Legislatively Speaking
By Senator Lena C. Taylor
Lena C. Taylor
As an alum of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM), I try to keep up with what’s happening on campus. I will never forget that this is where I cut my teeth on issues both local and global. I learned about advocacy methods, negotiations, and sharpened my ability to raise awareness of the issues impacting others. Today, students are talking about fossil fuel divestment and the environment. More than 30 years ago, my fellow students and I were talking about divestment that impacted the very freedoms of Black and Brown people.
As described by the online publication ClimateEarth, fossil fuels are formed from the decomposition of buried carbon-based organisms that died millions of years ago. They create carbon-rich deposits that are extracted and burned for energy. They are non-renewable and currently supply around 80% of the world’s energy. They are also used to make plastic, steel and a huge range of products. There are three types of fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas.
Many scholars, from around the world, agree that producing and burning these fossil fuels are harmful to our planet and our people. In addition to air pollution, fossil fuels are negatively impacting climate change, and is linked to health problems like heart attacks, stroke, asthma, early death, and more. While an unrelated issue, the devastating impact of Apartheid in South Africa had many similar outcomes. What I have learned over the years is that there are many ways to destroy a land and marginalize its people.
Whether environmentally or through legislation, we make or break communities every day. In the 1913 Land Act, territorial segregation was forged in South Africa. The United States also enacted Black Codes to segregate people. Jim Crow policies were contrived to sustain separate and unequal. Freedoms, once held, even if for a brief period of time, could be legally wrestled away. History has taught us that freedom is tenuous for some in our society.
It is with all these realizations, that we come upon the one-year assault on a woman’s right to autonomy over her own body. I can scarcely believe that the will of a minority of residents is the governing law of the land. With the Supreme Court’s decision on Dobbs v. Jackson, life changed for women and girls in this country. Republican controlled legislatures have rushed to relegate women and restrict their choices.
CBS News recently reported that abortion is outlawed, with few exceptions, in 13 states. Abortion care is also unavailable in Wisconsin because we have no official abortion providers. Seven states restrict abortions based on the number of weeks a woman has been pregnant, with some bans coming as early as six weeks, before many women know they are pregnant. Further, some 28 million women of reproductive age live in states where abortion is banned, unavailable or restricted, with 2 million more in the two states where abortion is available but restrictions are pending. It feels like proponents of a woman’s right to choose have lost this war.
But like Apartheid and Jim Crow, there will be a changing of the guard. Public opinion, like calls for disinvestment, will provide opportunities for policy change. However, the disinvestment will be in elected officials. Collective voices will be raised and actions taken to reverse what’s been done. And as Nelson Mandela once said, “It always seems impossible, until it is done.”