Aggrieved. Angry. Afraid.
Words fall short of describing the sinking, sick feeling we all share today.
Your inbox is likely full with emails from representatives, candidates and party officials telling you how shaken they are about the Supreme Court's decision to strip women of their autonomy, effectively erasing 50 years of progress in the fight for human and civil rights.
Growing up in south Mississippi, there were no abortion clinics in my state when I was in high school. The closest one was in Mobile, Alabama, about an hour away.
I've spent a lot of time today thinking about the four girls I drove there in high school who couldn't get there any other way. I didn't even tell my own parents what I was doing - I pretended to be with my boyfriend.
I'm thinking about the girls who tried to give themselves miscarriages using dangerous and extreme tactics, like falling backwards down the stairs and one who even said she tried rat poisoning. For anyone reading this email - those methods are more likely to kill or injure you than to cause a miscarriage.
Within hours of the announcement, Florida Rep. Anthony Sabatini called for a special session to ban abortion outright in the state of Florida.
We can't lose this race. We can't lose any of these races.
If your heart is aching for what has happened and what will happen if we don't act, help us defeat the bad guys so us good guys get a chance to make things right. Otherwise, it's useless pain. It's hopeless fear. It's yet another step toward a society none of us would want to live in.
And I know you're emotionally and maybe even financially exhausted from the decades of fighting we've had to do on this front.
I've received at least four texts asking me to "defend Roe," coming from the party, from various organizations, from unknown entities, and each time I thought to myself... why?
I've been donating money to causes and candidates to protect Roe for more than a decade. And yet, every time we had control of all three branches, we failed to codify these rights.
I imagine that's how a lot of you feel.
But I'm not like any other candidate for Congress in our state. I grew up in the real world, and worked in a field where failure to act could immediately cost lives. I've made my name for creating solutions to problems when no one else could or would do the work. And I'm going to Congress to get the damn job done.
A fundraising pitch right now feels exploitative to me, but the cold, hard truth is that we can't win elections against anti-freedom Republicans without the financial resources to mobilize supporters.
I did the math.
If every registered Democrat in my district donated $11.47 today, we'd have more cash on hand than my opponent Matt Gaetz, who, like DeSantis, was deeply involved in planning the January 6 insurrection and would gleefully take as many rights and freedoms from us as he could.
If every Democrat and NPA, as well as the Republicans... truly ANYONE who is sick and tired of the constant assault on our basic freedoms by traitors like Matt Gaetz... if we all chipped in today, we'd have more resources to register voters, get people to the polls, and keep our communities informed of what this dark moment in American history truly means.
That's all it takes to kick out Gaetz and elect an honest, hardworking scientist and mother to fight for the American people.
Not everyone who lives in my district can afford even as little $11.47, though - so those of you who don't live in Northwest Florida but want to keep or even expand the pro-reproductive freedom majority to fix this, give as much as you can.
Are we all just talk? Or will you help us make this right?
