People the barricades without me

 I hadn't promised to anyone except perhaps myself, and had only mentioned my intention to my wife and mother-in-law, but I expected to attend a small protest here in my small midwestern city. It was sponsored by the March for Women's Rights, the same organization that had set up the anti-trump protest in DC around 2017's inauguration I had missed, as well as one in 2019 in Madison I managed to attend. 

I had somewhat made plans  in the way I do, keeping in the back of my mind while my day goes on were I intend to go and what I intend to do once there. But I read an article this morning--I forget where and can't locate it again--that was a recognition of the necessity of this sort of constant protest, spurred by the recent Texas Law and the number of states trying to ape it. It is a bad law and I am against both it and the attempts by other places to make the same law. But this article had one interview that stuck in my head all day and kept me finally away.

One of the article's interviews was with an older woman who said, and I am paraphrasing here, "Will I be at the protest today? No. It's a protest against the right thing, but Roe v Wade was decided 50 years ago, and I've marched in hundreds of protests to keep it safe, and it's obviously had no effect at all. We shouldn't have to keep marching after something becomes law. I'm tired. Maybe we need to lose the right for a generation in order to remember why we fought for it."

Bitter? Oh, definitely. But it's an earned bitterness. In driving my mother-in-law home, I passed the park where the protest had just started. I saw a number of people I know, all of them over 60. 

Of course, there were other protests in other larger cities and I don't doubt there were thousands of people of child-bearing age marching and shouting and making a ruckus. But that isn't the point. This woman, whose name I can't locate, is right about one thing. We shouldn't have to keep marching after something becomes law. We've marched and made noise for a half century, and if all that has led to is the ease with which a Republican majority can effectively ban a legal and safe procedure, then we have done nothing. Is it wrong of me to agree with her that perhaps we need to lose the right to them for a generation to remind us why we marched? Maybe. But I speak from the perspective of metaphoric sore feet. Those women with more at stake and sorer feet have the right to suggest maybe it's time to step back.