A Message To All Dads - Please Protect Our Reproductive Rights

On Father’s Day when you hug your daughters, take a moment to reflect that their freedom & even their lives will be on the ballot this year.

Photo by Caroline Hernandez on Unsplash

On Father’s Day and every day from now on through November 5th, I’m asking all the daughters out there to ask your fathers for a gift that they can give YOU - the gift of your reproductive freedom. 

I know that there are millions and millions of dads out there who love their daughters and may even proudly call themselves, ‘Girl Dads’.

When you were little, they read you stories. As you grew up they cheered on your soft ball games, hooted when you graduated high school and college, and cried as they walked you down the aisle.

They loved you and protected you.

But now you need them to stand up for you as an equal member of  American society.

You need them to vote.

You need them to vote to protect your right to make your own decisions about whether and when you will have babies.

Many dads across this country may not have given much thought until now about how their ‘baby girls’ were going to be affected by the extreme abortion bans passed by 21 states, even if they lived in one of these states.

After all, the bans may have fallen beneath their radar as only a ‘women’s issue’.

Something that doesn’t ‘affect them’.

But it does - even if they haven’t realized it yet.

You know your dad still wants to keep you safe and flourishing. But many dads don’t realize yet that their beloved daughters are living under an abortion ban or will  - and that ban will endanger their daughter’s health and even their lives.

They don’t realize that you, their daughter could be forced to have a ‘government-mandated’ pregnancy, since abortions are not a legal option for you if you live in a ‘red state’.

And you can be forced even if you are still a teenager, even if you are raped and even if you aren’t physically, emotionally or financially able to bring a child into this world.

Your dad may also not be aware that even if you get pregnant with a much-wanted baby, your life will be at high risk under an abortion ban.

Every pregnant woman today living in an abortion ban state is having a high risk pregnancy.

That’s because if you have a life-threatening complication you still won’t be able to get an abortion until you are literally close to death.

If you explain this to your dad and he says that, that can’t possibly be true, then tell him about Texan Amanda Zurawski, who was 35 when she almost died twice from a sepsis infection after her water broke early at 18 weeks.

She was denied an abortion until sepsis ravaged through her uterus and her fallopian tubes.

The scarring from that infection left her unable to carry another pregnancy.

Then there’s Lauren Miller who was pregnant with twins in Texas. But tragically one twin had a fatal fetal anomaly and its condition was threatening the life of her other twin and of Lauren herself.

She had to flee to Colorado, where abortions are legal, to save her life and the life of her healthy twin.

Your dad wouldn’t want either of these things to happen to you. He probably has no idea that his ‘little girl’s’ life is on the line and on the ballot this November 5th.

If he asks you, how this situation could have happened in 2024, you can explain to him that Donald Trump is the reason that abortions are now banned in almost half the country.

Donald Trump vowed that if he was elected president in 2016, he would appoint justices to the Supreme Court who would end Roe V Wade - the ruling that made abortion legal nationwide for 50 years.

Trump kept his promise and he chose three right wing judges who did his bidding and they overturned your right to make your own decisions about your healthcare and your body.

You can explain that Trump now plans to finish the job of abolishing women’s reproductive choices by ending abortion nation-wide, if he is elected this coming November.

If he can’t get a national ban through Congress, he can have the Justice Department enforce the 1873 Comstock Act, which makes it illegal to transport any drugs or surgical equipment used in abortion, across state lines.

And those same drugs and surgical equipment are also used to provide help and lifesaving care for women experiencing miscarriages or who have fibroids in their uteruses.

Miscarriages are super common - one in five pregnant women have one and sometimes they can go very wrong.

You can tell your dad about Texas husband, Ryan Hamilton, who has been speaking out after his wife almost bled to death on their bathroom floor after being denied necessary treatment for her miscarriage.

Ryan never thought something like this could happen to his wife.

Would your dad want that to happen to you?

No way!

Being a dad isn’t for just when you were a little girl, it’s for always.

Surely, he wants to protect you now that you are a teenager or a woman. He just didn’t realize that abortion bans posed such a dire threat to your health and life.

And then you’ve got to go one step further in laying it on the line for your father. Let him know that Donald Trump doesn’t plan to stop with abortion. He has already said that he is “looking at” “restrictions” on contraception.

And his evangelical supporters want a ban on IVF too.

If he doubts this - all you have to do is show him the news reports about how Republican Senators just blocked bills in the past couple of weeks that would have protected contraception and IVF.

Also, it’s Republican - dominated legislatures in ‘Red’ states that have passed abortion bans, while Democratic elected officials have fought them.

Since Republican politicians won’t protect you, you need your dad to step in and do it.

It’s time to put the choice clearly before your dad - would a tax cut mean anything to him, if he lost you? Or you lost your fertility?

You need him to protect you by voting for President Biden on Nov 5th and for Democratic pro choice politicians up and down the line, even if he’s never done that before.

Isn’t your life and health more important than a tax cut?

Tax cuts come and go.

But losing you or the prospect of future grandchildren - that’s forever.