Nothing quite so profound this week -- nor "on time". For one thing, I feel less "fired up" to share widely the rest of I've been writing.
For another, there's really so little of it that if I gave it out at the speed of the last few weeks consistently, it would all be gone in six to ten months -- and it took years to compose, in between other things I do (almost all mundanities, of no interest to any but my nearest and dearest), so it would be a quick burn even if not particularly bright nor hot.
And on top of that, this week the death of someone I won't name, (iykyk) with whom I once worked closely and have known off and on since we were toddlers, passed on. I'm not rocked with grief over his passing but it was a surprise. We're beginning to be of that age when one can't honestly say, "oh! he was just too young!" which if you're older than he (even just a little, as in my case) it'll feel a bit like that. But I feel for his family and I'm thankful to have had the chance for the tangents of our trajectories to touch at all. He was certainly, to me, everything gracious and complimentary that is being said of him elsewhere. He didn't "bury his talent", I can tell you.
But I did have a thought go rattling through my head in the aftermath of last week's apologia for "the Parade". It's not long. There wasn't a lot I had to compose. But I thought it worth sharing.
There are a couple of musicians whose songs have formed a spine to the torso of my development, through adolescence, young adulthood, to the present. Some have been great lyricists, some have been great instrumentalists, some have been great arrangers, for some it’s what I could see of their character, for many it has been more than one of these attributes.
Back in the beginning of those days, ALL of these musicians, if they said anything at all about the abortion issue, spoke against it passionately, often backed up by eloquent songs.
One of these – I’ll call him Jeff, though that won’t really guard his identity much – along with passionately singing against abortion was also brutally candid about the trail to parenting that he and his wife walked through. They had three miscarriages, followed by a hard birth. Mom wound up in one hospital, the young child in a NICU 1h40 drive away. Dad went back and forth between them, ultimately lost the child and then wrote a heartrendingly beautiful song of farewell and grief. Eventually they welcomed three healthy children, each celebrated in songs shared with all of us by Jeff, and each song sweet in its own way, each one raising my own anticipation about how cool it would be to be a dad one day, too.
Their kids have survived into adulthood, several of them continuing in music or the arts one way or another, but in watching a post-Dobbs America, a thought hit me this week.
In a post-Dobbs America, how many of those mis-carriages would have happened before the lack of “abortion” care would have led to his wife’s death or loss of fertility?
And if this had been in El Salvador -- or perhaps a US of the near future (avert!)-- in which instance might she have come under suspicion of having caused the miscarriage?
You think I’m making absurd allegations?
Miscarriages as “crime scenes”: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-61995250 (the rhetoric in the US is ominously similar)
American women who have died or lost fertility because of state anti-abortion laws:
deaths: https://msmagazine.com/2024/11/04/women-die-abortion-ban-elections-vote/
loss of fertility:
https://people.com/texas-woman-miscarriage-sent-home-twice-hospital-abortion-ban-12005748
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65935189
https://www.texastribune.org/2024/08/12/texas-abortion-law-ectopic-pregnancies/
If ever there were an issue about which the law of unintended consequences had a field day, a commitment to life “from conception to the grave” is definitely one of them.
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