Last night was a dream, walking just a few blocks to a neighborhood venue where a friend’s band would play their last show for a few months. The Louisiana humidity and mellow evening temperatures enveloped me like a hug, and I felt so grateful to have a night in my favorite city, my home. Today, I woke up to a nightmare where Louisiana is surrounded by fellow “trigger law” states and any birthing person in, say, where I live in New Orleans must travel at least 350 miles if they need to reach a reproductive health center, but even that’s not without caveat. The closest clinic is in Florida where, come July 1, abortion after 15 weeks will become illegal. And I’m surrounded by reminders of how lawmakers and those in power have failed us.
One of the justices who sided with the majority opinion and who’s always maintained her pro-life statushas her own street named after her just a town over from me. It’s a straight shot off the interstate from Amy Coney Barrett’s home of Metairie to Baton Rouge, where Gov. John Bel Edwards signed an abortion bill allowing no exceptions for cases of rape and incest into law this week. The Democratic coward has also always been pro-life, and Louisiana has historically always fought back against legalized abortions, lawmakers having passed some 100 laws against it since Roe v. Wade.