Roe v Wade Overturned

Woke up this morning to messages from women friends all over the world

Back to the days of back alleys, coat hangers, blood, and death

If you are wondering what that means, Cultural opportunity for you here– watch Demi Moore in If These Walls Could Talk

What a glorious day for all the moral warriors who love life but can’t see the reason to regulate guns that pulverize school kids to bits their parents can’t recognize. Hey there, Justice Alito!

Hope your pure Catholic heart and that of your venerable tarred and tarnished colleagues—Justices Thomas, Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch—are high-fiving one another at this victory. Though, I’d just suggest, maybe a better title? I mean, Dobbs vs. Jackson? Really? At least Roe vs. Wade had a better ring to it, even dead?

You have written in your initial report:

“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start…The inescapable conclusion is that a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions…. Together, Roe and Casey represent an error that cannot be allowed to stand….” (https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/02/supreme-court-abortion-draft-opinion-00029473)

A supporter of the decision on the news argues that pro-life groups will take good care of ‘unwanted babies,’ will provide support to unwed mothers. Thanks so much. Really big of you. And thanks also for reminding us of something else that surely many are now thinking about, especially those who feel the same as you, our benevolent well-wisher of ‘unwanted babies.’

The truth is that THE COURT HAS SIMPLY NOT GONE FAR ENOUGH!

Why?

Because, In the good old days of women’s non-liberation, there were institutions in Great Britain and elsewhere that criminalized unwed young mothers from accidental pregnancies (the men had walked away, scot[us]-free, of course) by imprisoning them during and after birth in ‘houses of correction.’ There, they scrubbed floors and listened to abuse until their time came. Then, they gave birth without painkillers, because that would teach them to commit sins next time, wouldn’t it! Then, after six months of nursing, they were made to watch their children being taken away for adoption or—not to put a fine point on it—permanently sold.

Cultural opportunity for you here– watch Judy Dench in Philomena

That generous pro-life advocate lady on the news also said there are many resources for unwanted babies. Yes. And 442000 children in US foster care. So, here’s what’s left for the SCOTUS to do to complete its glorious deed.

Learn from the past, and set up houses of correction for today’s unwed mothers who might have otherwise been able to get an abortion and live decent lives with opportunities guaranteed by the Constitution.

Make sure these women are made to scrub floors and haul wood while pregnant, be called whores and bitches, and made to give birth without anesthesia or painkillers.

Then, as a cherry on top, make the women nurse their children for six months, and then be forced to lose them forever. (With a slight twist, Jonathan Swift’s “Modest Proposal” could be cited and upheld here by the SCOTUS, for these adoptions to ensure a modest but steady profit to the state?)

Then, and only then, will the job be finished; the moral warriors will have truly sacked feminism and women, in the manner foretold by Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale, Katherine Burdekin’s Swastika Nights, or Leni Zumas’ Red Clocks.

Other than that, My Friends, enjoy the future drafted and curated for women by Amy Coney Barrett

who definitely far exceeds at least Clarence Thomas in the cojones department

Might she not, perhaps, be put in charge of the government unit that oversees the Unwed Mothers’ Correctional Facilities of the future? Just my two cents of a modest proposal.

Folks, I was born and raised in India and have called the United States my second continent for the last thirty-odd years. Wherever I’ve lived, I’ve generally turned to books for the answers to life’s questions, big or small (that includes philosophy and recipes). My first novel Love’s Garden was published in October 2020. Some nice people have said some nice things about it (Buzzfeed; Medium.com; Foreword Reviews; Goodreads). I’m currently working on Homeland Blues, my second novel, about love, colorism, racism and xenophobia in post-Donald Trump America.

My short stories have been published or will be in in Oyster River Pages, Sky Island Journal, the Saturday Evening Post Best Short Stories from the Great American Fiction Contest Anthology 2021, the Good Cop/Bad Cop Anthology (Flowersong Press, 2021), the Gardan Anthology of the Craigardan Artists Residency, Funny Pearls, The Bombay Review, Meat for Tea: the Valley Review, Storyscape Journal, Raising Mothers, The Bangalore Review, PANK, OyeDrum, and more. I’ve attended the Bread Loaf Writers’ Workshop, the Vermont Studio Center residency, the VONA residency, Centrum Writer’s Residency, and others. I was first runner-up for the Los Angeles Review Flash Fiction contest (2017-2018), long-listed for the Disquiet International Literary Prize (2019 and 2020), a finalist for the Reynolds-Price International Women’s Literary Award (2019), and received Honorable Mention for the Saturday Evening Post Great American Stories Contest, 2021.

In a related avatar, I’m Professor of English at Texas A&M University, USA and teach and write about English literature, South Asia Studies, Indian Cinema, Postcolonial Studies, Colonial Discourse Analysis, Gender Theory, Film Studies, and Critical Theory. I founded and directed (2007-2017) the South Asia Working Group of the Glasscock Humanities Center at Texas A&M University, and rom 2012 -2014 directed the Graduate Studies program of the English department at Texas A&M University. I’ve published three academic monographs and many articles on film, world literature, feminism and visual culture, colonial and postcolonial discourse analyses of literature from the eighteenth century onwards, gender in South Asia, and travel writing. The latest of these is Hindi Cinema: Repeating the Subject (Routledge 2012). I’ve received grants and fellowships from the Huntington Library Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship, the Regional Worlds Program of the Globalization Project (Ford Foundation) at the Chicago Humanities Institute, and the Lilly Foundation.

I also play at Youtube; Amazon; Author’s Guild; Twitter; Instagram; Facebook; Blog; LinkedIn; Goodreads; and Nandini’s Writing, Treehugging and Reading Outfit

I was sighted at these spots recently:

Featured Panelist on “Shapes of History” panel, 3rd Tasveer South Asian LitFest (TSAL), part of Tasveer Festival: Watch, Read, Talk; October 1st-24th, 2021; also available here with a ticket or pass; October 19th, 2021, 9 pm CST

Featured Reading of Love’s Garden, Bright Hill Press Reading, July 8, 2021

Invited Reading at Lit Balm: an Interactive Livestream Reading Series, February 27, 2021

Invited Workshop and Reading with a focus on Love’s Garden at Dev Samaj College for Women, Panjab University, India, February 2, 2021

Featured Reading from Love’s Garden in the Hidden Timber Book Reading Series, January 24, 2021

Reading from Love’s Garden at Readings on the Pike, December 10, 2020, 7-8 PM EST

Reading at the KGB Bar, New York City, Nov 15, 2020, 7-9 PM EST

Reading at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop, Nov 13, 6-7 PM CST

Book Launch at Brazos Bookstore, Houston, TX, Oct 27, 2020, 7–8 PM CST

Cambridge Writers Workshop and IEE Benefit Reading, July 24, 8-9 PM:

Podcasts: Desi Books Episode 21

Interviews: Nandini Bhattacharya speaks on “Tell Me Your Story” Digital Conversation, April 10, 2021, 8 am CDT, on MONEY/MOOLAH/THAT THING THAT THEY SAY MAKES THE WORLD GO AROUND, and Colonialism, Gender and Writing; Oyedrum; Lois Lane Investigates; Tupelo Quarterly; Critical Flame