My family doesn't talk about Diane. She died in 1947 from a rare stomach infection.

Her husband was Dwight, an Arkansas truck driver. He left from 1942 until 1945, fighting in Europe. When he returned, his PTSD from the war was met with alcoholism and spiraling depression.

I heard stories that Dwight took his own life after his wife died, because the grief was just too much.

What actually happened was sadder: Five years after his wife's death, Dwight got drunk as fuck and veered off a remote Ozark road. He wasn't found until a week later.

Dwight died in 1952, seven years before my dad was born. My dad never met his uncle.

By all accounts, Dwight was a sad story -- like many men who returned from WWII, mentally scarred by violence and gore.

That story though? It's only half of it.

When Diane died in 1947, she was dealing with a shockingly common stomach infection.

This stomach problem was impacting women across our nation. In 1962 alone, over 1,600 women died at the Harlem Hospital because of this mysterious stomach infection.

The real story about Diane is that she was stuck in an abusive marriage, and wanted to leave Dwight. He was drinking, beating her, and had become a monster.

But then... she got pregnant.

Diane didn't want to bring a child into an abusive home. So she made a difficult decision.

My aunt Lisa said that Diane sold the only thing she owned of value -- a Rolex gifted at their wedding, and drove to what she thought was a safe clinic in Little Rock.

The procedure wasn't safe.

Diane died three days later.

When women used to die from unsafe abortions, families didn't talk about it. They created these elaborate lies.

Diane didn't die from an abortion. It was a "stomach infection" or a "ruptured appendix" -- anything but an abortion.

It happens to lots of women at 25, I suppose.

According to estimates by the Guttmacher Institute, in 1967 alone, over 820,000 illegal abortions were performed.

Complications varied, and data is (understandably) unavailable, but something like 20% of abortions caused severe medical problems.

Many were fatal.

I feel it's important to highlight my great-aunt, who died 39 years before I was born.

Why? Because her story seems unfathomable today. Women in their 20s aren't dying from "mystery infections" anymore.

Roe solved a problem. The problem wasn't abortion. It was SAFETY.

The Evangelical Right and Conservatives of the world want you to believe their narrative: They're "Pro-Life" because they're "saving babies," and preventing this scourge of "partial-birth" (a term they invented) abortions.

Their narrative misses history.

If you were 18 in 1973, when Roe passed, that means you were born in 1955.

Roughly speaking, only people born before 1955 have a real memory of what life was like before Roe.

Women's health choices pre Roe were either prohibitively expensive, or ghastly and dangerous.

In the late 1940s and 50s, a pregnant woman with a wealthy husband might "take a vacation" to Iceland, Sweden, or Denmark.

By the 1960s, England had legalized abortions. Airfare, hotel and abortion package deals were advertised to American women seeking safe procedures.

By 1973, public opinion had shifted.

Too many women were dying, or in many cases, having botched abortions that caused them to become permanently infertile.

Just because you're not ready for a family at 20, doesn't mean you won't want children at 27.

Americans were angry.

I want all you Conservatives to understand this: If you manage to stock the Supreme Court with conservative, anti-Choice justices, you won't succeed in your mission to prevent abortions.

You will only be building a time machine, with an end-point landing us in 1972.

You don't "save babies" by overturning Roe. You simply kill the woman, along with the fetus that you were trying to save.

It's not just dumb for the usual fundamentalist Christian reasons. It's dumb because the logic trap is so obvious.

I'm going to wave my hands over a crystal ball and peer into your Conservative future to tell you how this ends.

You're going to overturn Roe, and then find out Canada still exists. Women in the United States will simply drive (or fly) to Canada.

... unless they're poor.

Women who don't have the means to travel to Canada will end up in unlicensed, unsafe places, and we will be right back where we were.

Nothing will have been solved. No lives will be saved. It it a pointless, utterly cruel mission, with no possibility of a positive outcome.

In conclusion, a pre-emptive "fuck you" to every single Republican Senator who will be confirming Amy Coney to the SCOTUS.

You all have proven yourselves wildly incapable of even the most basic critical thinking skills, because you ONLY pander to religious extremists.