This Episode of the Handmaid’s Tale Sucks
Trigger warning: mention of rape.
About a month and a half ago, I went to my first ever protest. It was everything I expected it to be, and more. A fun day shouting things in unison with a sea of women wearing pink or green. Waving at the cars that honked support at us as they passed. Pointing out the cleverest or funniest or most impactful sayings on cardboard signs to the friend I came with.
On the way back home afterwards, it was story time. I think every woman or person with a uterus has a story to tell along these lines — about a friend who had a choice to make, or a choice we had to make ourselves at one point. My friend’s story really struck me.
She was 14 years old. She wasn’t going to Planned Parenthood to get an abortion. She wanted birth control. But the protesters standing outside the office got in her face and screamed at her, and she turned away.
A few weeks later, she was raped. And then she was pregnant.
I could imagine what it was like to be her on that day at Planned Parenthood, that 14 year old girl that just wanted an option to be able to be safe. But 14 year old me would never have been her. I would have been with the people on the other side of the interaction.
