From my archive, a two-minute portrait of attorney Sarah Weddington, during a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood, in Orange County, California. Sarah Weddington is the attorney who argued the landmark case Roe v. Wade.  

Today, Thursday June 18th, 2020 we await a potential,  pending decision from the Untied States Supreme Court regarding, a woman’s right to decide for herself, her most intimate and private rights over her body, and her access to health care services, independent of religious beliefs or constructs.

For so long legislation has imposed and seized a woman’s body to determine what rights, control and access she has or had over her own body – this has/had expressed itself through healthcare choices, pregnancy, birth control or contraception, fertility choices, a right to choose (abortion as an option), or significantly in the employment of Eugenics in the enforced sterilization of women.

For the love of (wo)mankind, it appears that the male driven paradigm has determined both sides of the coin for far too long. No longer. You cannot have it both ways. NO longer should this paradigm decide for women, especially women of color who is fit to give birth, who is mandated to be sterilized,  when or if a woman gives birth or not. It seems to me that enforced sterilization is a method of birth control justified by racist and discriminatory policy.  This white male paradigm has owned our bodies for too long, we are not you chattel.

Image copyright Ana Elisa Fuentes and licensed through Alamy.