Warning: If you watch the video of Harris’ speech, have some tissues handy. Hell, even if you choose to read this post on my blog, you might want to grab some tissues.
This past Saturday, Jessica Valenti shared a post on Substack about Harris’ Atlanta campaign speech on abortion and access to reproductive healthcare for women. She embedded a video of that speech in her post. That speech is incredibly powerful, but be forewarned. If you are capable of empathy at all, you will cry.
In a speech channeling the anger of millions of American women, Vice President Kamala Harris laid into Republicans and Donald Trump today, blaming them for our post-Roe nightmare and the deaths of two Georgia women. Blasting what she called “arcane and immoral laws,” Harris called the November election not just a fight for the future of the country, but “a fight for freedom.”
Harris went on to talk about the two women in Georgia who recently died from a lack of appropriate health care. Doctors waited too late, and could not save Amber Nicole Thurman. She spoke of how this young woman’s death was preventable, if not for the horrid Georgia abortion ban. Candi Miller, who was afraid to seek care because of that law, died at home.
This should not happen in a nation of freedom. I know you’ve heard it said before. If you don’t have freedom to make decisions about your own body, you don’t have freedom. Bodily autonomy is the most basic of freedoms. Without control of your own body, nothing else matters.
As a transgender woman, bodily autonomy strikes close to home for me. You’ve read about the gatekeeping I’ve faced in order to make changes to my body. My body. That women are dying because of Trump and his cohorts denying them bodily autonomy is despicable.
If there were no other reason to vote for the Harris/Walz ticket on November 5, this alone should motivate you to do so. And remember to vote down ballot as well. If you have the means, donate to the campaign. Donate to local campaigns. Let’s make this the biggest blue wave in history.
The journey continues.
An Aging Trans Woman 
It’s truly cruel. Only made worse by the policies that abandon family’s after birth. I am so lucky.
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She was accused of murder after losing her pregnancy. SC woman now tells her story | CNN
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