Wednesday
Sometimes a book that one is reading matches up with current events in unexpected and amazing ways. Such is the case with Ta-Nehisi Coates’s The Water Dancer, which Julia and I listened to on our way back from an Iowa wedding. I initially chose the work because I wanted to become familiar with Coates’s fiction, only to discover that it relates to conversations arising out of the Supreme Court’s attack on abortion rights.
The novel is about the underground railroad in slave times. Hiram Walker, a man with special powers, is a slave who is betrayed by a fellow slave when he attempts to escape. Following harsh treatment by his captors, he is rescued by the railroad and then becomes an underground agent himself.
Here’s a description of the betrayer:
No man was more esteemed among the coloreds and the whites of Elm County than Georgie Parks. He was the major, the ambassador, the dream, though the dream took its meaning from whatever vantage it was glimpsed from….There was a tantalizing shadow about Georgie. He would disappear for long periods or be seen out in Starfall or glimpsed in the woods at the oddest of hours. We had an explanation for these mysteries. Georgie was tied to the Underground.
It turns out, however, that Georgie has been pressured by whites to be used as bait to catch potential runaways. The trap works in Hiram’s case.
It was through the lens of this story that I found myself reading the tweets of one Kiki Djarin concerning a more contemporary underground railroad. This will be the railroad that is already being set up to get red state women desiring abortions to abortion centers in blue states—and to do so without incurring lawsuits, fines, or imprisonment for anyone involved.
A reactionary Supreme Court once gave us the Dred Scott case, in which slaveholders could retrieve slaves who had run away to free states, and it’s possible that comparable dramas will play out following the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. Missouri is already discussing laws that would prevent its residents from traveling to another state to get an abortion, and other states could well follow. The settled law on such matters is very much up in the air at present, and with the current Supreme Court the ultimate arbiter, anything is possible.
Anyway, Kiki Djarin’s tweets note that there are some offering help who can be trusted and some who can’t. In other words, there are Georgie Parkses out there who, even if they don’t deliberately betray you, can end up facilitating those who want to catch and punish you. Djarin warns,
If you’re in a state that just banned abortion, DO NOT reach out to these people who are offering to let folks stay at their place if they need an abortion.
Their offer of help may work as an unintentional trap, Djarin says:
While some of these folks are well-intentioned, and I do believe they want to help. None of them I have seen are part of an established abortion fund or abortion network. You cannot trust them.
These people have just gone on social media and publicly announced they are a safe haven for abortion seekers. Anti-abortion people are now watching them. Law-enforcement will learn their names. If you are seen with them… or your phone pings at their house…
Djarin speculates that some of these “saviors” may be in it for the glory:
These individuals are putting their hero complex before your safety. If they wanted to do this work, they would have gone to established networks and done the training, done the work and learn how to do this safely. Do not trust them.
Everybody is ready to be a hero. Right up until they get a letter from an attorney that their ass is possibly going to jail for helping you get an abortion. These people will sing to the high heavens about everything.
And then, there may be some offering help who resemble Georgie Parks even more. Djarin warns about people who “are going to pretend to help you for the purpose of trying to catch you.
As an alternative, Djarin advises doing what Coates’s protagonist should have done:
Instead, go to an abortion fund or abortion network. These places know how to transport you safely and discreetly. They have years of experience and have prepared for this exact moment. these individuals on TikTok and Twitter have not.
With an abortion network, the people you interact with have been properly vetted and you can trust them.
Djarin provides one trusted resource: https://twitter.com/NatAbortionFed.
In his ruling, Alito compared overturning Roe to overturning Plessy vs. Fergusson, the case that validated Jim Crow racism with its declaration of “separate but equal.” By citing the case, Alito revealed himself as a cynical troll, and the comparison is ridiculous. That’s because Dobbs has more in common with Plessy itself than its reversal. Plessy returned African Americans to second class citizenship after they had fought to be free, and now Dobbs is doing the same with women.
Coates is savagely eloquent about what it feels like to be property, and women may increasingly find those passages relevant as they too are treated as subordinate to the embryo they carry within.