After Roe v. Wade...

 The United States Supreme Court may shortly overturn Roe v. Wade, the historic decision which secured a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy.  Half a century of basic freedom may soon come to an end.

Chief Justice Alito's philosophy is that this decision is not an inalienable right of the individual, but the province of state politicians.  One has to wonder, if a right of bodily autonomy is not considered a constitutional right, what is?  What next may be left to the mercy of local state politics and self-serving politicians catering to populist sentiment?  Marriage equality?  Basic human rights for LGBTQ people?  How about even racial and religious equality?

In the near future, if the right to abort a pregnancy is left to the states...if some states allow abortion and others don't...what then?  Legislation has been proposed already that would literally equate abortion with homicide.  If that becomes the law in some states, will those states actually stop pregnant women from crossing their borders to obtain an abortion elsewhere?  Could abortion actually be punishable by death?

If  state's rights are to be considered virtually absolute in the case of abortion, how far could this go?

This short story proposes an extreme possibility which hopefully will remain the stuff of science fiction.

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CRUCIBLE

Tara roared as she fired, men falling from the machine gun turrets atop the wall guarding the Texas border.  The hatred raging through her blood was intoxicating, pounding through her brain like bomb bursts as she swung the machine gun, the copter turning.

Focus, she commanded herself, concentrating through the red haze.  Switching to interceptor RPG’s, she linked the A.I. through her scanner goggles, targeting the enemy choppers moving to intercept the Federacy tanks.  She tasted the salt of her sweat on her upper lip as she took out one copter after another.  She found herself reveling in the deaths of the Christian Nationalist pilots, and winced in disgust.  She hated what she was becoming, but she couldn’t stop.  Their hate was a scorching fever, and it had infected her.  She could quell the fire in her brain only by killing them.

She cheered as the tanks breached the wall, a tide of refugees making it across the border into New Mexico.  EMERGENCY, the auto pilot intoned as the chopper’s gas tanks burst into flame, punctured by ground fire.  SEVERE DAMAGE.  EVACUATE.  Tara cursed as the A.I. automatically swung the chopper downward.  She didn’t wait for an easy jump distance; She knew the sooner she was off, the sooner the A.I. would switch to secondary combat protocol and aim itself at the nearest enemy command post.

She jumped, groaning with the impact as she tucked and rolled across the dusty ground.  She came up firing with two handguns.  This is more like it, a part of her mind exclaimed with a perverse pleasure as she killed the C.N. scum firing at the refugees.  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her chopper crash into a hovering enemy command heliplatform, the two dissolving into a searing fireball.  She laughed in madness, the killing fever taking her.  She fired and fired, dead enemy soldiers falling until her ammo was spent.

She drew the serrated blade from her boot as it came down to hand-to-hand. The hulking swine with the eagle tattoo on his thick neck came at her, a sneer crossing his ugly face.  He licked his lips as he drew his blade.  If this was it, this was damn well how she wanted to go out.  Face-to-face with the pigs who’d killed her sister and tortured Tara in the camps.

The swine snarled as he lunged.  She winced as she spun, his blade grazing her shoulder.  She thrust, skewering his kidney.  He groaned, swinging backward.  She ducked and stabbed him again, cutting through the flab and muscle of his ample mid-section.  He roared in pain, his black-gloved hand clenching his knife as he swung.  She saw stars as the hilt of his knife connected with her head.  Flat on her back, she shook her head, his wild-eyed, savage face glaring down at her as he raised his knife over his head with both hands.  She kicked him in the groin and rolled.  He doubled over, then came after her again, his teeth bared, sweat streaming down his bald head.  She threw dirt in his face and reached for her knife where it lay on the ground.  She knew she wouldn’t reach it in time.  She thought of her sister as the bastard closed in.

Gushing red holes formed a line across the man’s chest as the sound of an assault rifle cut through the hot midday air.  As the enemy soldier fell dead, Tara looked up at the woman on the passing tank, holding the smoking rifle.  A smile spread across Tara’s face as she recognized the girl’s face.  “Steph!” she shouted, getting to her feet as Stephanie tossed her the rifle.  Swinging onto the tank, Tara laid down cover fire, taking out more C.N. troopers as they advanced.

As the tank cleared the wall into Federacy territory, Tara’s heart leapt as she saw more Federacy tanks moving up fast, a solid line approaching, Federacy flags flapping in the hot wind.  She held on tight as the tank swiveled around, joining the advancing line as the Federacy tanks opened fire.  The air vibrated, thunder blasting through her chest as sections of the wall collapsed.  Federacy sonic jets roared in, long-range air-to-airs taking out enemy choppers moving in.  Tara cheered and held her rifle high and proud as the Christian Nationalist troops retreated.

She turned to Stephanie who sat there on the turret, smiling at her.  “Thanks,” Tara said, brushing a wisp of hair out of the other young woman’s eyes and vividly remembering the day they’d met.  The day Stephanie’s unit had liberated Tara from the C.N. conversion camp in Utah, years ago.

“Missed you, babe,” Stephanie said.

As they kissed, Tara found herself trying to remember how many times she’d broken up with this girl.  As usual, she couldn’t.

                                                                                ***

Tara exhaled a stream of cannabis cigarette smoke into the cool night air, firelight washing over the sign on the Christian Nationalist side of the half-shattered wall.  A huge, enlarged photo of a first trimester fetus, with the caption in bold letters:  LEAVE HERE TO KILL YOUR CHILD, AND DIE WITH HIM.  She lit the corner of the poster with her lighter and watched it burn.  She walked past the bonfires where the Christian Nationalist flags were being burned, the white cross against the stars and bars shriveling in the flames, the firelight illuminating the Federacy Flags being hung.  The red and white stripes and rainbow crescent and green-and-blue earth…and that blue field with precious few stars left.  How long would the Federacy be able to hold this territory, she wondered.  How many times had it changed hands already, and at the cost of how many lives?

“More damn’ Russian guns,” a Federacy grunt muttered as he helped load captured enemy ordnance into trucks for shipment.

“That’s ‘cause we bombed the hell out of the C.N. arms factories in Dallas, bro,” another Federacy soldier said with a smile.

“Yeah, I know.  I just wish our dear Chinese allies were as generous as Ivan.”

Amen to that, Tara thought as she walked on.

They were still clearing away the dead bodies.  She turned away, wincing in revulsion as the firelight fell on the dead, ash-pale face of one of the refugees who didn’t make it across…a girl, late teens maybe…one of thousands of pregnant girls trying to get to freedom.  Tara clenched her fist as she remembered her sister Karen had saved countless others like that one when she ran the underground railroad into the free states.  The C.N. bastards had publicly executed her for it in front of cheering crowds in Selma.  Remember all the ones we did save, Tara reminded herself as she unclenched her fist and walked on.  At least the poor girl died quick, she thought.  Unlike the ones they caught alive.  Those, they grew to term in the camps, then butchered like animals, cutting them open without anesthesia to extract the babies.  Her stomach turned as she remembered what she’d seen when her unit had liberated the camp in Ohio.  The gutted bodies stacked carelessly in the crematoria…

She doubled over and vomited.  She leaned back against the wall and cried, slumping to a seated position.  She hated herself for that.  When she’d screamed in anguish, convulsing from the electric shocks in the conversion camp, she’d promised herself those pigs would never see her cry.  Damn, they were winning.  They were killing her by inches, and she couldn’t stop them.  No matter how many of them she killed, it would never be enough.  She heard gunfire in the night, and recognized it for what it was.  Firing squads, executing the damned C.N. butchers who’d killed so many like that girl, and anyone who’d tried to help them.  She’d volunteered for such firing squads in Louisiana.  In Mississippi.  In Tennessee.  She’d lost count of how many notches she’d carved into her rifle stock.  It would never be enough.  More of them just kept coming, and coming.  She slumped her head back, the tears streaming down her cheeks.

She felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up.

“Hey, babe,” Stephanie whispered, sitting down beside her and putting her arm around her shoulders.  “Finally got a little R&R.  C’mere.”  She kissed Tara on the head, wiping away her tears.

Tara rested her head on Steph’s shoulder.

“Share?  I could use a hit.”

Tara handed her the smoking joint.

Stephanie took a long drag and exhaled.  “Mmmm, that’s good.  Bless our Mexican allies.”

“Tell anybody about this, and you’re dead,” Tara warned, taking back the joint and taking a drag.

“Same old Tara,” Steph said, putting both arms around her.  “Won’t allow yourself the luxury of being human.  Look…it’s not going to last forever, y’know.”

“Feels like it already has.”

“Buck up, soldier.  Have you heard?  Word just came down from the G.I.E. in Montreal…The Federacy has officially merged with the new Canadian Republic.  We’re the North American Coalition now.  The new Human Rights Charter is being drafted as we speak.”

“Hooray.”  She took another drag, frustrated that she just couldn’t get stoned enough to kill the pain.

Steph took the joint from her and took a puff.  “Look…with more refugees streaming into the free states and Canada every day, the brain-drain and worker shortage is starving the C.N. bastards out.  Our weapons keep getting better, and those dead heads are slipping back into the stone age.  Plus, the storms are killing them, and winning more recruits for the eco-guerrilla cadres.  We’re gonna’ win this, babe.  The damn’ Russians can’t keep propping them up forever, and fight the Polish Resistance at the same time.”

“Great.  So, in two years, we’ll be fighting to liberate this country from the Chinese.”

“Those tired old men in Beijing can’t hold on forever, either.  Not with their eco-revolution in full swing.  Who knows?  In five years, when this continent pulls together, we may hook up with the new European Union, arm the Chinese rebs, bomb the coal plants and save this sorry excuse for a world.”

Tara stretched out, her head in Steph’s lap.  “How do you do it?” she whispered, looking up at her.  “How do you stay alive inside, even through all this?”

Steph put out the joint and lay down beside her.  “My mom was also my social studies teacher.  She used to say, ‘Life at its worst is a crucible.  Everything it burns away isn’t worth saving.  What survives is what the future is built on.’”  She came down on her as they kissed.

Tara felt her unfastening her clothes.  The pain and the hate faded as Stephanie gently stroked her face.  Stephanie was like a cool, soothing balm, her love washing the hatred from Tara’s blood.  Tara moaned in pleasure…the love flowed through her, quelling the fever, the rage…the despair faded like smoldering embers in a cool rain.

Love survived the crucible, she thought.  That, they could never kill.