Ad Astra Per Aspera

I was at a conference in North Dakota in June with about 100 other women when I got a push notification on my phone. The notification was that Roe v. Wade was overturned. 

I starred at my phone, and my world stopped. I looked around the room, and a lot of other women in the big room I was in were doing the same exact thing I was doing, which was looking at my phone in disbelief.

The Supreme Court leak told us all what was coming. Still, I didn't think it would happen. Later that night, people started gathering in the same room around a window in the hotel that looked out onto the streets of Fargo. 

Eventually, I got up to see what the commotion was. Everyone in the room looked down, onto the streets of Fargo, as people marched through downtown.

I didn't know what else to do that night. What do you do after a day like that? I went back to my hotel room, put my headphones on, and played Tim McGraw's song Red Ragtop on repeat until I fell asleep.

I was out of a job and she was in school

And life was fast and the world was cruel

We were young and wild

We decided not to have a child

This song was released 20 years ago.

--

My little home state of Kansas is in the news today. In case you haven't heard, Kansas is the first state to put abortion on the ballot since Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Republicans wanted the states to vote on the issue. 

Decision makers in Kansas, whose names I don't even know because I don't really care, invented a lot of drama over the issue. The question on the ballot was worded confusing intentionally. 

I took a picture of my ballot, and I will put it in this here blog post.

Additionally, it was put on the primary election ballot, not the general election ballot.

On purpose. 

There was a deceiving message sent out the night before the election, which downright lied, telling people to vote yes to protect women's rights. 

Drama, lies, scandal. It was delicious drama and fodder for the rest of the country.

From my perspective, the people who be who tried to push this through thought Kansans would be too dumb to understand what they were voting for, if they even voted for the issue at all. 

Tsk, Tsk, people who be. 

Don't underestimate my state. 

Kansas voted no, which means that women have a constitutional right to abortion. 

Abortion is not banned in my state. That means that rape victims will not need to co-parent a child or children with their rapist. 

That means that 9-year-old will not have to go through childbirth. 

That means that women who have pregnancy complications can get healthcare without fear of being turned away and left to die without life saving treatment. 

Don't turn your back on Kansas, ever. We are strong, we are quiet, we are friendly, and we are pretty fiercely independent.

We don't like being told what to do. 

My favorite Reddit comment from the debacle: THIS IS JOHN BROWN COUNTRY, BITCHES.

This week I've been thinking of all the wonderful, strong, independent women I know personally who have been raped. 

I've been thinking about the abortion doctor in Wichita who was murdered in his church in 2009. (People voted in that same church on this issue yesterday.)

I thought about everyone I know who took pregnancy tests after failed relationships, when the man left suddenly and never reached out nine months later to see what, if anything, happened. 

Gone, suddenly and with no warning.

It happens more than you think it does.

--

Kansas, I am so proud of you and so in love with you right now.

Our state motto: Ad Astra Per Aspera — to the stars through difficulties.