This is so painful to read. I know the place you’re writing from. Motherhood has made these already God-awful moments that much more horrible, because I can’t not imagine myself in their mothers’ shoes.

If someone took my baby boy tomorrow, I would be outraged. I would fight like hell to avenge him, and while I hope I’d be dignified and purposeful enough to become a movement leader like so many Black mothers of slain children have, I think it’s equally likely I’d end up in jail for just flipping the entire fuck out on anyone with anything to do with it.

But Black lives matter, no matter how short they are. My child has brought me immense joy in even the short time he’s been here. Feeling him move in my belly brought me joy. Birthing him brought me joy. Watching him smile while he nurses and sleeps and plays and eats and learns brings me joy. And for as long as we’re both lucky enough to keep living, we’ll keep loving each other and adding joy to each others’ lives (or so I hope). No one’s taser, knife, bullet, or bomb could ever change that, even if they can end it. The circumstances of a person’s death do not determine the worthiness of their life.

No one, anywhere, can render anyone’s life pointless, because it’s not how a long a life lasts or how it ends that gives it value. It’s how that life is lived.

This is not an argument to have children. It’s definitely worth considering whether their life would be more good than bad before deciding to have them, and I wish more people would take that calculation seriously. But we all die eventually. Unless life itself is pointless, I just don’t feel good about giving anyone, least of all a proto-fascist police state, the power to decide not only whether or how I should give life, but also to decide whether that life has a point.