If you don't believe a woman's body is just that - her body - you do not want to read this story. You've been warned.
Any hateful comments and/or anti-choice propaganda will be deleted.
The day the travel ban went into effect, Joe wasn't angry so much as he was sad.
He'd been angry for weeks, as had they all; but slowly that anger had given way to determination to fight back. Even a bit of pride had worked its way in. No amount of self-admonishment -
You're not Luke Skywalker or Victor Lazlo, this isn't a computer game, women are going to die before it's all over
- could rid him of that sense of being one of the good guys, even though he really wished it would. He had, of course, been damn careful to keep all that to himself, and at least he had succeeded at that.
All those thoughts - and others like them - roared through his mind once again as he and his passenger approached the state line. Angela stiffened in the passenger seat of the van as the flashing red and blue lights came into view on the horizon. "You're kidding me, they're actually stopping people?" she said, real fear seeping into her voice for the first time since Joe had picked her up at her mother's house.
"It's the very first day," Joe said. "They're probably making a big show of it for the occasion. I wish we'd thought of that." He and Margie and Lisa had thought of plenty of contingencies - but not that particular one.
"Same here," Angela said.
"Well, there's one thing we did think of," Joe said. "There's a trunk in the back, under the bench seat. If you get in now, they'll never know."
"That's not safe!" Angela snapped.
"I'll drive slow," Joe replied. "No choice for the moment, huh?" He gazed longingly at the state line and the safety it offered, just past the roadblock. From there it was only ten miles into Halmerstown - if they made it across.
He'd been impressed with his first-ever passenger's stoic demeanor throughout the hour-long drive from her mother's affluent suburb. All at once that evaporated as Angela burst into tears, though Joe couldn't blame her at all. "Who do they think they are, forcing us into this shit?!" But she did undo her seatbelt and clamber into the back, and she seemed to have her rage under control as Joe heard the lid of the trunk drop.
As he endured the ten minutes of stop-and-start traffic approaching the roadblock, Joe was not so sure he could keep his own disgust similarly under control. From the day he'd joined the underground group posing as a day tour operator, he'd felt equal parts proud to be part of the solution and fearful of what might happen if he were caught. But he hadn't counted on getting to know his passengers, even if it was only for an hour or so.
That hour had been time enough to learn Angela was a college freshman whose devout Catholic parents had done their level best to make sure she never learned about birth control. It had been time enough to learn she wanted to be a doctor - something she had no shot at if she had a toddler to take care of, not to mention that her parents would likely have disowned her so she couldn't have even finished college. It had been time enough to learn the father was a frat boy who'd already moved on to other conquests and hadn't been replying to her emails.
It had not been enough to accept that, courtesy of a broken condom, she now had to hide like a criminal just to get across the state line. Joe felt like crying for her.
But if she could take it, however begrudgingly, he figured he'd damn well better do the same.
"Morning, young man," said the white-haired cop in sunglasses as Joe opened the driver's side window scarcely twenty feet short of the Welcome sign, beyond which the road was in visibly superior shape. "Heading to the People's Republic, are we?"
"Just to pick some tourists up in Halmerstown," Joe said. "For a day trip."
"Gonna show 'em how we live in the real America, are you?" the cop said with an entitled grin. "Good for you. Any passengers in there?"
"I sure hope not!" Joe feigned amusement and looked over his shoulder as if expecting a knife-wielding hitchhiker.
The cop helped himself to a look as well. Joe's heart raced as his unwelcome guest took a lingering look at the trunk, which was marked LIFE JACKETS. "Taking the city slickers to the lakes, are you?" he asked, turning back to Joe.
"Yeah," Joe said. "Gotta make them wear life jackets. Insurance, you know?"
"Stupid government regulations," the cop said. "I'm sorry you have to deal with that." He stepped back from the van and waved Joe through. "Have a nice day."
Joe was sure the relief was visible on his face, and didn't exhale fully until he'd rolled over the state line.
"I should've known how disgusted I was going to feel with the whole thing," he told Margie hours later, back in the Country Town Day Tours office, while Lisa tapped away on her computer behind them. "I guess all these weeks of reminding myself how I really don't know what it's like never really sank in as much as it should have."
Margie detected an exasperated look from Lisa, but opted to ignore it. "I don't see how any of us could have really known what it'd feel like until we were out there on the front lines," she said to Joe instead. "But you did get Ang-"
"Shhhh!" Joe held a finger to his lips. They and the other volunteers had all agreed to a policy of never sharing their passengers' names, so all but the driver could honestly tell the police they didn't know if it came to that.
"Sorry!" Margie touched Joe's arm affectionately. "Thank you. But you did get her to the clinic all right, didn't you?"
"Yes. As soon as we were over the first hill past the state line, I pulled over and helped her out of the trunk, and she was a little dusty but fine. She said to say thank you to us all, too." On that note he turned and looked at Lisa for the first time, but said nothing directly to her."
"Well, yay us - first mission accomplished!" Margie said. "I got two more calls while you were gone." Turning to Lisa, she asked, "Any while I was at lunch, Lisa?"
"One," Lisa told her. "She said she was two weeks late, and I gave her Doctor Price's number. You do have her number, don't you?"
"Joe and I both have it saved, yes," Margie said.
"I don't want him answering the phone," Lisa ordered, and with that she spun on her heel and walked off to the break room.
"That's strange," Margie said as soon as they were alone. "Aren't you and Lisa old friends? Doesn't she know how long you've been involved?"
"Of course," Joe said, betraying no hurt feelings. "Don't worry, I know what's going on with her."
"What is?" Margie asked. "I've never heard her talk about you like that. Or anyone here."
"Are you Facebook friends with Lisa?" Joe asked.
"Yes, but I didn't look at it this morning," Margie replied, now drawing her phone out of her purse. "My sister is majorly anti-choice and I just couldn't cope with what she's probably got to say today." Margie tapped Lisa's name out on Facebook and read her latest update. It was a repost of an earlier comment, which Margie noticed was from the day after the travel ban was passed, some weeks before.
She read it out loud. "