If you don’t recognize the subject line, it’s from The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood—a translation of a faux Latin phrase scratched into a closet wall by a woman who has mysteriously disappeared.

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a high value for privacy. It’s not easy to protect one’s privacy these days, but it has just become exponentially more difficult.

Today we lost a privacy of inestimable value. The Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade, a constitutional right for almost 50 years, attacks our very existence as private citizens in the United States of America.

How did we get here?

During the height of the pandemic, I wrote a book in which I considered this question, among others. The book is called Imperfect Heart: a Journal, a Book Club, and a Global Pandemic. It will be published in December by Adelaide Books.

Imperfect Heart follows the pandemic and the political scene in the months between March, 2020, and December, 2021. It is very personal as to my life and my opinions, but it also details the concurrent domination of a global pandemic unprecedented in our lifetimes and a president who challenged our most fundamental moral imperatives.

It was the confirmation of three Supreme Court justices during the former president’s term of office that enabled the overturn of Roe v. Wade. And this is just the beginning of a massive invasion of our privacy.

The overturn of Roe v. Wade signals the seep of surveillance and control over every aspect of our lives, but especially our most intimate and private decisions. It will impact our health, our physical safety, our mental stability, the decisions we make concerning our bodies, and our right to privacy. It may well lead to arbitrating who we choose to love and marry, and ultimately who, in our right of self-determination, we choose to be.