While I was practicing late into the night on August 31st, I was also watching the news about the Supreme Court.

Texas SB8 had been challenged, and the Court had until midnight on August 31st to block the law from going into effect on September 1st. The Court did not act. Around 1:00am I began writing this song, my first fully composed original piece.

The title, "Aid and Abet," refers to the language in TX SB8 that allows private citizens to sue anyone who aids or abets an abortion in Texas after the sixth week of pregnancy, before most people even know that they're pregnant. The law even allows for lawsuits for anyone who intends to aid and abet – even someone like me, tweeting my support for people seeking abortions in Texas, could be sued under SB8. The law was written this way in a cynical, cowardly attempt to prevent the law from being overturned in a conventional case before the Supreme Court. And on September 2nd, the Court used the so-called shadow docket to announce that SB 8 could stand until the case appeared before the Court later in the year. Roe was effectively gutted.

This law cannot stand. As a people, we have been managing pregnancy for hundreds of years. The right to abortion and to manage one's health throughout a pregnancy cannot be rescinded. There is no reason for a healthcare procedure to be a "hot-button" or "controversial" political issue – those who do not want abortions should simply not seek abortions. I will not live in a world where a small minority's absurd insistence on intensely specific, repressive, and arbitrary gender governs how I control my body, how I seek healthcare, or how I express my gender. There are those who want all people to be shuttered into two (and no more than two) rigid boxes: men who lead and govern, and women who are barefoot and pregnant. The people who want everyone in this country to be forced into one of those two genders have no right to determine how anyone else lives. Abortion is healthcare, and healthcare is personal.

This song reflects how I feel about the prospect of living in a post-Roe America. I often struggle with words when I try to describe my inner world that's altogether too much and too loud, but I hope this piece of music communicates something to you.

Donate to abortion funds if you want to support folks seeking abortions in Texas and elsewhere. If you don't support the right to abortion, don't get one, and leave us be.

We will not go back.

Mercedes Yvonne Lysaker
Contraforma