News from the Muse: The Muse of Free Women

Abstract

On June 24th, 2022, the Supreme Court hit the women of America with a gut-punch in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe vs. Wade. This paper is a response to that ruling, which essentially decrees that women have no constitutional right to make personal decisions about their own bodies. The angry ghosts of women who died in back alley abortions howled in America’s soul. The Muse of Free Women went on retreat. Those who have taken their right to decide whether or not to bear a child for granted saw their world turned upside down. Those who remember the bad old days when abortion was illegal all over America watched the country pivot backwards. The Supreme Court has appropriated our wombs as vessels of the state. But when it comes to the work of tending the fruit of our wombs, those in the so-called “pro-life movement” are nowhere to be found. An underlying misogynist mother hate—an inability to empathize with the reality of women’s lives and bodies—reared its ugly head. Hadn’t we rid ourselves of that painful shadow with the Women’s Liberation of the 1960s and 1970s? Apparently not. The antidote comes in the form of Motherline stories, which flesh out the joys and agonies of being the bearers of new life. Myths about the Great Mother Goddess from many cultures in the world help women see themselves with more complexity and nuance and offer images of power and intelligence beyond the patriarchal paradigm.