using abortion as birth control. 

They just didn’t want babies ripped out of the womb and killed.

That was what their Trojan horse on the presidential debate stage said was happening and it made them say, “Yeah, what about that? Huh?” 

So we ended up arguing about things that weren’t even happening. 

We used their language to argue for our rights.

And now there’s the concern that the leaked abortion decision undermines our trust of the Supreme Court.

Which makes us wonder why we trusted the Supreme Court for the last 50 years. 

After all, the right has been hinting at this moment for decades.

We felt sick when an accused predator was appointed and Anita Hill was treated like a delusional liar.

We were disgusted when they stopped the count in Florida.

We tried to swallow the palliative pill of Merrick Garland, hoping maybe that would make things better.  And we watched Republicans cough up that pill and spit it out.

We missed our moment and ended up with Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett. 

Conservative women assured us these judges would never go after the precedent established by Roe v Wade. 

We screamed at the top of our lungs that these justices were exactly the kind of fundamentalists that would twist legal reason to arrive at their ultimate goal.

These were exactly the allies Thomas and Alito were waiting for.

We have a Supreme Court packed with judges who were appointed by presidents who didn’t win the popular vote. 

Breaking the dam that was Roe v. Wade will release a flood of new laws designed to restrict women’s freedoms while strengthening rapists rights

We have states that put a bounty on anyone involved in an abortion.

There are women in Texas rushing to have an abortion because they don’t want to miss the window of a few hours allotted to them by the state.

Those who miss the window are experiencing the first state mandated pregnancies of our lifetimes. 

Mandated pregnancies.

Some state legislatures are tossing around the idea of punishing women who leave the state to terminate their pregnancies. 

Some of the leaders we trust are telling us to make sure we vote.

Many of us wonder how we can vote any harder. 

Because we have voted in every election like every woman’s future depended on it. 

We will make poster boards. We will march. We will vote. We donate money to Planned Parenthood. We will recruit. 

We will remove our period tracking apps because yes, that’s a threat to women’s safety now. 

What we won’t do is debate anymore. 

We got it. 

Forced birthers believe something different than we do.

No one should be forced to incubate someone else’s beliefs. 

But that’s where we are. 

We certainly don’t have to ring the alarm bells anymore. There’s smoke everywhere. It’s time to fight the fire.

Patti Vasquez hosts “Driving It Home” every weekday at 5 p.m. CST on WCPT 820AM. Follow her on Twitter @PattiVasquezCHI.