For the 37^th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade I had a lot to reflect upon. I wrote a bit about my thoughts on “What Choice Means To Me” on the Rh Reality Check site. My thoughts on “choice” always centers on the death of Rosie Jimenez, so my piece speaks to what her death and legacy means to me.

If you have never heard of Rosie Jimenez, I’m not surprised. Although people say they will “never forget her,” for me, I exist because of her and remember her everyday. She was a young working-class Chicana mother of a 5 year-old daughter living in Texas and a few credits short of completing her credentials to become a teacher. When she realized she was pregnant and discovered the new Hyde Amendment  that had recently been approved would not allow her Medicaid to cover her abortion, she died of an illegal one she obtained. She was the first woman to die after this new amendment was passed.

I wrote this in my piece on Rosie Jimenez:

Rosie died on October 3, 1977.

As a daughter of immigrants from Puerto Rico, the country where forced sterilization and birth control testing  by the US has a deep history, choice means having control and power with my body, not just over my body. A body that is not valued as other bodies are in this country.

The mere ability to love this brown bushy-haired big body in a country that still has colonial rule over my homeland is an act of rebellion and love. Because of Roe v. Wade, and because of Rosie’s death, I am able to sit here and write this. I am able to accomplish what Rosie had planned for herself and have become a teacher. Because of Rosie, I can dream bigger, travel farther, educate others, and help people experiencing an abortion as their abortion doula.

Because of Rosie I’m a survivor. I exist.

I don’t know where Rosie’s daughter is today or if she knows her mother’s legacy. She is six years older than me; she is my peer. Today, this week, for as long as I am alive, I will remember her and her mother and all they have both sacrificed for me; for us. Yo recuerdo a Rosie Jimenez.

You see, I do think of Rosie everyday. I think of what her family has lost, what her daughter has lost. I also think of what I, and so many others like me, have gained. At the March For Women’s Lives in Washington, DC in 2004, I organized banner, sign, and t-shirt making at my apartment. My t-shirt read “recuerdo a Rosie Jimenez.” Check out the banner my homegirls Elizabeth and Ryan are helping me hold (you can’t really see my t-shirt but I still have it).



One thing I also think about on a regular basis is how there is a lack of media youth can access (specifically film, TV, and music) that takes a pro-choice stance on the subject. I often teach from a book called Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement by Jennifer Nelson. I use this because she includes women of Color in the efforts in the 60s and 70s within the US and Puerto Rico around reproductive health and feminisms, because we are often omitted from such histories. She also discusses Black, Puerto Rican, and Chicano nationalist movements and their perspectives on abortion and a shift in ideology.

It saddens me that among media makers who produce and create music, there still only exists one song, that I use to this day, that is pro-choice and does not make a person choosing an abortion feel judged, isolated, or vilified. That song is by Digable Planets  , what some may now call an “old school hip-hop crew,” and I would call simply “dope.” Their first album, Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space) , included the song Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat) which was one of their first singles. Many of us who love this album adore it for its lyricism as well as the incorporation of various other genres that expanded what hip-hop music was and is. La Femme Fétal was also on that album.

Listen to La Femme Fétal and tell me if you’ve heard of other songs similar in caliber and messaging to this one. Has it really been 17 years of only this song and nothing similar for youth to hear? The lyrics are below.