By bans off our bodies
this is none of your concern
you’re a fascist, you’re regressive
and all the other terms
you abolitionists
riding your high horses
always trying to provide
the voiceless with a voice but
you don’t really care
you won’t support their maturation
you’re just pro birth
you’re just pro emancipation
our fathers taught us this
for our jobs this is needed
we inherited this culture
you can’t rob us of convenience
we will not abdicate
do not conspire to prohibit
we’ll just travel to a state
where our desires are permitted
we’ve made an industry of this
we won’t go down without a fight
we’ll dig in, we will shout
we are proud, we are right
you cry and reprimand
you try to ban what we’re doing
but you don’t understand
they’re not fully human
we’re doing them a favor
this world’s too much for them
they’d live a hard life
so that life we must end
these are just clumps of cells
nobody’s sons or daughters
we’ve got sponsors on our side
our bosses pay for the slaughter
and what about my partner
you’re always scolding me
what of the one who sold the slave
and the one sowed his seed
illegitimate we’ll scream
we’ll trumpet our benevolence
as we plot to assassinate
justices and presidents
we’ll claim that we’re the slaves
though we had other choices
I guess the difference is
who administers the poison
we’ll take the bible out of context
pervert its words to support us
we justified the whips
and we’ll justify the forceps
they reeled from the lashings
and recoil from the needles
there’s blood on the soil
there’s blood on the table
but it’s a necessary evil
somebody’s gotta pay the price while
you want to save a life
we want to save a lifestyle
this mansion this career
all this pomp and ceremony
without sacrificing them
we could not have won these trophies
we turned babies into burdens
perhaps no one noticed but
we converted the very nature
from congrats to condolences
through lies and clever branding
like “reproductive rights”
or like we’re just granting
their cotton picking rights
love is love
but life isn’t always life
if we decide we don’t want it
it’s just a parasite
tearing limb from limb
is just “ending a pregnancy”
we are not accountable
we are just defending a legacy
we’re the victims here
this is forced birth
you can’t force us to free them
that’s forced freedom… it occurs
that this rings a bit familiar
like some kind of déjà vu
is it eighteen sixty one
or two thousand twenty two?
I can’t help but feel
just a twinge of dissonance
like history is haunting
I guess the other difference
in being torn from a placenta or
being forced onto a plantation
is that in abortion’s aftermath
there’s no hope for liberation
What do you think?