I think sometimes when we are, I feel like every couple of years, we have to remind our lawmakers what it means to bring if center the decency and the humanity of people. Um, so for me personally, I do not have an abortion story. But I am a caretaker for aging parents, I had to take on a young child and bring her on to my home, my little cousin, due to a whole slew of circumstances that are familiar. And what I really wanted to take my time in my testimony to be able to do is really hone in on the things that our lawmakers are not doing. When they say that we should have we shouldn't have choices about our body, and what we do with our body and also how we show up in our lives and the impact. And so as most of you know, women and femmess make up about 51% of the population here in Ohio. So not only are we the leaders of our families, not only are we making decisions for our families, but we're the backbones were the pillars, we're the decision makers, but we also are the economic drivers for the state of Ohio. The reason why so many lawmakers can go to our Statehouse all the time and make terrible decisions is because women in films like us get up and go to work every single solitary day, and we contribute more than half of the income tax that pays them to be able to make really terrible decisions about our lives and tell us how we are able to show up. And I find it funny that if we're able to keep their families fed clothed, won't have roofs over their head, and we're able to make economic decisions about our lives that really enhances their ability to have so much privilege to be able to make terrible decisions about our lives. It really speaks to the power that women and females have throughout the state of Ohio. It also speaks to our ability to make sound decisions and sound choices in our lives. And a lot of times, the narrow ways that the lawmakers show up and tell us how our life should look doesn't reflect our values doesn't reflect our morality. And it actually doesn't reflect the decisions that we're actually making in this time period. And I just overall find this fight to be insulting, as a black woman who's a caretaker who has parents that have children or children that I have not given birth to who has to make very strong economic decisions for myself in order to be able to take care of my family and show up and do the work every day with my comrades with my family, like Olivia, like Heidi, like Rhiannon, and I find it insulting that in 2020, when women have had to leave the workforce in droves, they've had to give up on their dreams they've had to recenter their families. We are facing economic crisis like we've never seen before a housing crisis of food and justice crisis that was aggravated by a pandemic, while black mamas, like Casey Goodson, his mom had to pull herself out of the horrible year that was 2020 and had to find the string to come together and hold a community together. I find it insulting that all these things that we're up against, these are the decisions that if I'm going to be frank white men are making for us, and people who are white aligned in their morals and values when we talk about cisgendered morals and values are telling us how we should be showing up for our lives. When we have some of the largest food deserts in the nation in Ohio, when our healthcare system is failing in Ohio, when black women like me often have to go back and forth about whether I want to exercise the right to give birth.
Because I don't know if I'll live through it. Because I have people currently in my life that I have to be economically spiritually emotionally, but most of them present Most importantly, alive to take care of. Like these are the decisions that are on the shoulders of women in films, black women and femmes Indigenous women who don't get much love in the state of Ohio are damn near invisible. So again, thank you, Heidi, for uplifting the land that we're currently on. I find it insulting that in in amongst the things that women have to face just by being women, when most single parent households are led by women and women are literally producing miracles, snatching things out of thin air and have been doing so for generations, then in a time, we really need our state that we generate, and we drive the money for and we do everything for. We're asking them to show up to make sure we're close to make sure we have homes to make sure we can pay our utilities. And you're telling us that the choice that we have the one intimate choice that we have about our bodies is the fight that you want to have in 2020. How dare you How dare you tell us that this is the way you choose to spend our taxpayer dollars after we make up over half of this state, and we make up over half the economic driven money that flows through and this is how you squander it. You don't give us homes You leave our children, specifically black and brown children to the poorest educational systems known across the United States, some of our healthcare, it rivals Haiti, when we talk about infant mortality and maternal mortality rates, it rivals Haiti, haiti's GDP we spend in a day. This is how you reward the people who show up for you day in and day out. And I just absolutely find it insulting. And I find that we can have better things to do. And I just want to thank Representative Crowley for bringing it to the forefront the health outcomes and the health implications that happened, because what has happened in the state of Ohio, is they've become so divested from the humanity from what actual human centered policy looks like. They just want to be right, or they just want to prove a point. And I want to acknowledge how much of that is rooted in white privilege, how much of that is rooted in cisgender privilege, how much of that is rooted in economic stability, how much of that is rooted in able body inability to to be able to make decisions because you know that you have health insurance, and that you don't have to use a doctor for anything, but you have people like me, who've struggled my whole entire life, as a person who has an autoimmune disease as a person who's afraid to give birth as a person who has to weigh the options of what future I want, because I have to think about the implications for the people who are already here. And this is a person, a black woman who's had a job since he was 16, matriculated through a university a pw AI where black people were 3% of the population. And, you know, was called the inward on my first day at my university. And these are the ways that I show up and I take care of my community, I take care of the state of Ohio. Some of the women that are on this call with me are some of the hardest working people I knew. And we've been in so much community together talking about how to make Ohio a better place. And it it I can't say it breaks my heart because I fully expect this. But in some way seeing and hearing and being a community with women and themes and knowing the uphill battle that we collectively face, while people can just squander away opportunity to make our lives better. And watch Ohio fail as we fail women and films throughout the state really touches me in a way that I don't even think they're words in the English language for other than anger. And I just wanted to take that time to just really remind lawmakers How dare you? How dare you bite the hand that feeds you?make no mistakes and women and femmes are the hand that feeds you. We are the reason why you can supply things to your family. We're the reason why you can have such blind privilege and why I should say You're welcome. I'm really gonna say we come in for you. And that's really all I want to say.
