Until our house burned down, I kept the copy of Ms magazine announcing the win for Roe v. Wade. It was filled with pictures and stories of all that women had endured before this day.

My mother had her own story, and I had mine. At the time, my mother was in the hospital fighting the cancer that finally took her life. I bought her a copy too, and we sat in her hospital room and celebrated, as well as she could, the end of women dying unnecessarily from botched abortions, the end of anxiety and fear every month when unprotected sex was engaged in, this for married and unmarried women. We celebrated, me because my daughter would never be faced with such a stark choice, and because women would have the autonomy that they need to make the choices that determine their own destiny.

Today I mourn, today I cry for the women who, in the future, may end up like this, our mothers, our sisters, our aunts, our friends forced to back-alley abortionists, because the only thing that overturning Roe v. Wade will end is safe legal abortions. Women will still seek and get abortions: The rich will fly to where they are legal, and the poor will seek an illegal back-alley practitioner, and many will die, or suffer sterility.

Is this truly what those on the right want for their own wives, daughters, friends and neighbors? They must be monsters, because the only thing overturning Roe v. Wade will do is end safe legal access to abortion. Women have always sought and obtained abortions, even when they knew they risked their lives, I know.

Diana Lovejoy

Buckfield