This Saturday, Calvin and I will officially become the parents of two teenagers, as our youngest daughter Layla, will be turning 13. As many parents do, we appreciate her progress so far and fondly remember the months and moments that shaped her entering our lives. 

When I was still expecting Layla, it felt more like late summer that year than spring. As a Midwesterner, I despised heat before carrying the extra weight of a baby, so I remained in a perpetual state of steaming misery (my husband referred to me another way entirely: “mean as a snake.”). On top of that, I was running a household, contributing as a writer to the Briefing’s Moms Panel and raising a toddler and preteen. I marked the calendar in anticipation of her ‘eviction date’ and as if to accommodate me in advance, my labor started in the early morning of May 21st.

When Layla arrived hours later, we were overwhelmed with love and relief. She was, and is, a healthy and beautiful combination of Calvin and me, greeted by our family, including her older brother and sister, with wonder, affection and joy. Like every other child, she embodies the past (by resembling myself, great-aunt and maternal grandfather, depending on the day), the present (she keeps us up to date on the latest trends, whether we ask about them or not) and, of course, the future (she was the only child we had to be born during the administration of our nation’s first-ever Black president). How could we not witness the timing of our daughter’s arrival as a hopeful one, with the promise of further progress to come? 

Unfortunately, just over a decade later, when Layla blows out the candles on top of her cake, she’ll become a teenager as the Supreme Court is apparently poised to remove 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision, which allows girls and women the right to choose to terminate a pregnancy.

Despite declaring under oath that they would recognize the existing decision as precedent, Justices (using the term loosely and ironically) Gorsuch, Alito, Robert, Barrett and Thomas—-according to leaked draft document that was made public recently—–are using personal opinions and religious rhetoric to justify leaving individual states to decide for themselves what’s best for 51% of the population.

There are no rules governing parts of the male body, which science tells us is also responsible for creating a pregnancy, but these five adults are comfortable in demanding that only females remain responsible for the physical, emotional and financial consequences that pregnancy creates. That is regardless of whether the fetus is wanted or not, healthy or not, and in some states, even if conceived by rape or incest and a danger to the mother’s life.

I feel blessed to have been able to decide, with my spouses and my sound mind, to bring children into the world. I determined the timing and the number of babies I felt equipped and capable to raise and support. However, if Nia and Layla decide not to pursue motherhood, I want that choice to be theirs, not anyone else’s. If can’t use my moral compass or non-denominational convictions to determine what’s best for others, why should a handful be able to overrule what the majority has overwhelmingly determined they want? 

With Covid-19 (and sub-variants) on the rise, groceries and gas prices still high and family-friendly policies few and far-between, the apparent decision by the Supreme Court to prioritize a ‘domestic supply of infants’ as hundreds of thousands of children in foster care wait to be adopted, is both duplicitous and despicable.

I never thought that Nia, Layla and other generations to follow could endure more restrictions than I did, and my biggest, brightest wish for our teenager is that progress continues to propel the lives of women forward instead of ruthlessly forcing them back.