As the anniversary of the overthrow of Roe v. Wade approached, I vacillated. I kept trying to avoid the call to express the fear and frustration of the last year - to avoid "going public" on such a volatile topic. In the end, I could not stay silent. The heartfelt urgency could not be denied.

For 49 years, 5 months, and 2 days - from 1/22/1973 to 6/24/2022, women in the US enjoyed bodily autonomy and the right to make their most intimate decisions themselves. On Jan. 22, 1973, I was nineteen years old. I had grown up in the context of the repression and shame of the 1950s, in the context of maternity homes, long out of town "visits" with distant relations whispered about among my aunts, and back alley abortions. I had grown up with too many stories of lives lost, lives ruined, dreams extinguished, reputations shattered. Though I was never in need of an abortion myself, I spent my reproductive years without fear or threat, and I took that for granted right up to the decision on June 24, 2022.

In Texas today, the laws are so severe that (these are actual cases) a couple had to travel to New Mexico to abort a fetus that had not developed above the shoulders. Another couple made the same trip to abort a deceased twin in order to save the surviving one - an unlawful act here. There are numerous reports of women seeking care for a miscarriage in progress that are sent home to get sicker, as their life must be in imminent danger before doctors, concerned about prosecution, are willing to remove the fetal tissue of the failed pregnancy. Who in their right mind can advocate that a living woman face septicemia alone and bleeding as she grieves for a lost pregnancy? The cruelty and the suffering are overwhelming. We women, in so much of the US, have been shoved back into a bloody cage without any right to basic medical care.

If you, my reader, are male, particularly a cis gender male, take a moment and really, really try to imagine that.

No one is pro-abortion - it's a terrible choice to face. The arguments have been twisted beyond all reason to serve the ends of political power. I stand defiant. I stand desperately sad. I stand fearful for my daughters and granddaughters. I stand angry.

Once We Were Free is the outpouring of my broken heart.

Love and creativity always,

Wanda