I’m glad the topic of reproductive rights was brought up this week, because I was able to catch up on everything that was going on. I didn’t know about the details of the leaked decision, neither did I know about the Hyde Amendment, which blocks federal funding for abortions. This means people who rely on Medicaid would have to search for other ways to fund their abortion, which in many cases is impossible. Watching the short movie “Abortion Helpline, This is Lisa,” which shows these cases, almost made me cry. I kept imagining myself in the place of everyone who called the Helpline, realizing that this can also happen to me and how precarious my life is. Not terminating pregnancy sometimes means not surviving after that, because you’re loosing your financial security. And sometime this means having one more person in this world with a traumatic childhood, growing up in extreme poverty and in many cases, not being able to get out of it. This traces back to what Rebecca Gomperts said in an interview: “when you keep people poor, you can control them.” It was a pleasure to read an interview with Gomperts because I watched the documentary Vessel, about her activity, for one of our assignments in this class.

I also didn’t know that abortion bans were implemented to benefit slave-holders and amplify their wealth. Considering what I just wrote about keeping people poor, one may see a really strong connection here, which feels terrifying. As if slavery has never gone away, but just changed its look.