Pandora’s box is officially open
The Supreme Court has opened a Pandora’s box that Republicans may soon regret. At least one justice may be regretting it-Brett Kavanaugh. He apparently didn’t know his next-door neighbor is a vocal advocate against the abolishment of Roe v. Wade. Kavanaugh’s neighbor Lacie Wooten-Holway has had two abortions, and she regrets neither. According to Washington Post, Wooten-Holway became pregnant at 18, and though her mother-who was a devout Catholic-understood, she refused to accompany her to the doctor. At 21, she again found herself pregnant, and deciding she “was not ready to be a mom,” again aborted her child. She went on to have two other children, a boy and a girl, and she told WaPo “I still don’t regret my decision.” While many will see Wooten-Holway’s decision as an alternate means of birth control, few will question her right to make that decision.
Given the decisions she made for her life, it is rather ironic that today, she is a close neighbor of Justice Brent Kavanaugh. She has been holding vigils outside his house ever since the draft opinion was leaked to the press. Some neighbors don’t agree with her actions, but that isn’t stopping Wooten-Holway. She gets comments that she’s not going about it the right way by staking out in front of Kavanaugh’s home, but her response to them is: “I organize peaceful candlelight vigils n front of his house. We’re about to get doomsday, so I’m not going to be civil to that man at all.” Some of her neighbors call her “disrespectful” while others cheer her on. She doesn’t care; she will continue holding her vigils because she believes that overturning a law that has stood for so long and allowed her to take a different pathway should not be struck down. Whether you agree with Wototen-Holway’s decisions on how to conduct her life is irrelevant; it is her life, and she has lived it as she chose. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do in a free society? What makes matters worse is that it always seems to be men who are at the forefront of overturning Roe v. Wade.
Men will never go through pregnancy nor deal with any of the negative effects that sometimes accompany it, and none of us can walk in another’s shoes. We are thus not able to judge the decisions others make. Instead, we should applaud their ability to make those decisions without interference from government. A decision as personal as abortion ranks high on the scale of things in which government should not interfere, regardless of the reason a woman seeks one. The very people who want to interfere are the ones who want to cut aid to a woman if she can’t afford to feed the child. They are the same ones who will jail her if she is abusive to the child. Yet, they want to force a woman to have a child she either does not want or cannot care for. That is wrong, and we should not be told what we can and can’t do with our own bodies-especially by men.
Shirley is a former entertainment writer and has worked in the legal field for over 25 years