The election of 2024 is an event I have relived over the span of exactly 8 years. Or 96 months, 417 weeks, 2,922 days, 70,128 hours, 4,207,680 minutes, 252,460,800 seconds. During the election of 2016, I was 9 years old. On Nov. 5, 2016, I went to bed expecting to wake up with the first ever woman in office. Instead, I was awoken by my mother, eyes red and puffy from lack of sleep and the tears she had silently shed on the floor of the shower. Over the next 4 years I watched some of my classmates’ parents get deported. My third-grade class cried together over the loss of our friend’s family at the lunch table. As we grew older, I watched the boys in my class change. They no longer cared about people, they cared about prospects. I watched toxic masculinity destroy every shred of kindness they had once shared with me. That was the first time I realized how flawed politics have become.
In June 2022, Roe v. Wade was overturned. Around the same time, I visited the U.S. Supreme Court with my classmates on an eighth-grade trip. I remember seeing the streets filled with protestors cheering over the overturning of Roe v. Wade and feeling sick to my stomach. Before we approached, one of the teachers from another school we had been traveling with explained that the First Amendment gave them the right to yell about their thoughts on the case. I locked eyes with a man holding a sign of a stillborn baby, claiming that the image was of an aborted fetus at 3 months. Planned Parenthood’s website states that a 3-month-old fetus is “1 to 1.5 inches (21-40 mm) long.” To give reference, a AAA battery or paperclip is typically 1 to 1.5 inches long. I knew it was wrong, so I yelled back. I was soon dragged away by the teacher who had just preached to us about our First Amendment rights. He yelled at me and told me I shouldn’t have been yelling at “innocent men.” I was quick to bite back and ask about my freedom of speech. His response? “That’s different.” I still don’t understand how my desire for healthcare rights is less important than a grown man’s opinion. The topic of abortion rights is not just an opinion, it’s healthcare. In my situation, it could be the difference between life or death.
I was recently diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, antiphospholipid syndrome, a condition that causes my immune system to attack the proteins in my blood, leading to blood clots. One of the effects of my condition is a high risk for miscarriage. One of my greatest aspirations in life is to become a mother, yet any future pregnancy I carry will be more difficult than an average pregnancy. In the event of a miscarriage, I need access to abortion care. I will not be silent or still when my life, and the lives of every woman in the United States of America, is directly put at risk because a privileged, rich white man willed it to be so. Not only is my life at risk, but so is the life of my future children.
How can these men that have been put in power expect women to bear their children in the conditions they have set in place? How can they not see people will die? That women have died?
I had planned to spend the next 4 years living my life doing things I love like baking and walking my dogs, and figuring out the path to a career. My new plan consists of fighting my so-called “saviors” to obtain rights equal to those of a man. I will never stop fighting for humanitarian rights. Not just for me, but for my mother, my aunt Judy, my twin sister, my baby sister, my grandmother, my teachers, my future children, and everyone who is being put at risk by blind, power-hungry, foolish, idiotic, delusional men who think they can control us. They will never control us.
~ Oline Vachon is 17 years old and a junior at Cold Stream Alternative School. She was born in Quebec City and moved to California when she was 6 years old. She enjoys baking, reading, and writing. She hopes to continue writing, aiming to eventually go to law school.
