My support for abortion access contains all my love for my daughter

Two protesters in favor of abortion protest next to the Supreme Court of the United States, this Friday in Washington. EVELYN HOCKSTEIN (REUTERS)

Mere minutes after hearing the news of the leak of a Supreme Court draft on the likely repeal of the

who has guaranteed the right to abortion for almost 50 years in the United States, I heard my daughter crying in her room.

She had woken up from a bad dream.

Besides, she needed to pee.

I held her hand as she stumbled down the hall to the bathroom saying, “Carry me, Mom.

Take me in your arms."

And then, “bring me in your arms”.

Taking care of my daughter that night, literally

With my daughter that night, it didn't feel like a distraction from the news, but rather a reiteration of why it was important.

This is what it means to take care of a child: it's a job, every day, and every night.

It's magnificent, and transformative;

nothing equals the joy of seeing my daughter exploring and remaking the world, turning a cardboard box into the underworld of Greek mythology, or placing a small bunch of worms on the seat of her bike and yelling, “You're going on a trip! ”.

But parenting completely changes the basic pillars of the experience: time, sleep, money, loneliness.

In other words, every moment of parenting—every hour, every day—is an argument for why it's important to make parenting a choice.

Abortion is not just about pregnancy or childbirth;

it has to do with all that life that follows: a life of absolute responsibility, without palliatives, without interruptions;

and also with the child's life.

When I had an abortion at 24, I did not understand what motherhood was, but I understood that I was not ready to be a mother.

Or, at least, I understood that, at this point in my life, I didn't want to be.

As I sat on a toilet and looked at my positive pregnancy test result, I felt a strange, giddy thrill that my body was capable of carrying a fetus;

but that emotion was coupled with another sense of self-awareness: that I was not yet ready to be the mother of the child that fetus might become.

Now that I am a mother, my belief in the importance of ensuring access to abortion has not been undermined by motherhood, quite the opposite.

My support for guaranteeing access to abortion contains all my love for my daughter;

contains all my knowledge about what it means to take care of her.

When I think about the possibility of

I don't ask myself what would have happened if I hadn't had access to an abortion, because I know I'm not the most vulnerable person to the ways in which access would be limited.

Sister Song, a Southern-based nonprofit led by women of color, defines reproductive justice as a movement “about access, not choice” in several ways: “Even when abortion is legal, many women of color can't afford it, or can't travel hundreds of miles to the nearest clinic,” and, beyond abortion, justice involves access to reproductive care and domestic support.

It entails access to contraception, sex education, prenatal care, living wages and affordable childcare.

Becoming a mother has only reaffirmed my conviction about the importance of thinking about reproductive justice in these broader terms: fighting to expand not only access to abortion, but access to all kinds of reproductive care, like the kind of medical care that ensured the safe delivery of my daughter through an emergency cesarean section.

The repeal of

would deepen restriction and widen inequalities in a context already defined by restriction and inequality, effectively creating what the Center for Reproductive Rights calls “abortion-free deserts” and “abortion havens.”

It would make America a more intense version of what it already is: a place of reproductive injustice.

Walking into the Planned Parenthood Clinic where I had the abortion, I walked past the pair of protesters I passed almost every day on my morning commute: they were almost permanently sitting on their lawn chairs, with their macabre photos of mangled fetuses.

Until this morning, she had felt a strange kind of affection for these two regulars.

They believed in what they were fighting for, I thought.

Although I thought something different.

But that day, when they were joined by other protesters—it was Friday, the day of the week that clinic performed all of its abortions—I felt no affection for them.

I thought about how they made the women who came to that clinic for abortions feel: judged, bullied, and harassed by strangers brandishing their stony conception of morality like a blunt weapon.

reproductive justice

Abortion has always been the most visible point in the larger picture of reproductive justice: who has access to health care?

Who does not?

What bodies are considered worthy of attention?

How have centuries of systemic racism structured the ways some people are viewed as more deserving of care?

Forcing women and birth attendants to bring life into the world in an environment where access to health care is already so unequal, and the cost of health care already so unequally distributed, deepens and it actually perpetuates centuries-old, deeply rooted systemic injustice.

Facing the potential repeal of

urges us to recognize that

has never been enough.

Facing the potential repeal of

demands that we consider the right to access abortion within a much larger picture of reproductive injustice, in which women of color and other marginalized populations are routinely less able to access reproductive care.

In a recent response to the Supreme Court leak in

, Anoa Changa—a black journalist who lives and works in the southern United States, one of the regions that would be most affected by the repeal of Roe v. Wade—calls for “a comprehensive approach to the issue of reproductive freedom [which ] reminds us that, as necessary as it was,

has always been just the bottom line."

Behind conservative keywords like “viability”, “family” and “pro-life” lurk deep attacks on life and families from all sides.

Restricting access to abortion is an assault on the life of anyone faced with the decision to have children;

and it is an assault on the lives of the children they could have or already have.

Conservative forces that call themselves “pro-life” have also been responsible for upholding the right to own guns, leading to thousands of gun-related deaths each year;

a number that continues to grow, as mass shootings in the United States have become an increasingly normal horror.

The day after the decision was leaked, Nelba Marquez-Greene, whose daughter Ana Grace was killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting,

tweeted: “I have had two children and one died in a bathroom riddled with bullets.

And every day, more than 100 people join me.

I remain unconvinced that what this country wants is to preserve 'the family' or protect children.

Nothing convinced."

As Americans celebrate Mother's Day, not even a week after the draft opinion was leaked, I think about how differently I parent my own daughter, having had access to every kind of reproductive care throughout my life—including birth control, emergency contraception, and an abortion at age 24—and how much that care is privileged.

But I shouldn't feel “grateful” for it (as I do), because care is a right, not a privilege;

it should be not only available but actively accessible to all.

If I were to meet those protesters again, sitting on their lawn chairs outside the Connecticut Planned Parenthood Clinic, I wouldn't say, "I understand that you believe in what you're fighting for."

I'd tell them:

Leslie Jamison

is an American writer and essayist, author, among other books, of

(Anagram).

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