This week marks the SCOTUS’ terrifying decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, but this is only the beginning of a threat to all women's rights. 

While the breaking news of abortion bans floods over social media, I can’t help but take a step back and see what American society has become, and more importantly, where it is headed to. 

As a sixteen-year-old female student in the United States, our constitutional beliefs on freedom and liberty are integrated into every aspect of our cultural identity. More importantly, it is what the American public schools have taught me since pre-K. 

Throughout American History, I have learned about the American Revolution, the Civil war, and the women’s suffrage movement in the 1920s. By observing all these revolutionary patterns, I see American society as an ever-changing gear wheel, where "we the people" never stop fighting for justice and change.

But now I am confused. I am confused because this wheel, which has moved for centuries, ceased motion in America today. This very symbol of progress has beat down the dignity and right every woman is entitled to. 

A male classmate in school asked me one day, “what about the potential children you kill.” I paused for a beaming second and responded, “what about the heart-beating, conscious, living girl you destroy.” Why is it that our rights, lives, and bodies are decided based on their morals, their definitions, and their religion? Why is that a choice of motherhood now forced upon us? 

I feel helpless because as a young female I can’t help but imagine the potential of me being forced to carry a child at the age of sixteen. I feel even more saddened because my closest friend became a teen mother under the Texas SB8 law; she now has no choice but to home school and graduates three years early to financially support her son. But my friend only foreshadows the cruel reality of millions of young teen girls in America that politicians seem to ignore.

The question of why any girl who grew up in such a progressive and developed country is forced to have a child at the age of fifteen sickens me to the stomach, and it haunts me, even more, to think about what the future will hold after this nationwide overturn. 

What every American needs to understand is that for centuries we have progressed as a whole, so why is it that now, we retreat into a political order made by the misogynistic whims of male politicians?

When we confront the economic hardships of pregnancy, the politicians who invalidate that argument are the same ones who didn’t grant pregnant women stimulus checks during the pandemic. When politicians proudly state their unwavering mission of saving lives, they are also the ones who voted against a $28 million fund to combat the national baby formula shortage. So tell me, is an argument only valid and worth addressing if it helps strengthen the cage of our freedom?

The famous quote “if not now, then when” is popularly used; however, it is incomplete. The first half of the sentence states, “if not you, then who?”

It is essential to ask ourselves if not right now, then where will the future of America head to with lawmakers finding every way possible to justify their control of our bodies? 

The face of the issue today is overturning Roe v. Wade, but the underlying question for the future is, what’s next? What other right will they stir away from women after finding a probable justification?

So as a woman, I will not allow myself to stay silent on such an insulting decision. I cannot watch politicians strip away the freedom to their bodies of girls MY AGE. Because I know if I don’t fight the battle for abortion rights today, no one will fight for my choice of motherhood tomorrow.