I will turn 50 this September. I was born in 1975, and I represent the only generation of American women born with full rights that have been lost in the same lifetime. open.substack.com/pub/jesspipe...
Replies
56 this month & it strikes a chord for sure. Rights gained & lost in my lifetime. I was the hope my mother fought for, the dream they hoped they could have. College educated, home owner, and financially secure all without the control of a man. FFS now her granddaughter has lost control of her body.
aug 5, 2025, 5:21 pm • 0 0 • view
for the last few years, i have heard numerous women (facebook) complaining that even w/children, they are being denied tubal ligations by their doctors. in their 30s, 3 children: "nope, go have more children if you dont like your available birth control options." what a devastating reality. 2/2
aug 5, 2025, 6:33 pm • 0 0 • view
that's not true. i am now 71, born 1954, & i had all those rights. i was 30 in 1984, & planned parenthood provided me with a nearly-free tubal ligation. it wasnt easy, as i was young & childless, but i never wanted to have an abortion; i chose tubal ligation over inadequate birth control. 1/2
aug 5, 2025, 6:28 pm • 0 0 • view
i was born in 1954, & i had the rights you are claiming i didnt have. roe v wade was originally passed in 1973; had i needed an abortion, i could have legally had one, as i didnt become sexually active until 1973, when i was raped as a virgin. planned parenthood gave me a tubal ligation in 1984.
aug 5, 2025, 6:17 pm • 0 0 • view
Yeah, I feel you. I was born in '82, but I'm trans, and we won a lot of victories lately, and now the new government seems hellbent on turning the clock on my rights backt to the 3rd Reich. (I'm german, so that's not just a metaphor.)
aug 4, 2025, 6:33 pm • 15 0 • view
I never realized how many people didn't know this. I sure understand my mom so much better now. Not going back ✌️
aug 4, 2025, 11:44 pm • 1 0 • view
And it’s not like a surprise or anything. They promised they would do it. And they did. And the loss of which in no small part due to Gen X itself, who largely swung for Trump. Including about 40-46% of white women. We did it to ourselves.
aug 4, 2025, 7:54 pm • 1 0 • view
And Medicare and Medicaid were also in our generation. 1965
aug 4, 2025, 6:48 pm • 1 0 • view
I'm sorry this happened to you and the countless others in your generation & those coming after you. We fought so hard so you would have the rights none of us have now. Can't believe we're right back here again.
aug 7, 2025, 3:12 am • 0 0 • view
Gen X (including women) led the maga vote. His only good polling is with Gen X. Help a millennial understand it.
aug 5, 2025, 11:25 am • 1 0 • view
i'm sick to death of hearing "boomers did this, boomers are stupid, boomers ruined my life." fkkkng bigots. "boomers" achieved a great deal & young women are trashing us>?!! they can go to hell.
aug 5, 2025, 6:20 pm • 0 0 • view
Lady Gen Xer here (fuck the establishment!). Gen X grew up under repub admins--formative shit. BUT 2022 poll said 30% of Xers are conservative while 44% are indie--more indie voters than any other generation bloc. Also, more Gen Xers are white than other gens, and...well, white people, amirite.
aug 6, 2025, 4:21 pm • 0 0 • view
Hey you loud mouth woman. Sit down, shut up and help other women become subservient and obey the orders of white men S/
aug 4, 2025, 7:11 pm • 0 0 • view
Me too. April, 1975. It's sad isn't it?
aug 4, 2025, 6:34 pm • 1 0 • view
I’m surprised women in the US aren’t forming their own militias at this stage.
aug 5, 2025, 1:58 pm • 1 0 • view
I’m exactly your age and lately I’ve sounded more like my mother than myself. I know why. It’s because we’re fighting the battles again that her generation already fought … now, for our daughters. And I know exactly why she’d get so angry sometimes.
aug 4, 2025, 8:05 pm • 7 0 • view
My daughter is 50 yup
aug 4, 2025, 8:22 pm • 3 0 • view
☹️☹️☹️
aug 5, 2025, 1:49 am • 0 0 • view
Not on my watch.
aug 5, 2025, 4:46 am • 1 0 • view
Rural America is difficult and I don't understand why.
aug 5, 2025, 6:37 am • 0 0 • view
Same! Right after you, in October! And it’s insane what is happening to women’s rights in this country, let alone everyone’s rights.
aug 5, 2025, 12:57 am • 1 0 • view
50 years is not a long time at all
aug 4, 2025, 9:11 pm • 0 0 • view
I had no idea how lucky I was. I thought generations follow would have more freedom.
aug 4, 2025, 6:37 pm • 16 0 • view
Yes, the promise of the 60s and 70s was so thrilling… and then faded like a dying rose. My disappointment with my country is hard to overstate. 
aug 5, 2025, 4:16 am • 1 0 • view
yeah, me too
aug 4, 2025, 10:57 pm • 4 0 • view
And some of us did up for this rights.
aug 4, 2025, 6:57 pm • 0 0 • view
hopefully you’ll live to see women’s rights restored too
aug 4, 2025, 6:51 pm • 7 0 • view
Infuriating
aug 4, 2025, 7:14 pm • 1 0 • view
I turned 50 this year as well. It’s been really sad to see people abandoning democracy for a failure of a leader.
aug 4, 2025, 6:53 pm • 5 0 • view
And "failure of a leader" is it serious understatement. The man is a monster. 
aug 5, 2025, 4:24 am • 4 0 • view
True
aug 5, 2025, 4:25 am • 2 0 • view
I was born in 1942 and represent the boomerang generation - American women born with less than full rights who joyfully got those rights only to see them lost again in the same lifetime. I’m your older sister or mom or grandma.
aug 4, 2025, 7:50 pm • 2 0 • view
This is an amazing fact. Wow.
aug 4, 2025, 10:50 pm • 0 0 • view
Yes. I’m the generation who helped get them, and we warned many of our daughters and granddaughters not to take them for granted. All wars, even cultural, are fought on the bodies of women.
aug 4, 2025, 6:39 pm • 60 1 • view
👍
aug 5, 2025, 4:13 am • 1 0 • view
😞
aug 4, 2025, 10:57 pm • 0 0 • view
wow. I’m 58- never really thought about this
aug 5, 2025, 12:07 am • 0 0 • view
📌
aug 4, 2025, 9:37 pm • 0 0 • view
I am 75 and Canadian. I am sure I remember a time when the rights of women was not party political but personal, though still the remit of men! Wedge issues are not very democratic Guns == personal freedom Abortion == not so much. Those pushing wedges are not serving others.
aug 4, 2025, 7:29 pm • 3 1 • view
I beg to differ... I was born in 1962 (generation Jones 1955-1964) and at 18 in 1980 I was....
aug 4, 2025, 6:53 pm • 1 0 • view
Love seeing someone else recognize Generation Jones. I was born in ‘60 & do not consider myself a boomer. My parents are boomers.
aug 4, 2025, 10:23 pm • 1 0 • view
Yup.... I have nothing in common with my sisters born 1950 and 52. And I absolutely 💯 had a bank account at 18... a job and apartment without an approval of a husband. THEY are boomers. We generation Jones had 1st color TV .. and remotes... no father who was drafted... among other things.
aug 4, 2025, 10:57 pm • 0 0 • view
Talk about taking shit for granted!! So disappointed in the cult following Gen Xers! 🫨
aug 5, 2025, 12:42 am • 0 0 • view
Sad, and worse it's not over yet. Let's look forward to the reversals back👍
aug 4, 2025, 6:56 pm • 2 0 • view
I graduated from high school in 1975. I got those rights when I was in college and they have been taken away from my daughters and my granddaughters. The regime has an appalling lack of respect for human rights and specifically women’s rights.
aug 5, 2025, 1:05 am • 2 0 • view
Win the nomination when comes give you good 15 or 20 years of service 👍
aug 4, 2025, 6:58 pm • 0 0 • view
Keep up the good fight, Jess! I was born in ‘49, and have experienced many of the things you talk about! We aren’t going back! If I have to take back my maiden name to vote I will. They aren’t going to steal it!
aug 4, 2025, 8:48 pm • 2 0 • view
Such sad times to see how things are going backwards... I am ashamed to see how few men seem to be taking offense to what is being done to their mothers sisters, spouse or daughters. I am not from the US and I feel offended for half of this planet being held from equal rights.
aug 5, 2025, 1:15 pm • 0 1 • view
Saddest stat ever 🥲
aug 4, 2025, 9:14 pm • 1 0 • view
Beyond heartbreaking and enraging. I agree our gen X perspective will be vital going forward through this dark time
aug 4, 2025, 6:48 pm • 2 0 • view
It may be harder for us old women who finally gained those rights only to have them torn away again. Who thought I’d still be protesting regularly at 75? 😢
aug 5, 2025, 12:18 am • 0 0 • view
I started menstruating the year Roe became law. I never imagined a world without that form of protection.
aug 5, 2025, 9:45 am • 2 0 • view
I’m 67, born in 1957. For decades, women have fought hard for women’s rights. It’s inconceivable that some of them are slowly being taken away.
aug 5, 2025, 1:59 am • 2 0 • view
🥺😢
aug 4, 2025, 11:36 pm • 0 0 • view
Of all of the atrocities happening every day, few make me more sad than knowing my kids' generation will be the last that remember what it was like "before." #fdt 😡
aug 4, 2025, 6:32 pm • 10 0 • view
It's mind-numbing and unacceptable that my Baby Boomer mother and my Greatest Generation grandmothes had more rights when they died than my wife and daughters have now.
aug 4, 2025, 11:49 pm • 0 0 • view
I was born 17 years before you and, if you want to be generational about it, I represent the generation that got you those rights. Yet, after living most of its life with the rights we, boomers, fought for, the Gen X decided to get rid of them, while millenials just look at the train go by...
aug 4, 2025, 7:28 pm • 2 0 • view
Look at who's in charge in DC and tell me again about Gen X and Millennials "decided" jack. It's not a generational fight, it's the same patriarchal fight it always has been.
aug 5, 2025, 3:47 pm • 0 0 • view
Look who's voted for him and who forms his cabinet and SCOTUS.
aug 6, 2025, 12:11 am • 0 0 • view
WHY the hell would any female vote for these nasty corrupt chauvinist pigs?
aug 4, 2025, 8:44 pm • 7 0 • view
It's the question of the century, by my lights. But the next thought has to be why the hell would *anyone* vote for these nasty corrupt chauvinist pigs? I have extended family who are historically Repubs; thankfully, most drew the line at Trump. The ones that didn't don't get their calls answered.
aug 5, 2025, 4:23 am • 3 0 • view
When we boomer women fought for those rights, we never expected that they would be lost to our grand daughters.
aug 4, 2025, 8:10 pm • 14 0 • view
👊
aug 5, 2025, 4:20 am • 2 0 • view
And yet so many Boomers voted for Republicans to take away those rights. Why?!
aug 5, 2025, 7:05 am • 0 0 • view
Boomer males voted more republican then boomer females and same with Blacks and Hispanics. Males were more likely to be GOP in the last election.
aug 5, 2025, 1:11 pm • 0 0 • view
In 1975 we got married and bought our first house. I also learned that you'd better work with your partner if you want to survive and thrive. Still married.
aug 4, 2025, 6:54 pm • 1 0 • view
I’m at the end of the boomer generation. I was able to purchase birth control pills at the age of 18. I also voted in the general election when I was 19 years old.
aug 7, 2025, 4:35 pm • 0 0 • view
Well said and well written. ✌🏼
aug 4, 2025, 7:03 pm • 0 0 • view
Truly. And still we had to fight our way into the workplace, and now anti DEI and trad wife influencers smugly tear us down. It breaks my heart.
aug 5, 2025, 12:26 am • 5 0 • view
I remember fighting for our rights. It feels much harder now.
aug 5, 2025, 1:46 pm • 1 0 • view
1/2 I was born 2 decades before you. I took for granted when I started to work in 76 that I could do my own banking etc. It's only the last few years that I have realized all the restrictions my mother, born ln 1910, had to endure. Now I live in a real direct democracy, Norway, where rights of women
aug 5, 2025, 10:21 am • 2 0 • view
2/2 have been aggressively legislated.Self-determined abortion has recently gained more weeks. It's not perfect, but far better than the US Dream on-1 year maternity leave, affordable day care,child sick days, basically free uni, long vacations
aug 5, 2025, 10:24 am • 2 0 • view
Born almost exactly a decade earlier First politics I was knew was removing Nixon First Dem Pres I saw was Carter Reagan rolls in and says fuck the great society, look at them welfare queens! Instead of digging in for principles, we got Clinton chasing the Reagan Republicans Downhill from there
aug 5, 2025, 7:18 am • 3 0 • view
💔
aug 4, 2025, 8:29 pm • 2 0 • view
September 3 ?
aug 5, 2025, 6:50 am • 0 0 • view
some men, and women, find that right so inconsequential
aug 5, 2025, 5:46 am • 1 0 • view
Same 🤚 born in 1974 and now my 17 year old daughter has less rights than what I was born with and less opportunity and more of that is being erased every day under this regime.
aug 4, 2025, 7:44 pm • 2 0 • view
👍
aug 5, 2025, 12:14 pm • 0 0 • view
Sad
aug 5, 2025, 1:41 am • 0 0 • view
I'm not sure which is worse: to be born with full rights and watch them be peeled away or to have been born with no rights, watch them come into existence and then watch them be peeled away.
aug 4, 2025, 8:46 pm • 2 0 • view
My grandmother warned me that the rights they won could be taken away and I didn't believe it. :(
aug 6, 2025, 12:51 am • 0 0 • view
Thank goodness- we know what safety felt like.
aug 4, 2025, 6:31 pm • 4 0 • view
I am also a gen x woman born in September of '75. I cannot leave this world to my child knowing they'd have less rights than I did. We need to fight!
aug 4, 2025, 8:02 pm • 5 0 • view
It just sickens me that my granddaughters don’t have the rights my generation fought for. Republicans will pay for that. Women don’t want to go back to being chattel.
aug 5, 2025, 3:54 pm • 1 0 • view
🤬💔
aug 4, 2025, 9:06 pm • 5 0 • view
🤬
aug 4, 2025, 11:47 pm • 2 0 • view
I think a lot of that generation took them for granted, sadly.
aug 4, 2025, 6:53 pm • 0 0 • view
I was born in 1973 - the year of Roe v Wade.
aug 5, 2025, 5:44 am • 3 0 • view
It's the saddest thing and seems nothing can be done to stop it but CIVIL WAR! Let's go
aug 4, 2025, 7:51 pm • 0 0 • view
I got dragged into a casual “we can’t possibly add another state to the union” argument a couple years back and the only thing I said was “Hey - when I was born there were only 48” and those MAGA morons thought I was from Mars.
aug 5, 2025, 8:32 am • 2 0 • view
You are. I remember the fight for rights in the late 60s and early 70s. I am 65 later this month.
aug 4, 2025, 6:51 pm • 5 0 • view
We’re gonna get those rights back, even if we have to throw every last Taliban, Gestapo, Nazi, Nationalist in prison to do it.
aug 5, 2025, 4:25 pm • 1 0 • view
And now they are evaporating
aug 5, 2025, 12:20 am • 0 0 • view
😭😢😿
aug 5, 2025, 12:58 am • 0 0 • view
This!
aug 4, 2025, 6:36 pm • 0 0 • view
My housemate and I who are both Gen X were discussing that we are the only generation that had rights to our bodies.
aug 4, 2025, 8:09 pm • 5 0 • view
And I’m 72. The generation that burned our bras, marched and fought for those rights. My granddaughters have even fewer rights now. Technology is setting women up to be second class citizens again.
aug 4, 2025, 8:11 pm • 2 0 • view
We need to get those rights BACK.
aug 4, 2025, 11:38 pm • 1 0 • view
Thank you. This is excellent. And, accurate. And, by god, we need a third wave of feminism desperately!
aug 5, 2025, 6:43 pm • 0 0 • view
We're going to keep fighting like hell for the rights of every woman of every generation.
aug 5, 2025, 10:45 am • 0 0 • view
I will also turn 50 this September. I am also from Missouri. I no longer live there, but for the first half of my life, Missouri was a blue state, or at worst, a swing state. Any time my mom and I talk about politics, she mentions how Missouri voters no longer have a say.
aug 4, 2025, 7:47 pm • 1 0 • view
When I was little, I asked my mom to tell me how it felt for women to get rights, when I learned they didn't always have rights. She said that she didn't know anything about it. We need to educate future generations and teach them to fight. I had to teach myself. I wish that I knew more, sooner.
aug 5, 2025, 4:50 am • 2 0 • view
I've witnessed the losses too!
aug 4, 2025, 9:55 pm • 0 0 • view
You are 2 months younger than my son. I just turned 20 then. Beale AFB, CA Peace MBM
aug 5, 2025, 3:33 pm • 1 0 • view
:( Tragic. The rights women won decades ago brought the GOP right-wing backlash, its win with Reagan and that's kept on at every level. Those who lived without repro rights, fought hard for them, know the hellish world many women are living now, & more ahead, without a forceful, relentless fight XO
aug 5, 2025, 5:01 am • 3 0 • view
It’s simply monstrous.
aug 4, 2025, 9:17 pm • 0 0 • view
I will turn XX in September too, but I was born before women had full rights Didn’t march, protest & fight to return to this 👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼
aug 4, 2025, 6:38 pm • 36 12 • view
I was a teenager then. I remember republicans spreading the lie that if equal rights passed, we would have to share the same bathroom as men. 😳 they are still using the same argument 50 years later!
aug 4, 2025, 7:50 pm • 25 1 • view
I take it this is irony
aug 7, 2025, 9:46 pm • 0 0 • view
Wow. This hits hard.
aug 4, 2025, 11:56 pm • 1 0 • view
Same. I'm 54 so aside from my first two years of life, this has been my story.
aug 4, 2025, 10:13 pm • 3 0 • view
I will turn 65 in October. My gma was born before women had the right to vote. My mom couldn't have a credit card in her own name or make a major purchase.
aug 4, 2025, 7:03 pm • 11 0 • view
I grew up during the sexual revolution and equal rights era. So many hard fought accomplishments through the generations eroding one by one due to apathy and ignorance. Keep fighting the good fight @piperformissouri.bsky.social - we need you.
aug 4, 2025, 7:04 pm • 11 0 • view
And, without women, they wouldn't even exist!
aug 5, 2025, 12:26 pm • 1 0 • view
But y’all took them for granted.
aug 4, 2025, 8:42 pm • 0 0 • view
I was born in 55 & 1st I DIDN'T 🤨 & Then I DID 🤗 & Then I LOST 'em 🤬 But... For me it doesn't matter, cuz I'm ooold🥺 But... I CERTAINLY do CARE about ALL of the Young women💙 & 💥THEIR RIGHTS!💥 Sooo... WE, women, will CONTINUE the FIGHT. 💥
aug 5, 2025, 7:16 pm • 0 0 • view
Happy birthday Jess and I’m sorry.
aug 4, 2025, 6:30 pm • 9 0 • view
I'm 53 and I feel the exact same way. My mother and my grandmother fought for our rights.
aug 5, 2025, 3:25 pm • 1 0 • view
The year you were born, I was serving our country behind the Iron Curtain for the first of 3 years. Now, all these years later, after fighting for rights I thought were hard won, I find myself going through the same fight again. The level of disgust I feel for the current regime is boundless. #ETTD
aug 5, 2025, 1:47 am • 1 0 • view
We weren’t tho. Marital rape was legal everywhere and fault divorce still existed in many states. We’ve never once ever had full rights and equality.
aug 4, 2025, 8:51 pm • 11 0 • view
Dems need more of you. Candidates to run in otherwise uncontested races. The best of luck to you.
aug 5, 2025, 12:51 am • 0 0 • view
You mean born without, right?
aug 4, 2025, 7:51 pm • 0 0 • view
I'm 73 & I can't believe the direction OUR Nation has taken under MAGA, THE GOP, THE SUPREME COURT, AND TRUMP. My generation has fought hard to get the rights that we needed & and deserved, and we will not back down. #PowerToThePeople Register & Vote Blue.
aug 4, 2025, 7:00 pm • 33 2 • view
This reminds me of Iran in the 1970s. Women were modern and had freedoms. Now the have to cover themselves under a burka! They can’t get an education and need a male family member to escort them when they leave the house! I’m outraged!!!
aug 4, 2025, 7:44 pm • 24 2 • view
It's nauseating.
aug 5, 2025, 4:13 am • 0 0 • view
As you should be.
aug 4, 2025, 8:04 pm • 2 0 • view
We cannot allow this to happen in the States!
aug 5, 2025, 7:03 am • 0 0 • view
Wait, sorry….aren’t millennials and Gen Z in the same boat?
aug 5, 2025, 2:02 am • 3 0 • view
My friends in their early 40s live in places where birth control and abortion access is gone or at risk. No not all women of reproductive age have those rights any longer. Gen Z is at risk of losing so much more before their reproductive years are over.
aug 5, 2025, 5:24 pm • 1 0 • view
Understood. But your friends were born while these rights existed, as was Gen Z. All I’m saying is that Gen X is not the last generation to have been born with more reproductive rights than we have today.
aug 5, 2025, 8:20 pm • 0 0 • view
What the gen x people (women) are saying is we are the only generation that has gotten those rights the whole time we needed them. Most of gen x is done with baby making and the possibility of baby making. The very tail end of that generation might be trying for a miracle still.
aug 6, 2025, 3:14 am • 0 0 • view
That makes sense-thank you!
aug 6, 2025, 1:46 pm • 0 0 • view
That’s my question as well. I don’t understand how gen x is the only one born with full rights.
aug 5, 2025, 4:39 am • 1 0 • view
It would be great if the Not All Men would: make it illegal to marry children, improve healthcare, make childcare affordable, enforce child support, stiffen orders of protection, end trafficking, insist on affordable college and housing, close the wage gap, pass the ERA, and deconstruct patriarchy.
aug 5, 2025, 2:30 pm • 0 1 • view