Like so many Americans at the moment (at least those who appreciate a beautifully designed film musical), we remain obsessed with “Wicked”.
As elderly millennials whose daytime jobs require stimulating patriarchal standards around disturbing health, we were delighted to see a Hollywood cropping on female heroism and internalized misogyny on which we grew up, in particular by the voice of ‘Another world of Cynthia Erivo.
In many ways, the world of Oz and Shiz University reflects the world of Missouri’s abortion policy, a microcosm of what is nationally.
Or, this is how it resounded to us after an electoral cycle of almost two years in which we were avoided, whispered and ashamed to have tried to challenge the gravity of the resexation roe against Wade in the constitutions of the State, including the recently adopted amendment 3, when we all knew that the results would be unfair.
Let’s explain.
From our tired point of view, Glinda reminds us of traditional reproductive rights organizations that work as a kind of pink wing of the Democratic Party. In our analogy, they are non -profit organizations with heels with a lot of money and huge platforms. Planned Parenthood, Aclu and others obtain a weight by calling on an electorate frightened to desperately research civil rights, equality and economic sustainability in our world.
Glinda puts on a good face and a brilliant facade. Above all, it strives to remain popular by giving off an attractive performance of solidarity.
Thus, we give our dollars hard won and join what we think is the right fight against evil. But when we stepped back the curtain, we see that in reality, these good witches allow something very very bad.
Acceptance of Glinda’s clique requires buying basic illusions: this compromise is common sense, even when those in power want us dead. And that we can protect our security by devoting the anti-abortion status quo.
The Missouri judge strikes the ban on abortion, but clinics say that access remains blocked
This illusion reached a fever field during the Missouri electoral season in 2024 when the advocacy organizations, the donors and the Democratic party raised more than 30 million dollars to pass amendment 3, one new replacement for Roe.
For the uninitiated, Roe was a legal framework for faulty abortion and exceeded from the 1970s which protected a legal right limited to abortion while protecting state law to control pregnancy.
Roe means allowing abortion later to be criminalized. This means state interference. This means surveillance, police and punishment For pregnant people and their doctors.
In Missouri, we have seen anti-abortion legislators using all the tools available to them for police officers and punishing pregnancy so that we can be sure that they will continue to exploit the gaping gaps that amendment 3 allows them.
But Roe has also become a slogan that pro-Choix politicians and defenders adopted for popularity, money, vanity and a semblance of power.
For 50 years, the seriousness of ROE – and its legal authorization for the interference of the government – retained us from the real release of reproduction.
Like Elphaba and Glinda, our central tension is on the amount of political capital to risk – perhaps even temporarily lose – In order to gain a long -term change. The words of “defying Gravity” haunted us in the final scene when Elphaba declares that she is “by accepting the limits because someone says they are so”.
“Wicked” exposes a hard truth that we must learn to unpack: that sometimes it is our friends, not the enemy, who prevent us from doing what is good.
Over the past three decades, defenders of reproductive justice have pleaded with their Glinda-Esque counterparts to abandon the limits of the ROE framework. In Missouri, a small vocal group dared challenge Our friends and annular alarms are releasing amendment 3 because we knew that consolidation eggs would not guarantee access to abortion, economic security, security of violence or absence government interference.
An abortion remains inaccessible to the Missouri despite amendment 3. The Missouri remains one of the 41 states which prohibit abortion at some point in pregnancy and more women than ever are punished because of their pregnancy.
Amendment 3 The leaders offered pro-Choix Missourians an unrealistic promise: that we can protect abortion, it doesn’t matter who is in charge. Consequently, for the first time in five electoral cycles, the Missouri Democrats failed to obtain a single seat in the Legislative Assembly, more weakening any modification of the legal force 3 possessed for access to abortion .
Things are disastrous in the state of the show. But, like Glinda, we continue to see amendment 3 The leaders insist that the future is brilliant, desperately grasping credibility because their popularity depends on it. While Elphaba sings, we I hope you are happy.
The calculation that we must have for a better future requires looking in our own ecosystems and questioning conventional wisdom and limited thought that weighs down. The threats we face are real. And we have no chance of fighting them if we are divided.
But reproductive justice requires that we include everyone. So what now? If those who consider themselves leaders want unity, they will have to stop putting government power and controlling pregnancy.
“Wicked” shows us both the power and the limits of a political program anchored in familiarity. The real change requires strong values and a clear vision of the leaders who know certain things must be unlimited: our bodily autonomy, our power to consent, health and security, our empathy.
Growth movement Abortion defenders attach their capes to challenge decades of the conventional wisdom of the pink wing. Because they know what we know: that Together, there is no fight that we cannot win.