SPOTLIGHT ON ABORTION CARE & REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE
What We Must Face, and How We will Bear it, Together
Written by Jeff Koetje, MD, AMSA Reproductive Health Programming Strategist
“Not everything that is faced can be changed.
But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
– James Baldwin, “As Much Truth As One Can Bear,” New York Times, January 14, 1962
In deeply troubled and troubling times, such as the present moment, my troubled spirit seeks the council and wisdom of those who’ve come before me, who also lived in deeply troubled and troubling times.
These past several days, my troubled spirit has been turning over and over in horror at the latest instance of ideologically-motivated assassination and attempted assassination of democratically elected officials here in the US, in this case, two progressive MN State Legislators. And – in the same week – the horrifying conclusion to the situation in Georgia involving Adriana Smith, a 31 year old Black woman who was forced without prior consent, and against the desires of her family, to remain on life support, even though she was declared brain dead following a medical emergency in February, because at the time she was around 8 weeks pregnant and Georgia’s anti-abortion law prevented her medical team from removing life support. Why? You might ask: because fetal heart tones were detectable at the time she was declared brain dead. This week, her family announced that the fetus was removed from Adriana’s corpse via emergency c-section at around 21 weeks of gestation. The baby, less than two pounds, is under the care of NICU specialists, and according to the family, Adrianna would soon be removed from life support.
These – among many others – are the horrors of this moment; these – among many others – are the grotesqueries of a society warped by the sociopathology of authoritarianism. But not just any authoritarianism; the authoritarianism that has always resided at the core of this nation and its society is the authoritarianism of white supremacist, Christian heteropatriarchy.
In fact, it is this particular strain of authoritarianism that connects these two horrors. Among those in the movements for reproductive health, rights, and justice, we are well aware that the overlap between anti-abortion extremists and authoritarian white supremacist Christian Nationalists is effectively 100% – we even will say, with little exaggeration intended, that the Venn diagram of anti-abortion extremists and white Christian Nationalists is a circle.
The man accused of attempting to assassinate progressive MN State Senator John Hoffman and actually assassinating progressive MN State Representative Melissa Hortman, who was a member of the national Reproductive Freedom Leadership Council, is a right-wing Evangelical Christian white man, who attended an extremist “Bible college” which advocates for Christians to claim total control of the US government and every segment and sector of society. The list of his targets, which was recovered by police, included abortion providers and abortion advocates, as well as other progressive legislators in other states.
Down in Georgia, the right-wing authoritarian state government which instituted the state’s six-week abortion ban, sees no problem with abusing the corpse of a Black woman for the sake of advancing a perversion of justice – under the guise of “pro-life” policy, the State has committed an atrocity against a deceased Black woman – whose own humanity was utterly disregarded – and treated her as nothing more than an incubator for a fetus, with complicity from the healthcare professionals and healthcare system which failed to muster the moral courage to refuse their state-conscripted role in this abomination. We do not have to refer to the Handmaid’s Tale to recognize the social evil in this situation: Black women’s bodies have been treated as subhuman incubators from the very beginning of this era of Black enslavement in white supremacist societies.
The horrors of these two seemingly disconnected and yet utterly connected atrocities may elicit the impulse in our bodies to turn away, to look away, to avoid seeing the horrors of a white supremacist heteropatriarchal society, culture, and politics laid bare, revealing a network of power which has inflicted and continues to inflict systemic violence on so many and to such a degree that it almost breaks the limits of the human capacity for words.
“But, nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
And so when we feel the pull to look away, and we feel our capacity for the words necessary for this moment failing us, we turn to those who’ve come before us; who, like James Baldwin, have also witnessed, and experienced, such horrors in their own time and place. And who, like James Baldwin, refused to look away from the horrors, exposing the false innocence of white supremacist heteropatriarchal culture, propped up by delusion.
Baldwin wrote,
“We are the generation that must throw everything into the endeavor to remake America into what we say we want it to be.
Without this endeavor, we will perish.”
Even though 62 years have passed since James Baldwin wrote these words, his words are no less relevant now than then. When he said, “we are the generation” he was of course speaking to his contemporaries, but he also was speaking to a future “we”.
“…as much truth as one can bear, and then, and then a little more.”
###
*Note: this Spotlight is included in AMSA Reproductive Health Project eNews #48: What We Must Face, and How We will Bear it, Together, June 21, 2025. Find the current issue HERE and past issues in the AMSA Repro eNews Archive.
Explore the AMSA Reproductive Health Project
Find news, tips, tools, opportunities & more!
Sign-up Here for AMSA Repro Project Updates
