Republicans have been gathering more and more money to support this aspect of their political platform ever
since Roe v Wade. Now the momentum for this travesty is gaining behind the Republicans, who are in bed with the rabid leaders of the religious self-righteous zealots. None of us are safe.
This is an issue that affects the safety of, and life as we know it for, women, men, and children.Ordinary citizens are in general compassionate and willing to do the right thing. However, we
ordinary citizens do not realize how the issue of reproductive rights, and the kernel of it-choice-are necessary to our survival on this planet. Many are misled by the rhetoric of those who hold
power-political, religious, or other-by those who "sound" so "reasonable and knowledgeable."
This is not to say that we citizens are gullible. Those in power over us are extremely
clever; and they not only want to hold onto their power, they are hungry for more of it. Their profit margin of power must be ever-increasing for them to be successful. And we are going
willy-nilly into this wind tunnel of anti-choice that will become a maelstrom if we do not wake up.
"Abortion is murder." But letting a woman die for complications of pregnancy on the
off-chance that the fetus will survive? Is that not also murder? Why do they always leave out on purpose the woman in this equation? Why does the anti-choice argument purport to
"protect" children while it wantonly and deftly puts the very lives of women into jeopardy?
Some anti-choice arguments may tentatively allow abortion under certain extreme circumstances.
But if it takes an agency of the law to judge and mete out just when those circumstances are legally correct, by then it will be too late for a safe abortion, and it really will be murder. Have you
ever tried to get a case to court in a timely manner? Does anyone out there really believe that there would be special judges to dispatch in a timely manner arguments over who is legally entitled to an
abortion?
And I am not talking only of the physical complications associated with pregnancy that can kill a woman. Yes, folks, in the good old USA in our modern times, a pregnant woman who has not
been impregnated by her husband is at risk of violence and even murder. A pregnant teen or unmarried woman is at risk for violence and even murder by her parent or her peers. How can an
anti-choice law protect these women and their unborn children?
There is all this so-called protection for the "unborn child" while the woman-hating side of the question is ignored.
Why? Because woman-hating is so internalized that the men don't even have to force it on us anymore. We ALL accept woman-hating mostly without even recognizing its stealthy and deceitful
intrusion upon our ethics and our logic.
At the dawn of this techno-modern century, we still live in a woman-hating society. I never would have believed it could still go on like this so long.
We have NOT come a long way, after all. In some ways, we have gone backwards. We've made some progress, surely; but in the process, we have also unknowingly conceded freedoms hard won by the women who
risked their lives in the struggle to make society aware of the dangers of oppressing women.
A few well-worn examples, which are so very widespread enough as to cause alarm: Women can never be thin
enough, pretty enough, feminine enough, or chaste enough. If they are very thin, they are ugly and skinny. An ounce more flesh and they are "plus size." There is no perfect size
or look for a woman unless she has been cosmetically reconstructed under the surgeon's knife; and even then, she will not see herself as perfect. Even then, she will be criticized for being a
bimbo. On the other hand, if she is no bimbo, she must guard against the worst insult against a woman: that she may be a man-hating Lesbian (translation: too ugly to get a man). Not feminine or
pretty enough equals a masculine woman. (As if that were the definition of Lesbian-no matter, the insult is understood as women who are not obediently trying to live up to society's impossible
standards of what a woman is "supposed" to be.) If she enjoys sex, she is "easy to score with," and she is devalued. If she holds out on sex, she is a frigid bitch, causing
cruelty to men. Hey, what happened? This stuff sounds like 1950! But these few examples still ring true all around middle America, and even in the big cities.
The whole "men are from
Mars, women are from Venus" comedy only serves to divide women and men. Women and men are integral members of the human race, and we are all compassionate and reasonable when we have not been
brainwashed by political and religious bullshit to believe that one half of the population is responsible not only for original sin but also for most of the woes of males. When we lose our respect for
women, we lose respect for the human race. Women and men cannot be divided out of this wholeness that is our humanity. We need each other in order to survive. And if we do not come together
in true compassion and respect, the world is indeed in jeopardy.
Why can't we treat women as responsible adults and citizens and trust that they will use their natural-born reproductive powers with
responsibility? We give a man the right to buy a gun, and we trust him to be a responsible citizen with it. We teach soldiers, largely men, to kill, we hand them the most dangerous weapons of
murder on this planets, and we trust that they will not use this power and now-engrained blood lust irresponsibly.
Why do we not trust women with the ability to wisely venerate life? A few men kill,
and we don't say "no weapons for any men because they can kill someone." That would be preposterous. Why is it not just as preposterous that because a few women might have abortions
with no moral conscience, for that ALL women must be denied from their reproductive rights?
What do choice and reproductive rights have to do with power? Fact: Men own 99.9 percent of all the
means of production on this planet. The only means of production that men do not yet control entirely is the most important resource of all: reproduction.
Why have there been huge leaps in treatment
of infertility and test tube fertilizations, yet not in breast cancer or diseases that kill primarily women? Simple: the answer is money. And people put their money where their heart is.
The research money goes to fertilization techniques and other projects deemed important by our "society." Face it. The death of women is not so important. Men control most of the
corporate moneys that go to grants for research. Men get to choose most often what is important. It isn't a conscious "I think I will choose bigger bombs over saving women's lives" on
the part of men, at least I hope not. But it is an accepted and insidious woman-hating attitude that leaves us all in the dust.
Can you do the math? Men own 99.9 percent of the world's
production. Men control 98.9 percent of the corporate boards in the USA. Men overwhelmingly control the religious organizations in positions of power. Men are the huge majority of our
politicians in power. As for the Supreme Court… well, need I go on?
If women let men take total power over us and the world, will we also let them make laws that control our most personal and
unique reproductive processes? In so doing, we open up a whole area of jurisdiction over reproduction. If we women let men sway us into their religious or political ideas that promote
reproductive rights as illegal, then we have lost everything.
Our society tolerates and even advocates indiscriminate and systemic violence where choice or consent is absent. Take for example, in
woman-battering, rape, and war. But this same society upholds stringent taboos against consenting women adults exploring the complexity of the power of sexuality and reproduction.
I believe
that apparent paradox about tolerating violence and having a taboo against women's reproductive freedom is due to something terribly sinister. Those in power who influence our social mores and even our
legal system are attempting to withhold knowledge about and experience with power. Power is denied to all but those elites so that the power of the elites can be protected.
In almost every case, men
get away with being hailed as virile when they cause a woman to become pregnant. In all too many cases, women are punished by society when they get pregnant. Ready or not, her choice or not, the
pregnant woman must immediately become maternal and totally submissive to the rapidly dividing cell within her, or she is considered as a demon who would kill children.
Some people leap from the
"miracle of birth" illogically to view getting pregnant as an "act of God" that should NOT be undone. (While it is OK that other acts of God be combated or avoided, such as seeking
protection from storms, etc.) "Abortion is wrong" is fine as a personal philosophy and religious tenet. Most women would agree with abortion is wrong. Most women would hate to be
put in a position to choose abortion. But that is a far cry from transforming abortion into a criminal act of murder.
The plain fact is that abortion is not murder in the political, scientific,
physical, or philosophical sense. Therefore, it cannot be murder in a criminal sense, either. It may be so in a religious context.
Thankfully, our government and our system of laws are not
based on any one particular religious dogma.
Fine, then, let religion take care of it. Let it be a religious crime. Let people be excommunicated for it, shunned by their religious peers, or
whatever. That is serious enough punishment if you are in the mood to cast the first stone! But keep the government and the legal system out of it. Keep our constitutional freedoms and Bill
of Rights out of it.
If power is denied to all but those elites so that the power of the elites can be protected, then where does that leave us, the ordinary citizens? How does the state choose the
more valuable citizen? How can the state give totalitarian rights to a fertilized egg or a fetus, thus creating a tyrant in the womb of a woman? Why is the state afraid of a woman retaining her
reproductive powers? How and when does the state mandate that a detected pregnancy leads to the immediate situation where a yet-to-be citizen shall have tyrannical rights over the person-that is, the
pregnant woman-whose body is held captive by her tyrant in the anti-choice view?
If there can be no satisfactory agreement about when the rights of a woman versus those of her fetus become of interest to
the state, then that leads us directly back to oppression of women. That will mean a severe imbalance in humanity, which threatens the very survival of our planet.
If the government controls a
woman's reproductive activities, where will it end? Can a woman who smoke or drinks, and then has a miscarriage, be charged with manslaughter? Will this lead to state-prescribed behaviors that
are acceptable for pregnant women? And punishable offenses for activities that are not? How soon in the pregnancy can these laws be applied? If "life begins at conception" (and it
does, but not the life of a citizen who is susceptible to the laws of our nation), then from the moment of conception the pregnant woman is liable. What about those women who do not know they are
pregnant for months? Can they claim ignorance? My girlfriend was six months into her first pregnancy before she knew it. Even her doctor missed it. She and her husband were thankful
to have had a healthy boy.
Did you also know that a woman does not have to have penetration sex with a man to get pregnant? A young girl can conceive from merely sitting on a wet spot in the bed from
her young boyfriend's ejaculate. That happened to my cousin. Try interviewing a few gynecologists if you don't believe that this kind of teen pregnancy-without penetration-happens quite
frequently.
Laws telling women what they can or can't do during pregnancy would be silly, you say? It can't happen here, you say? Once the door is open to control (especially to oppress) our
reproductive rights, there is no stopping the extent of that control.
Let us not forget the recent lesson of a civilized, European nation that forms part of our heritage: Nazi Germany. First,
Hitler outlawed abortion because it was a moral outrage. The people accepted that. Then, he went on to mandate abortions in cases of "undesirables." Guess how much of the
population was included in the "desirables?" The same political process is going on in China today.
The USA is a very powerful political force in this world. There is no reason to
believe that our government would not enact further laws regarding reproduction in women if world power is at stake. The government would have the legal precedent once abortion is illegal. If the state
has an interest in outlawing abortion, it also has an interest in mandating it.
Once women's reproductive rights are lost, we have lost all our rights. This is the slippery slope to despotism that
the founders of our great country sought to avoid when they framed our Constitution and created our Bill of Rights.
Think about reproductive rights as the rights of half the people of our world
and all of the people of our future. We are all of woman born, and blessed be. I trust in the original human design. It is women who have the babies for a reason. It is no business of
the state to interfere with reproductive rights.
