Facts and Opinions

Roe v. Wade

So…the Supreme Court decided to repeal the landmark case Roe v. Wade…not shocking in my opinion. Those who have uteruses are basically under attack; the right to a healthy abortion has been desecrated. Since Roe v. Wade is considered an umbrella law (not sure if that is the right term), so abortion is not the only thing that is affected here. If you wanted access to birth control or any other contraceptive, you can kiss that goodbye because that’s no longer an option. Perhaps you suffered a miscarriage and require extensive aftercare. Well, if they don’t arrest you first, you are probably going to be denied help. Maybe you want to get pregnant, as being a parent has been a dream of yours since you were a child, however, you have fibroids or ovarian cysts, which results in every pregnancy test revealing only one line instead of two. Well, maybe research some old school remedies, because IVF is not going to be on the table for you. Anything that was protected under this law can be eradicated. You’re pregnant, and you think everything is going well until your fourth doctors appointment. There are so many developmental problems present and you don’t know what to do. Well, hope for the best, because you’re delivering…even if it kills you. What’s next? Obergefell v. Hodges? Loving v. Virginia? Don’t think they aren’t considering it. There are already politicians in certain states wishing to bring back segregation. I might not be the most well versed in politics, but I’ll give Trump this…he said he was going to take America back to his so-called definition of “great” and that’s exactly what he is doing even from outside the Oval Office. I wish I could say that this was a shocking turn of events for America; how dare they infringe upon basic human rights…this surely has never happened before here, right? Unfortunately, when the draft of the potential overturning of Roe v. Wade was released, I knew that it was only a matter of time until it manifested itself into reality.

This is bad…REALLY bad, and the Supreme Court knows it, and to be quite honest, pro-lifers do too. You may see Twitter rants about how this is a good thing for the American people and YouTube videos of people with signs of bloody fetuses crying and leaping for joy over the news, but they know that things are going to get pretty dreary pretty quickly. People are going to find ways to get rid of their unwanted fetuses; whether that be botched, back alley abortions, mixing up a medical cocktail and guzzling it down like Sprite, or committing suicide, it’s going to happen. There will be babies left on doorsteps, found in dumpsters, thrown into rivers…abandoned and neglected. More children will be put into abusive and traumatizing home situations. Foster care, they retort, put them into foster care, but have you seen America’s foster care system? Have you heard the stories that have come from those who were victims of said system? That isn’t a solution! These are all things that we have been told before! You know this has nothing to do about preserving life, right? If that was the case, I would be able to purchase a reasonably priced apartment in a safe neighborhood without having to prove I make three to four times the rent. If pro-life was really a thing, people would have access to free healthcare. If pro-life was really a thing, those who have given birth would be given paid maternity leave…at minimum. Those who are against abortion and the Roe v. Wade law know that overturning it will affect black and brown people the most, which means more minorities to exploit. This is all calculated, long game racism and white supremacy. You protested wearing masks into Krogers but having bodily autonomy now is a foreign concept…give me a break.

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Facts and Opinions

Free Rodney Reed

I’m just a small blog. Not many people read my writing, which is alright; I am not complaining. I enjoy writing; always have and I always will. I hope to one day help others through my writing, inform them or make them think about things a little differently than they originally did. I’m hoping I can do that with this post today, as my peer circle has been talking about it quite a bit for the last few days.

rodney reed

This is Rodney Reed. He is 51 years old and is currently on death row for a murder he most likely did not commit.

On April 23rd, 1996, nineteen year old Stacey Stites of Giddings, Texas fails to show up for work at the H.E.B grocery store in Bathrop. At around five in the morning, almost two hours after she was scheduled to come in for her shift, she still was not there. Her fiance’s truck that she typically would take to work was found in a high school parking lot by a police officer. Everyone begins to worry, but soon, they would find out where she was. Later on in the afternoon, Stacey’s body is found on a dirt road in a heavily wooded area. She is partially clothed with her arms above her head, with ligature marks on her neck, indicating that she was strangled to death. There was also an unknown male’s DNA inside her body, and the sample wasn’t matched until almost a year later.

This is where Rodney Reed comes in. That DNA that they tested…it matched Reed. At first when he is questioned, he denies knowing Stites, but he later changes his story, letting law officials know that he and Stacey were having an affair. They had sex about a day before she was murdered; that’s why his DNA was able to be detected on her body.  Of course this was not a good look for Reed, but I can understand why he would be hesitant to come forward with that information. He is a black man and she is a white woman. There was a bit of an age difference, and she was already in a relationship. Also, this happened in the South, so I’m pretty sure not everyone would be accepting of the secret relationship not only because cheating was involved, but because Rodney was a black man.

This is where we introduce Jimmy Fennell. Stacey was engaged to be married to this former police officer during the time of her death. He originally was the prime suspect, but of course, the DNA didn’t match. However, when taking a polygraph test, he failed it. So he took it again, and the police got the same result. Failing both polygraph tests can be kind of telling don’t you think? Fennell claims that he was at home with Stites the day before she was murdered. He says he was up watching television when Stites went to sleep at around nine at night. Hmmm…well when we dig a little deeper into the evidence, there seems to be some dilemmas. When examining the sperm sample collected from Stites’s body, the three intact spermatozoa had been there no more than about 24 hours prior to her death. Didn’t Fennell say that he was with Stites the night before she was murdered? The timeline for Stites’s murder was just all over the place. If she was to have sex within the 24 hours of her murder, that means that she would have been on her way to work when that happened. Also the murder would have taken place during the time Fennell says that he was with Stites.

It was said that Fennell already knew that Stites was having an affair with Reed. Charles Wayne Fletcher, a former Bastrop County police officer stated in an affidavit filed in October that Fennell told him that he thought she was sleeping with a black man behind his back. Years later in 2008, Fennell was charged and plead guilty to kidnapping and improper sexual activity with a person in custody when he was a police officer in Georgetown, Texas. He was sentenced to ten years. While he was in jail, he told an inmate that he had to kill his ”n-word” loving fiancee. Smart Jimmy, really smart. Here is an article that explains the situation a little better:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/07/us/death-row-inmate-rodney-reed-execution/index.html

With all the information that has accumulated over the years that possibly proves Mr. Reed’s innocence, why is he about to be executed on November 20th? It is possible that an innocent man is going to be killed, and there isn’t much time to help him out. The more the word has been spreading, the more hope he has at being taken off the death row list. He could be saved. There’s only eleven more days left. People such as Rihanna, Kim Kardashian, LL Cool J, Gigi Hadid and others are trying advocating for this man’s innocence. Below is a petition that can help Rodney Reed from getting executed.

https://www.freerodneyreed.com/

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