I was at a local gathering to register disagreement with the draft decision of SCOTUS on a woman’s right to choose the other day in solidarity with those meet in towns and cities throughout the country doing the same. Although I am hopeful that the young people chose to go into Boston where the crowd would be bigger and the event more exciting and newsworthy, but certainly not every young person went there, or could get there, so there should have been more of a presence at this local event.

The sad reality was that the majority of those participating were beyond child-bearing age for women, or very dependent on things advertised on the internet and post prime-time TV hours for sexual performance enhancers for the men, or in my case being a cisgender, white, Gay male in my seventies, not personally relevant at all.

Combined, there were two groups of people present, the young under 50 crowd who had had the right to choose over their whole lives, and those who had helped in getting the right to choose in their youth, perhaps their whole lives up to that point, and enjoyed that right in their time only to see the work of their youth for the sake of future generations being erased.

As far as any personal interest, abortion was irrelevant to me before, during and after Roe v Wade but it did affect friends and family and it was incumbent on me to be an ally, I expect the same from friends and family, after all.

And so, there I sat. I bring a lawn chair now after years of rallies, marches, stand-outs, and strikes, and, why not? A few very young kids were very polite and attentive assuming this old guy was somehow chair ridden and great deference should be shown to such a one. The shocked look on their faces when I stood up at the end of the event, had me have to turn and ask if they had never seen a miracle before.

Although the event, stand out, was organized by a women’s organization whose interest was obviously on the loss of choice, I was there for the protection of the unenumerated rights, the ones that some SCOTUS justices believe should not be honored as they are not specifically mentioned in the U.S. Constitution like religious expressing and the right to bear arms.

I was there to defend the Nineth Amendment,

“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

Obviously, the Founding Fathers, among them Ben Franklin who published an abortifacient formula in his math book, knew that there were a number of rights that did not come readily to mind, and people might realize them in the future.

This idea of more rights than can be listed was consistent with the Declaration of Independence where in it is stated we are

“Endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights”,

and here they chose not to list them all, but chose to give three examples while acknowledging the existence of many more,

“that AMONG these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

The problem with accepting that the Founding Fathers acknowledged that there were more rights than they could think of by stating there were more and the people retained them, knowing time, circumstances, and humanities growth would uncover more, but the Second Amendment only mentions arms, obviously in accordance with the understanding of what arms were at the time, but there is no acknowledgement that this amendment applies to any future development of arms as there is no mention of the possible existence of arms further developed than what they knew of. In one Amendment they were clear that further possibilities exist, in the other, they seemed settle on things remaining arms-wise as they were.

 Like the Nineth does.

The elders, the majority of those in attendance, although most never having met each other before assembling, had lived similar lives in one regard, activism.

Most of the people I was with came of age in the late sixties, early 1970s and spent their adult lives working for social justice and to help people have their rights recognized whether directly connected to them or not.

Since 1973 the women present had had the right to choose, and for some they were adults before they got it. Some were active in the fight and continued to have to be each time this right was challenged.

The rest have always had the right.

A woman’s right to choose is not my issue, but the rights of Gay people and many rights just assumed by people to be there and will continue to is. I am concerned for the claim that only rights enumerated in the Constitution should be recognized as rights.

It wasn’t an obsession and it wasn’t a career, but I spent 45 years of my adult life fighting for my rights and by extension those of the born and yet to be born, and in various places got to enjoy what rights had been gained where I was at the time I was there, and, moving back to Massachusetts, have enjoyed in my retirement the full rights I fought for and still would be if I was living in other places not in dribs and drabs depending on where some locale was and how far along the rights continuum it was, but all at once and pretty routine at that.

Where my relationship to my rights had been a battle, they had now become the status quo

Like the others gathered who knew people who gave their lives to the cause, I know many people who have died before something they had worked for was attained, and some who lost it all to repressive laws, but the fight was known and the sacrifice clear.

And the sacrifices were made.

However, after all that, to see what you have won for yourself and others born and yet to be taken away so the experience of rights was short lived, almost attained by reaching the accepted age, or from this point on not to be enjoyed gain by anyone, hurts.

And those gathered were hurting, first because of what will not be there for their progeny, and second, for the years of their adult life they spent fighting for something meaningful and a benefit to generations yet to come whose meaning was erased by the vote of four people who lied to get on the Supreme Court.

What was to be and what was coming is not to be now.

The elders will live their days remembering what was won and how their lives were better for it, but for how long? Not as long as the people under fifty who will have fewer rights than their parents and grandparents. Using abortion as an example, most of the people I was with were not fighting for their right to choose. They were there to fight for those who are young and yet to come whose right to choose they had won and are being taken away.

They were there to protest the return of conditions that existed before Roe v Wade, and know will be hard for those who have no idea what it was like and might not be wholly ready for what is to come.

.They see that along with the loss of the right to choose which existed for 50 years and through whose lifetime they benefited, as I see the long fought for rights for Gay people having been won and enjoyed for an even shorter time will have to be fought for to get restored while some locations got to enjoy most rights longer and others were seeing the future as bright, until now, there are many unenumerated rights taken as a given that ca now be taken away.

They have lived and seen what the young are facing and still do not like it.

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