These are the Supreme Court Justices of the United States of America who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022.
John Roberts
Samuel Alito
Clarence Thomas
Neil Gorsuch
Amy Coney Barrett
Brett Kavanaugh
Five Justices had stated publicly in the past—sometimes the very recent past—that they regarded Roe v. Wade as settled law. (The sixth never acknowledged this.)
The Dobbs decision directly impacts the right of any U.S.-resident person who can become pregnant to make decisions about their own body. It claims unjust authority over that body’s movement through our tired, contracting, beauty-veined world. And it compromises an individual’s ability to locate their own flourishing and happiness, which may stand single, among family, friends and partners, or eventually include the chosen addition of a child or children.
If you’re reading Our Beautiful Reward, you probably already agree with all of the above. You may also agree that the struggle for reproductive rights is linked to other contemporary struggles for bodily autonomy, including trans rights; disability rights; the right to be free of violence both institutional and private; the right to not have the environment damaged so deeply that you, an embodied person, can no longer take care of yourself and others within it. Many affiliated efforts in the direction of justice follow from these beliefs.
In some of the writing that follows you will find powerful evidence of shock, anger and grief at acts of reckless authoritarian intrusion including, but not limited to, the overturn of Roe v. Wade. Not every piece in this collection aims to be ‘constructive.’ We have held room for fury and disorientation. In other works, you will find speculative approaches to living fully, defiantly, within threatened contexts. A good number of these poems and stories acknowledge that for now, freedom—that difficult-to-quantify, wrestled-over term—is felt and found from moment to moment, day to day, rather than existing as a great and secure continuity of unquestioned fact.
What we hope we have done in bringing these authors and works together in this special issue of Reckoning is to confirm that many of us, across the world, are working wherever possible to extend those moments, those days. Join us. Read on.
