The Battle is Not Lost — Continue the Fight

By Priscilla Cerrillo / Winter 2022

Dear Priscilla,

I wanted to tell you how proud of I am of you for making it here, to this moment. I remember there was a time where you didn’t plan for a life past 25, a life that you thought was unattainable. Going back to that time when you were young, you use to look at the world as a place to continue change and explore the unknown, and then life happened, and you began to fear the world and the future you once dreamed of as it all seemed to be falling apart as you were getting there. You felt like you had to keep going, there was a role to fill and a script to follow. I’m proud of you for that though, it brought you here, and now you know it wasn’t your fault that you had to go through it alone, and more importantly you know now more than ever that you did the right thing.  

At first, it didn’t always eat you up, you were an advocate for abortion, and an advocate for lifting the voices of those who had been hurt by this world. You wanted to tell your story, you thought this must’ve happened to more people, you thought this needs to be talked about. But somewhere along the way, the world kept pushing back, and you started to keep quiet, and the next thing you knew it, women’s rights started to get taken away one by one behind closed curtains again, and you felt like the battle you one is now even harder for those after you. You wanted to tell your story, you wanted to relate, but you knew it wasn’t a happy one, and so you learned to put that away. You didn’t want to live in that place, but your body couldn’t deny it. When you finally spoke up, you never realized that so much healing came from acknowledging your whole truth. Now 14 years later, you can finally put all together and let it go.

You didn’t know this before, but girls with ADHD are more likely to suffer from assault, the other problem was you didn’t even know what assault could look like, combined with being taught that you create your own messes, it became a recipe for a traumatic disaster. You became a product of an environment whose system that was designed by the voices of a few elites, leaving all of us without a helping hand to fall through the cracks. You knew having a baby in a system like that as a girl who needed help herself was not an option you wanted, and you knew you were lucky enough to have a safe abortion. You were allowed to keep it away from your parents, but you thought, “I still needed someone? Someone to guide me and help me through this” and I’m sorry you had to go through it alone, but that is where I hope to make change for people in the future.

You got sucked into this world and thought you were defeated, but 17-year-old you would still be so proud of you for making it here and getting to see again the power you hold and the beauty in the world. I’m proud of who were then too because you did what you wanted and believed so strongly in people voices being heard. Even though you couldn’t even vote at the time, it ran through your heard over and over again that if it weren’t for Proposition 4 being rejected on the 2008 ballot, you would have had a whole different life forced upon you. You knew from a single vote that your rights can be taken away from you. Women have always had abortions, but it was a matter of was a safe one or not. Only 36 years had passed since Roe v Wade made it possible for you to have the right to a safe abortion in 2009, and you got to witness just how fragile that right really is. You kept thinking, if I had lived in another state, I may have been forced to tell my parents, or even be forced to go full term. 

Now 14 years later, you witnessed a series of abortion rights be taken away in other states, you started to think how someone was going to be forced to be told what to do with their body, and yet you had the right, a right someone can give and take at any moment. You started to feel defeated in the possibility of it directly affecting you, and what you would have done, and I’m telling you now to remind you to always remember how strong you were then, and how that strength is still within you to continue the fight. These girls must fight for themselves and claim their own body’s back in the courts as you saw with a Florida judge who tried to deny a teen abortion due to her high school transcripts. This is a battle no woman should fight alone.

Now that you are in your 30’s, you have come to know to so many women who share similar stories as yours, and all in need to be heard.  It is the truth that needs to be unmasked to reveal the world we live in, so we can collectively move towards a world we want to be in. I want to remind you of all the women who came before you who fought for your right for a safe abortion, who fought for your right to vote, and who fought for your right to go to school. I want to remind to do the same for the women after you, you must continue the fight, not only in maintain the rights we have acquired, but to continue to fight against the inequalities that remain in our system. So, continue to tell your stories and encourage others, the good and the bad because they make you who you are, and help the world see each other. I promise you that I will work towards bringing awareness to that fact that women’s stories are forgotten, and the fact that it is not directly the fault of one person, but instead was shaped by centuries of suppressed stories in order for the stories of a few elites to become the standard norm to strive for. Keep growing, keep exploring, and bring light to the places that need it the most.

With love,

Priscilla