JEN MARSHALL: I am furious and disgusted and terrified. I feel exactly like what I am: a second-class citizen. I\u2019m tired of being powerless. I\u2019ve participated in protests, called my congresspeople, donated, and volunteered. I voted my ass off. Where has that gotten us? What else can we do?<\/p>\n
Although I live (involuntarily) in a red state, I\u2019ve been lucky enough that none of my friends or family have been directly affected so far, but they will. We all will. I am close to three people (that I know of) whose lives have been saved by abortion, and I can\u2019t stop thinking about what would happen to them today.<\/p>\n
E.F. SCHRAEDER: Deep breath on that one. I\u2019m not sure. Along with most of the folks I know, I feel like I\u2019m living in a jittery emotional space that hovers in chronic existential worry, jumps into utter panic, settles somewhere between outrage and numbness, and sometimes fluctuates between all those extremes (at once). The ground has shifted beneath our feet, I think there\u2019s an undercurrent of stress that slices into the surface in the wake of a monumental implosion like this. Although there has been a constant chipping away at Roe for as long as I can remember, I can\u2019t help but feel sadness and fear when I think about the future\u2014 the long term consequences that the decision poses are deeply disturbing and disheartening.<\/p>\n ELYSE RUSSELL: I\u2019m nervous, to say the least. Physically, I\u2019m rather \u201csafe\u201d at the moment, because of an IUD, but I had extreme PPD after the births of each of my children. I know in my heart that I would not survive having another child. So, I worry about that, though it isn\u2019t an imminent threat. I worry about my daughter\u2019s future if this isn\u2019t changed. Meanwhile, my entire extended family (and in-laws) are conservative, and are celebrating this loss of rights right now all around me. The moral dissonance is draining.<\/p>\n Where were you on June 24th when you learned that Roe had been overturned? What was your first reaction?<\/strong><\/p>\n JEN MARSHALL: I was working from home so I learned about it on Twitter. My first reaction was to find out where the protest was going to be. I felt sick the rest of the day.<\/p>\n I couldn’t respond immediately to my friend’s text. I trudged out of my bedroom, found my husband in the kitchen, told him I wasn’t okay, and cried into his shoulder. It felt like a slap in the face. A betrayal. A demotion as a human being. I felt numb and hopeless and angry as hell all at the same time. And this was just my first visceral reaction, well before I understood the reality of how this decision would affect issues related to bodily autonomy, healthcare, racial and economic inequality, and privacy that have little or nothing to do with pregnancy. As I learned and understood more, all those feelings intensified. It was an exceptionally difficult day.<\/p>\n DONNA J.W. MUNRO: I was at the In Your Write Mind Workshop at Seton Hill University. I was chair this year, so I was completely consumed by getting all the organizational work done for our\u00a0guests and attendees. I’m always surrounded there by amazing like-minded writing women and in that I thank the universe, because when the decision came down we put our heads together and kept each other close. We had to do our jobs for the conference, but in that circle of women\u00a0we plotted. If writing was magic, that weekend we would have brought down the Supreme Court and the whole rest of the patriarchy.<\/p>\n ELYSE RUSSELL: I was at home, preparing to launch the Kickstarter campaign for The Dark Side of Purity<\/em>, when I heard the news. My first reaction included a lot of profanity. I felt a sinking start in my stomach, but\u2026I knew it was going to happen. I wasn\u2019t shocked. We\u2019d had warning of the decision from leaks, and I\u2019d channeled all of my horror and anger from that into fast-tracking a related project to serve as a direct response. A clap-back. I had to do something. Writing, creativity, curating anthologies, and marketing are some of my strengths, so I threw myself into the charity work. I focused on that one small thing I could do.<\/p>\n As a horror writer, how do you feel like this ruling will affect your work? Are you struggling to write? Will you incorporate these themes into your writing more? Also, how would you like to see people in the genre, especially those in positions of power, do better in terms of supporting us during this crisis?<\/strong><\/p>\n JEN MARSHALL: Certainly I have been struggling to write, and what little I have produced has already incorporated aspects of our current dystopia. Social commentary has long been an important part of horror and science fiction, and now it\u2019s time to press even harder. I think my rage will come through in my writing a lot more now.<\/p>\n I have always been so proud of our progressive and liberal horror family, and of our organizations and publications that work hard to be perceptive, inclusive, and supportive. However, some of the responses I heard about, even among our usually amazing community, made me sad. When human rights are being ripped away, there should be an immediate outpouring of outrage and disapproval. There is no moral gray area here, no two sides to this issue, so there\u2019s no reason for subtlety or diplomacy in a response. Perhaps we\u2019re all still getting used to this new reality and it might take time for some people to absorb the magnitude of what has been lost and to calibrate accordingly.<\/p>\n TIFFANY MICHELLE BROWN: During times of great stress and change, I usually have a really hard time creating, but that is not the case for me right now. I feel very compelled to create, and I’m riding that wave so\u00a0I can channel my feelings of rage and helplessness and bone-deep sadness into\u00a0something good. My work has always been political, because my very existence as a woman is political, but damn, it’s about to get that much more brazen, in your face, and emotionally charged. It’s a privilege to be able to raise my voice against injustice, so yeah, I’m going to do it.<\/p>\n In terms of support within the genre, we need people and organizations to understand that they can no longer take a neutral position. There is no in between. You either condemn the actions of the Supreme Court or you don’t, and silence is complicity. The threat to the health and well-being of women, trans men, nonbinary individuals, and especially individuals within these groups who are BIPOC and already experience grave injustices and micro\/macro aggressions on the daily thanks to white supremacy, is very real. We’re already seeing the effects play out in real-time. And if we give them an inch, they’ll take a mile. I’m very concerned about the reversion or further degradation of rights for LGBTQIA+ folks. I’m concerned for folks who don’t fit into the cookie cutter white American ideal.<\/p>\n Those with power, resources, and privilege need to create safe and supportive spaces and opportunities for members of the horror community who are affected by the overturning of Roe v. Wade. And that goes far beyond making public statements, because anyone can do that. We need more than a strategic, self-serving PR move. We need to see long-term strategies and actions that align with any sort of public statement individuals or organizations publish.<\/p>\n It warms my heart to see many individuals and organizations rallying to fundraise and\/or create opportunities for writers to express their frustration through art. Nico Bell, Roxie Voorhees, Creature Lit, Brigids Gate Press, S.H. Cooper, Oli A. White, Hillary Monahan, Sonora Taylor, Cosmic Horror Monthly, Jolie Toomajan, Cursed Morsels, Eric Raglan, Voices from the Mausoleum, and Gwendolyn Kiste – I see you, and I appreciate you. Keep going! (There are probably lots of folks and organizations who are also doing great work that I’m personally unaware of or whom I’ve accidentally left out in this instance, but please know I support the hell out of you, too!)<\/p>\n With regard to continued, long-term support, if you host conventions, what will you do to ensure folks affected by this decision feel safe, secure, and included? If you’re a publisher, does the work you publish reflect your values? Are your works diverse and inclusive and speaking to issues of the moment? Are you encouraging marginalized voices to submit work to your\u00a0calls? How will you contribute monetarily toward causes and organizations that are fighting the good fight? And lastly, and perhaps most importantly, are you receptive to criticism? We’re all learning. We’re all responding to current events in real-time. If you fuck up, will you fix it and grow and continue to get better? Individuals and organizations won’t always get things right on the first try, but their long game will tell you everything you need to know about their integrity.<\/p>\n DONNA J.W. MUNRO: The shadow of this ruling, the long reach of a conservative SCOTUS, had already impacted my writing. First, I’m in EF Schraeder’s\u00a0Abortion Anthology and as PRO<\/span> CHOICE<\/span> as I am, I struggled with my story in it because I’m in such a deep red, evangelical place on the map. Putting my name next to a pro<\/span> choice<\/span> story might have repercussions for my day job as a teacher, so I was already worried. I wrote it because if I didn’t, who would? The ruling hadn’t come down when I wrote about the near future horror<\/span> of a world without Roe, and here we are. What I thought of as dystopian horror<\/span> will now be reality for young women in the school where I teach. Since the ruling, I find myself writing with an anger I’ve never felt. I’m not just angry at the system and politicians. I’m angry at us all. The next story that needs writing is about how easy it is to watch rights taken away and then accept it because we just don’t have the power or will to stop it or the news cycle moves on or there’s just too many things to care about. Yes, there have to be more stories about abortion rights or the loss of them.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/Donna-J.W.-Munro.jpg\")
<\/a>DONNA J.W. MUNRO: Personally. I hate to use slang to describe something so terrible, but I am shook<\/b> to the core. The thing is, I’m past childbearing at this point and the impact isn’t personal…except it is. Abortion saved the life of a family member. She had a pregnancy in her fallopian tube that\u00a0would have killed her without the abortion she had. Several of my folks had abortions in the 80s and 90s and\u00a0 wouldn’t have gotten where they are now without that option. So this disruption of a carefully orchestrated\u00a0political balance makes everything\u00a0I believed to be solid, unshakable protections of women into something all of us could lose,\u00a0have lost. As far as family and friends, I’m from Missouri (first to enact the trigger law). Abortion is a dirty secret here. We don’t talk much about it among women and isn’t that ultimately the goal? Controlling us? Keeping us quiet? And now, birth control is becoming just as taboo. Even if that’s not what is intended here, that’s the end result in the end, right?<\/p>\n<\/a>TIFFANY MICHELLE BROWN: I woke up to a text from a friend that said: “Omg, they fucking did it. They overturned ROE v WADE.” Like many, I knew it was coming. We’d all seen the leaked opinion from the Supreme Court, but there was a finality and sadness that hit me that morning that I was in no way, shape, or form prepared to process. I have long been a firm believer that abortion is healthcare, and decisions regarding pregnancy are complex and nuanced and should be made between a pregnant individual and their healthcare provider.<\/p>\n