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It’s Getting Harder to Be a Woman in America
The US welcomes the employment and economic advancement of women—yet doesn’t actually support them. We’ve finally hit a breaking point.
By
When Roe v. Wade was overturned, I didn’t know about it for an hour. The verdict in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization came down around 10 a.m. EDT on a Friday in late June, while I was interviewing a woman who’d given birth in a hospital hallway because all of its delivery rooms were full. After we hung up, I had about 60 missed text messages from friends. I read the texts. Then the news. And then I went back to work. At the time, I was 24 weeks pregnant.
In the weeks since, I’ve found myself dwelling not on the immediate effects of the decision and what it means for my 2-year-old daughter’s future or even my own pregnancy, but on all the ways this country has shunted onto women the responsibility of keeping its society and economy running. I’ll fold my toddler’s onesies and think about how the US, a country in which two-thirds of mothers of young children work, has such a forceful “pro-life” movement, and yet it’s the only wealthy nation that doesn’t guarantee new moms time off work after they have a baby.
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Weighing the relative racism of different candidates in the hopes of arriving at the choice as to who will do the least damage is nothing new to black voters. In fact, it’s a big reason why Mike Bloomberg and his bottomless coffers have been attracting black folks concerned first and foremost with ousting Donald Trump, who became president by appealing to white resentment.
But an audio recording of Bloomberg recirculating this week was a stark reminder about Bloomberg’s imperious approach to black lives. He explained that he had police officers flood black and brown neighborhoods because “that’s where all the crime is,” while also falsely asserting that “95 percent” of “murderers and murder victims” are “male, minorities, 16 to 25. That’s true in New York, that’s true in virtually every city.”
