Benicia Poet Laureate Mary Susan Gast: Uncertain Inalienable Rights

My poem draws from the vision and promise of our nation’s Declaration of Independence in contrast with the vision and threat presented by proposed total bans on abortion. – Mary Susan Gast

UNCERTAIN INALIENABLE RIGHTS

Inalienable rights
Endowed by our Creator
Inalienable rights
Inalienable—can’t be gotten rid of
Absolute
Sacrosanct
Unassailable
Life
Liberty
Pursuit of happiness.

Except, of course,
If you have likewise been endowed
With a functioning uterus.

In which case, your inalienable rights
Are up for alienation
Trumped and superseded
Any time
Any old time
Any young time
Egg and sperm meet
Within you.

If you should conceive,
Whatever the circumstances,
Nothing
Nothing in your life,
Neither loss of job,
Nor loss of mental health,
Neither exhaustion,
Nor damage to physical health
Nor neglect of children already born,
Neither commitments to vocation
Nor aging parents
Nor anything else in all creation,
Can keep you from becoming a birth mother—
Or die trying.

The sectarian parochial conviction
That a fertilized egg is a full human being,
That dogma,
Has powered up its wardrobe,
Dapper in judicial robes, and senatorial togas
Along with its usual ensemble of religious vestments
To propagate and promulgate itself most forcefully
As the law of the land
Mowing down
Devastating
Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness
For those who are unhealthily, unwillingly, or unjoyously
Pregnant.
Bodies conscripted
For servitude.

Enforced birth, coerced procreation
Demeans, mocks, belittles, dismisses
The generous, arduous, courageous, dangerous, heroic
Labor of love
Entered into
By those who freely give of themselves
To give birth.

We hold these truths to be self-evident.

Inalienable rights
Endowed by our Creator
Inalienable rights
Can’t be gotten rid of
Absolute
Sacrosanct
Unassailable
[Say it with me, everyone]

Life
Liberty
Pursuit of happiness.


Mary Susan Gast
©2022
“Bans Off Our Bodies”
Benicia CA


 * Interesting note: ‘Inalienable’ or ‘Unalienable’?