I'm not sure how to begin this. I am angry, frustrated, sad, disappointed and flat out sick. I don't recognize the country of my youth. Once democracy was a shining beacon wherein the participants of the democracy understood an inherent need to protect minorities in all forms. Historically, this country has not done that perfectly, but historically we have moved in a general forward direction. We are going backwards now. We will continue to do so as long as people react out of misdirected fear, need for power, need for "being right," and laziness.
Those who purport to disdain large government (and really, do they even believe themselves anymore?) and who purport to worship the Bill of Rights, are doing everything in their power to enlarge our government. That alone should make a real Republican against the legislative efforts of our current GOP, but real Republicans are all but extinct.
I am sure you have all heard of the move for legislation that will deny tax payer funding for abortion except in the incidents of "forcible rape." If you haven't, I redirect your attention to the laziness comment above. (Sorry, but I'm in no mood to be nice.) Perhaps you have even heard that Texas governor Rick Perry is trying for legislation that will force women to have an ultrasound and listen to the heartbeat before having an abortion. We will get into why this moves are so bad, but first, I want to make clear that all efforts to limit abortions disproportionately affect the poor. (And another conservative group made a video full of blatant lies to try to undermine Planned Parenthood. Let's make it harder for poor women to seek help, and then let's eliminate the only place they can go. Great plan!) Instead of our responsibility to help those in a minority (or any kind, not just racial), we are allowing our Congress to create an even harder life for them. A blogger said this is using democracy as a bully. Majority rules so screw you, minority! No wonder we freak when Egypt wants democracy. We view from a skewed and bastardized version of democracy. Real democracy is nothing to be feared. Wow. How does the USA not know this?
I know I am getting a little off focus. I'm sorry. These things are all interconnected and upsetting. I'll try to stay on task. Abortion. Controversy from the start. Did you know Roe v. Wade was decided by 7-2? I didn't know that. It has been presented my entire life as if it were a close decision; could have gone either way. Not a lot of Supreme Court decisions are decided by a wide margin and in the history of Supreme Court decisions, 7-2 is about as decisive as possible. Constitutionally women should have the right to seek an abortion. Slam dunk. So, why hasn't it been treated that way?
The GOP has enshrined the Constitution and Bill of Rights lately (although, they get it all screwed up a lot, but let's assume their hearts are in the right places). In this country I am free to worship or not worship as I so choose and cannot be persecuted for my faith or lack thereof. This freedom of religion has ultimately been good for both religion and for government itself. But the lines are blurring more and more. One thing is certain, you still cannot legislate your religious morality onto another citizen. This is being eroded more and more. But why would we want that? People claim to fear Sharia law could reign in this country (which is laughable if you know anything at all about Islam), but we don't need Sharia law to keep women in their place, now do we? We can bastardize Christianity to that for us just as well. And conservatives are working on it, particularly in the case of women. Make no mistake.
I respect that some people do not feel like abortion is right. Heck, I don't like it. But I do believe that sometimes it is necessary. We argue about abortion as if it is a black and white issue, but it's not. There is not a single part of it that is black and white. It's time to stop pretending. I see bumper stickers on both sides all the time, but the one that asks the right question says: If you don't trust me with a choice, why would you trust me with a child? It's a good question. You see, what anti-choice people are saying is that they do not trust the moral capacity of a woman to make the "right" decision. Obviously, to the anti-choice crowd, there is only one right choice. Obviously, that is an falsehood because it is not black and white. But women, whether they agree with abortion or not, should be outraged that their moral capacity is called into question. Look at the male-dominated leadership of the world and I ask you with the kind of historical moral track record of men are we really wanting to go there? Do women make bad decisions? Yes, of course. But any moral decisions are between that woman and God. It is not for us to judge. We should be too busy with the log in our own eye.
By the way, I often hear that God is opposed to killing babies. Really? Have you ever read your Bible? If God is so "pro-life" then I think he has some explaining to do.
As to Rick Perry, I saw an ultrasound (because it was regularly scheduled) the day I found out I had a lump in breast that may be cancerous. See, I wanted my child. I planned for my child-to-be. But as I sat there, waiting for the verdict, listening to my options if it is cancer, having seen the ultrasound did make it harder. Of course that is what Perry wants. But, it's not black and white. Having seen the ultrasound was causing me more pain and sorrow in an already painful and sorrowful circumstance. Had I been raped, how much extra suffering are we going to add? (And I would like to point out to the We-claim-to-be-opposed-to-large-government Crowd, then stay out of my vagina! Seriously. How much larger and invasive can we get?) But I had to face the reality that I was alive and could fight for that life in order to be there for the child I already had. The child-to-be forming in my womb, was a chance at life. I'm sorry, but a fetus is very much a parasite, it cannot survive on it's own, so it's not yet an autonomous life, a child, a baby. It is simply a chance of new life. Sometimes, as in my case, a desperately wanted chance, but every mother waits for the cry at birth because she knows in her heart of hearts that the baby is not really her baby until she hears that cry and knows he or she is alive.
Are there women who view abortion as an acceptable form of "birth control"? Yes, but they are the few. What about the woman who has too many children and cannot support another one? Or the woman who gets pregnant while in college and has to drop out? Will the government provide aid and not scorn her? That is a big criticism I have of the anti-choice crowd. The GOP scorns anyone who needs aid, and tries to strip it away, but they don't want to see that being anti-choice will put more women in need of aid, the same aid they are trying to get rid of. They want to pretend like they can just make the problems go away by denying the problems. Life doesn't actually work that way. Make no mistake, it is anti-choice, not "pro-life." A person who is pro-life will look at the person's whole life and realize that it is not black and white. If you can't face the problems that eliminating abortion will create, then you are not pro-life.
The fact is that men (in a universal, not necessarily individual sense) are jealous of a woman's ability to give birth. Maybe they don't see it that way, but it is a power that woman has that man does not. Go back through history and you can see that man's desire to control woman goes back to this one amazing ability that woman has that he cannot control. Yes, I realize that woman cannot do it on her own, but man's contribution is small compared to woman's. You also cannot escape the fact that men have a history of walking away from their responsibilities as a parent. It is easier because their contribution to creating that life is smaller. The fact is, eliminating abortions will create more single mothers, something everyone agrees is worth avoiding because of the difficult life those single mothers face. Oh, and let's not forget that men don't really want a world in which women, other than wives, would not ever have sex with them. No matter how much our leaders espouse the virtues and sanctity of marriage, that has never been respected in all of human history. Should we make sex special? Of course, but we also should live in reality. People are going to have sex outside marriage. Stop pretending otherwise.
Let's go back to the GOP's new legislation. People are most afraid of the redefinition of rape, and rightly so. The definition of rape is lack of consent. Period. It matters not if a weapon was used or if the woman was beaten. If she did not consent, it is rape. If drugs or alcohol were used so as to get around consent, it is rape. Statutory rape would also not count under the new law, but I'm sorry, a child cannot consent. I suspect that a wife who is raped by her husband would no longer count as we are headed back to an era where women have no voice but her husbands. Lack of consent is rape! There is no other definition. This law, again, would disproportionately affect the poor. People who already feel as if they have no voice would be, in fact, told you have no voice.
I hope you can see that when you try to legislate against a woman's right to choose, you are just legislating against women period. These new laws are a clear step to returning women to a status of second-class citizen. Many of our lovely GOP Congressmen have outright stated that they would like to return to "the good old days" and feel women should stay home with the kids. Each woman has to be trusted to have moral capacity. Not just because the Constitution says so, but because it is true and right.
I know that God created a world in which men and women were meant to be partners. Here's a crazy idea: let's do that. Let's stop trying to hold back women. That is of this world. If we are of God's world, we would not want to return the vision of the world that anti-choice and GOP Congressmen want. I was not born into a world where women were slaughtered because they could not, for whatever reason, have a legal abortion. Or left to die because of complications with the pregnancy. I don't want to ever experience that world. I hope you don't either.
P.S. You spent two tenths of a cent of your paid taxes on abortions for rape, incest and circumstances of endangered health last year. I know that that two tenths of a cent is astronomical and you should be outraged at that. Yeah.
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