It was almost 11 by the time I became vaguely aware that I hadn’t heard the distinctive familiar sounds of the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Instead I heard various news announcers; news of some kind had broken. But the volume was low, I was in back to back meetings all morning and it all stayed in the background. It was in a three-minute lull between Zoom calls that I dipped into Twitter and learned of our altered reality.

I spent the rest of the day numb but vibrating with a new kind of anxiety that would seep out the following day into a stunned despair. Then it would grow into a vicious pendulum swing between sadness and fury, sweeping over a pit of total helplessness.

But you live in a blue state.

But you’re practically too old to even get pregnant.

But you haven’t even had a period in three years.

But you don’t have daughters you need to worry about.

This isn’t going to affect you.

My avoidance-seeking lizard brain was feeding me all kinds of bullshit. Things that were technically true but nonetheless meaningless. I don’t have daughters but I know young women of all kinds in all parts of my life. Women who definitely want to have babies (or more babies) someday. Women who definitely don’t. Women who will have less control over that exceedingly personal decision about whether to give their body over to the gestation of a new human. Women who will have to roll the dice when they partake of their natural sexuality, when they—as they have every right—experience the sensuality of intimacy with a person harboring sperm. Who will worry for days until their next period, no matter how many precautions were taken.

Yeah, I’m practically too old and I’ve been on birth control pills for so long it seems my uterus has totally abandoned its natural biological behaviors. Yeah, I live in New York which, for the moment, will be a safe haven for those who need abortion care. A state in which, should I weirdly become pregnant, I would be able to exercise my bodily autonomy and decide for my damn self whether I was going to change my mind about wanting a kid.

Yeah, the loss of Roe will not actively affect me. But that does not change the fact that the message is loud and clear: the female sex can get down with having babies or fuck off. The uterus-containing bodies are first and foremost vessels for babies. The personhood of the uterus’s owner is secondary at best. Tertiary in places like Missouri. The right of women to pursue their happiness and their goals, to enjoy the full fruits of their existence is secondary to her biological ability to bear offspring. And this is where the rage starts.

And as infuriating and appalling as that notion is, we are, maximum, two elections away from it all getting even worse.

Vote they say. I say it too. Vote, they say as they ask for money to get out the vote because OMG Roe was overturned! Give me money so I can help! Can you pitch in $5 so I can help restore rights to half of the citizenry?! And yes, I’ll fucking vote for you. But I’m done giving your ineffectual asses money, democrats. You’re going to collectively earn my next donation to any democratic candidate. But I will vote for you, even though you are an embarrassment of disorganization and short-sightedness and naïveté. Even though you knew this was coming and did fuck all to even try to counter it. I will vote for you because the other party is comprised largely of literal fascists and/or gun worshipping religious zealots whose majority would just love to impose an authoritarian theocratic state upon us liberal, baby-killing heathens who have zero problems with drag queens and people who don’t want to live as their biological sex. (Yes, yes, I know “not ALL republicans”—but too fucking damn many. If you’re a republican and consider yourself a reasonable person, take a long look at your party and consider some recalibration. Those fuckers aren’t all about small government and lower taxes any longer, my dude.)

As you may be able to tell from this aimless, messy ranting, I’m having a hard time articulating myself around this whole paradigm shift. I’ve been struggling to find a worthy analog, something to help men understand a little bit about how this feels. To remind women who feel removed from it by age, circumstance or demeanor. To possibly help the pro-forced-birth set to consider this all from a less dogmatic perspective. (Not that I have many or any of those folks in my regular audience.) The closest I can get I found on Twitter, where I have been spending a truly regrettable amount of time. It goes something like this:

You have two healthy kidneys.

You are a match to a stranger who needs a kidney.

The state says you are legally obligated to donate your kidney to that person.

How does that make you feel?

Now, sure, some of us would gladly give up a kidney to someone we love. And some may even do so for a stranger—it’s certainly been known to happen. But those are choices. People are able to decide to offer their body up to an invasive medical procedure and then carry on with their life hoping there are no complications and that the absence of that other kidney won’t become problematic.

That’s what pregnant people who can’t or don’t want to have a baby are dealing with.

And sure you can say, Well, they chose to have sex and they knew the risks. No one forced them to get pregnant. (Except, you know, if someone forced them to have sex and they got pregnant. But never mind that. A little baby they never wanted and the bliss of compulsory motherhood will make that rape just fade harmlessly into their memory, right? Sure thing.)

To those people who shrug and say, well, just don’t be a slut, ladies, and you won’t have this problem: fuck you.

To those people who say that pregnancies rarely result from rape, so that’s not a real problem: fuck you.

To those people who are vehemently anti-abortion who put it all on women and what women did to get pregnant and countenance no circumspection about the roles of men, of toxic masculinity and the outdated gender norms we still raise girls and boys with: fuck you.

To those people who are rabidly anti-abortion but clutch their pearls and raise hell at school board meetings at the slightest whiff of a proper sex education for their children or the presence of condoms on the counselor’s desk at the high school: fuck you.

To those people who would sooner have a woman die than have an abortion, who would sooner a woman deliver a child stillborn or unviable beyond days or weeks because of birth defect: an especially strident fuck you to you assholes.

To doctors who ask women if their boyfriends/husbands/partners gave them permission to get an IUD or a tubal ligation: fuck you.

This list may be ongoing.

Fuck.