Editor’s Note: This essay is reprinted with permission from The Austin Chronicle, where it ran on July 1.
Dear Leonie and Odelle,
I’m sitting in the dark nursing you, Odelle, while you sleep. Your little hands are cradling my breast. It’s sweet and unremarkable in its habitualness.
But now it’s not just unremarkable, because I see the news that Roe v. Wade has been overturned. Now I will remember this moment, you in your daisy romper, the fan blowing cool air on my streaming hot tears, the ding of your sister’s footsteps outside the door. This is the day that you both have fewer rights over your body than your parents and the previous generations before you (wise and poignant words from your dad).
We’ve just moved four weeks ago to Evanston, leaving behind a state governed by detestable White men who have done everything in their power to eliminate access to abortion, setting the gold standard for how to be the worst state for just about everything.
Dad and I moved away from Austin in large part because it felt like an unsafe place to raise two kids, particularly two girls. During the previous Texas legislative session, Dad and I began in earnest to talk about moving. You’re both young and we have no idea how either of you will identify, who you will love, and what medical care you may need or want access to, from gender affirming care to abortion care. What we do know is Texas, and now arguably this whole country, is no longer a safe space for anyone. But Illinois is better.
Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a law restricting concealed carry of guns in New York.
In these back-to-back decisions from the Supreme Court, we will have countless deaths from gun violence, forced pregnancy and attempted home abortion care. We may have mass incarceration for folks wanting abortion care in states that criminalize it. There is nothing pro-life about either decision and as a parent I feel more than ever that I have to protect you against these dual affronts on your future bodily autonomy.
I’m so sorry this is the country you’re inheriting, the country you’ll grow up in.
While I believe your generation and future ones will take this fight on, you shouldn’t have to. The burden to fight for the right to access abortion should not be on your shoulders, but it will be. Your generation has the burden of fighting for so many other overlooked human rights that my generation and previous ones have failed at.
You will have to fight deliberately ruinous legislation and lack of legislation from voting rights to climate change, and now we have added on a colossal blow.
I fear there will not be time enough to fight for abortion care when faced with the ever impending and tangible forces of climate change, or vice versa. But I believe your generation will not stand for the lackadaisical “democracy” that has enabled this country to arrive at this embarrassment today.
I will do what I can. I promise to continue to be civically active and responsible in voting people into office who will fight for the right to abortion care.
I promise to continue to donate to abortion funds and clinics who are about to face a massive onslaught of logistical hurdles.
I promise to donate my time to help those who cannot access abortion in their state access it in our state and others. I promise to always provide a home where abortion care is easily accessible to both of you. If that means moving again, so be it.
I’m so sorry.
I love you both forever and always.
– Mom
Essig-Fox grew up in Evanston and graduated from Evanston Township High School in 2005. She got her master’s degree in public policy and analysis from New York University, after which she moved to Austin in 2017 and worked at Jane’s Due Process fighting for abortion care in Texas and later in HIV Prevention at the Texas Department of State Health Services.
Welcome home, Savanna and family. Thanks for your poignant letter. It’s not perfect here as the last few days that have unfolded may suggest, yet your decision to return to Illinois and Evanston to raise your daughters offers promise for all of us. We know by your brave decision and letter that you are no stranger to the work of upholding rights to legal abortion. We have a governor in Illinois who respects the rights of women to make their own decisions about their bodies and pledges to uphold that right. We will continue to keep Illinois a safe haven for those needing medical care to end an unplanned pregnancy. Raising daughters should be the same across every state but we know that the laws of the land like Roe v Wade, have been tampered with by a politicized and not so Supreme Court. Who’d ever have guessed we’d need to be worrying about back alley abortions in our daughters’ lifetimes? Thought we’d be on to bigger issues like banning guns!
Thank you for sharing your story and for your courage in leaving Texas behind to come back home. I have two very smart, capable adult nieces in Austin and I hope someday they also say goodbye to Texas and find a state (like Illinois!) that trusts them to make decisions about their own health care. Isn’t it a frustrating and exhausting time to be an American woman?
Thank you for making this lament public, for putting words to what so many of us are feeling. Welcome back to Evanston, we as a community are fortunate to count you and your family as neighbors.
Really hits home—especially after news of the mass shooting in Highland Park. I really feel for the youth who are inheriting this crazy world that we will leave behind for them. Let’s keep fighting.
Thank you for sharing your beautiful and manful letter to your young daughters with this community at large..
..and welcome back to Illinois, (and especially Evanston,) where you will be amongst kindred souls and people of good will….
..suspecting that it was difficult to leave TX, because it desperately needs people of your good will and consciousness.
This is a powerful piece written from the heart. I worry for the world I will leave behind for my children and grandchildren. Thank you for writing this.
Wow!
I wouldn’t stay there either, and my heart breaks for all the women who lack the resources to get out. I have a granddaughter coming this fall and I’m deeply worried about her future here, something I never thought I would have to say. Raise your girls to be tough. They’ll need to be.