How To Assemble Your 50-Foot Uterus Mask

Illustration by Jason Stout

After years of repression by the Texas Legislature, the uterus is striking back! Little did anti-choice lawmakers know, while they were trying to keep it down, the uterus was growing faster, stronger, smarter – and it's coming for you, Gov. Greg Abbott.

1) Wake up. Following session after session of anti-abortion laws that contravened medical best practices, that required mandatory transvaginal ultrasounds, that disappeared clinics from all but five Texas cities, a new day has dawned. To celebrate, grab the latest issue of the Chronicle.

2) Use scissors or an X-Acto knife to cut out the mask commemorating the day when the uterus struck back. Now, there are no surprise raids and systematic funding attacks on Planned Parenthood. Medicaid, in fact, has finally been expanded!

3) Find a piece of thin cardboard, and use the cut-out mask to trace its shape on the cardboard. Cut along the tracing. Laugh as you think back to the days when maternity and paternity leave weren't considered obligatory, and you might – the horror! – have to pay for birth control.

4) Use a light adhesive to attach the mask to its backing. Shake your head in bemusement that there was ever a day when crisis pregnancy centers were receiving state funding – money that now goes toward paying for comprehensive, fact-based sex education in all Texas public schools.

5) Cut out eye holes, and punch out smaller holes to attach string to tie the mask around your face. It's so weird that there was a time when child care for working parents wasn't government-funded and readily available.

6) Tie the mask around your face, and get ready to celebrate a new era of reproductive justice, where abortion and prenatal care are both easy to access for all Texans!

7) Wake up. It was all a dream. The nightmare of the Texas Legislature, unfortunately, is real.