During Roe's Overturn, a Girl Scout Troop at the Capitol Got a Real Glimpse of U.S. Government Miso

During Roe’s Overturn, a Girl Scout Troop at the Capitol Got a Real Glimpse of U.S. Government Misogyny
7/20/2022 by Morgan Aspinwall
We brought our girls to the Capitol to show them the promise of America, and instead gave them a briefing on its reality.




North Carolina Girl Scouts with Vice President Kamala Harris at a women in STEM event in June. (Instagram)

On Friday, June 24, a troop of Girl Scouts came to visit the Capitol in Washington, D.C. They walked together in their uniforms and neatly braided hair, their patent leather Mary Janes clacking on the granite, their hard-earned badges on display—symbols of their accomplishments, their intelligence and passion, and their dedication to an organization whose rallying cry asserts women are leaders too. That we should teach our girls to be brave—not just beautiful; that their brains and their voices can carry them to their dreams. These Girl Scouts walked through Capitol Police barricades.

To their right was a podium set up for a press conference set to be held later that afternoon. The House was scheduled to pass bipartisan gun reforms—legislation spurred by the brutal murder of children not much younger than themselves. On their left, the Supreme Court—the building, with “Justice The Guardian of Liberty” inscribed upon its wall—stood heavy with import and anachronism. Unlike the Capitol and the office buildings that huddle around it, the Supreme Court is home to the ‘justices on high’—the select few who do not answer directly to the American public.

That day, however, screams echoed before the Court. The American people wept before that cold and unflinching building, their anger radiating off the pavement as they defiantly asserted their rights which the Court had just that morning rendered obsolete. While the justices may not answer to the people, they bore witness to America’s anguish. Between those two historic moments walked the next generation of American girls. They found themselves trapped between the posthumous correction of a flagrant disregard for human life and the declaration that their government’s founding document sees no room for their personal bodily autonomy.




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We allow our children to be raped in schools. We have no definition for the noun “consent” in our penal code. We do not broadly require medically accurate sex education. We do not provide funding for research into women’s health. We have failed to adequately enact Title IX policies despite it having been passed 50 years ago. We have not achieved pay equality despite it being legally mandated. We still do not have sufficient—or in some cases any—maternity leave. We brought our little girls to the Capitol to show them the promise of America and instead gave them a briefing on its reality. This is a country with immense promise and a worthy charter. Our only responsibility to this nation and to those little girls is to live up to its initial challenge—and we are failing them miserably.

https://msmagazine.com/2022/07/20/supreme-court-roe-v-wade-girl-scouts-girls-women-politics/