My dear, sweet daughter,
I write this to you as a follow-up to the conversation we had over dinner here in Paris, on the night the world learned of the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Our family had been watching to see what would happen with this case, hoping for a different outcome than what the earlier leak indicated. But that was not to be the case. When we finally learned of the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, I was moved by your thoughts about this historic turn of events, and so I want to document our conversation.
I want to be careful, however, with how I frame my reasons for writing to you on this subject. It’s a problem when men approach topics like this one out of sympathy for a particular woman or girl in their life. It repeats the harms that got us into this situation. This is a matter of justice, not sympathy. The court’s decision betrays the nature of our society—and our response to it speaks to the kind of society that we want to live in. This moment is about women losing rights but also about the belief within our society that it’s OK, even good, to take away those rights. It stems from a history of human hierarchy that always targets multiple groups of people and degrades everyone’s quality of life.
