Gun Violence is a Reproductive Justice Issue
If your heart is aching today for the children, parents, and educators of Uvale, TX today, you’re not alone. As a mother, I feel shattered and terrified. It seems like it should be a basic human right to be able to send your child to school and expect that they will come home safely, but in America in 2022 we cannot hold any such expectation. As a midwife, I am furious and frustrated. I dedicate my days to reproductive health and equity, but what good is it if people cannot become parents and expect the most basic of their children’s needs to be met by their society? We are failing parents, and we are failing our babies.
I’ll be honest: I’m not and have never been much for guns. I don’t feel comfortable around them. I have fired a few guns before, but I still harbor an irrational fear that a gun can jump off a table and shoot me on its own. (Yes, I understand that guns, left all by themselves, do not kill people; they need a hand–willing or unwitting–to do that.) So I’m not going to be one to get agitated about second amendment rights. I care little for my personal second amendment rights, and I don’t expect I’ll ever exercise them by owning a firearm. However, I know lots of wonderful people who own guns, follow the law, and exercise their second amendment rights safely and responsibly, and I don’t begrudge them that.
That said, I am angry. I am angry that the second amendment has somehow become more sacred than the lives of children. Whatever happens with Roe v. Wade, we will never be a “pro-life” country as long as our babies are murdered by men armed with assault rifles. Never. So how about we cut the crap, and stop pretending that the fight against abortion has anything to do with protecting the precious lives of children– actual, post-birth, living-in-the-world, hoping-hopes-and-dreaming-dreams, children?
So even though I will never be a gun owner (and can only pray I’ll never be a gun victim), as a mother and a midwife the issue of gun violence is front and center for me. We will not achieve reproductive justice until people can: a) choose to become parents when they want to be, b) become parents safely and healthily, and c) raise children in a world where they can have reasonable expectations about their safety. Can we assuredly avoid every bad outcome? Of course not. Will child loss always be a possibility that haunts every parent? Unfortunately, yes. But can we work towards reforms that will enable parents to send their children off to school and expect that they won’t be gunned down? ABSOLUTELY.
Today, we weep. I think it is not only important but essential that we allow ourselves to feel, and feel deeply, the grief of Uvale. But tomorrow, we take that grief and let it embolden our fight, and we fight back not with weapons but with our voices, our tweets, our donations, and our votes. We say, “No more,” to the politicians who worship at the feet of the NRA and its money. We say, “never again” to the pundits who will tell us (they’re already telling us) that the “real” problem is “evil,” “the lack of God in society,” “video games”-- anything but guns. Our lives, and our children’s lives, depend on it.
-Sam Cohen
