Tag Archives: Reproductive rights

Alabama Alice in Wonderland and the infanticide myth.

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As a female, I have to look at the calendar from time to time to remind myself that this really is the year  2019.  

Even though I am well-past my reproductive years, my horror at the erosion of hard won women’s rights is not diminished by age.  Some kind of mass hysteria seems to have seized the so-called “right-to-life” lobby, resulting in ever more grotesque displays of misogynistic cruelty.  Waiting periods escalated to invasive exams and psychological coercion; then to eliminating abortion clinics altogether and even threats to prosecute women for choosing to terminate pregnancies.

The great state of Alabama, already a dangerous outlier, just upped the ante by charging a woman with murder after the fetus in her womb was killed by a gunshot that was fired at her during an argument with another woman.  The woman who fired the shot isn’t even being charged.  The fact that the prosecuter later dropped the charges against the grieving mother does little to relieve the pall this incident has left over Alabama women in contemplating their reproductive future. This is especially true of women of color, since, unsurprisingly, the target of this draconian miscarriage of justice was black.

It’s Alabama Alice in Wonderland! 

This (hopefully) temporary insanity isn’t confined to the deep south.  It percolates up through the public discourse even in a progressive state like Vermont.

Among letters to the editor of the St. Albans Messenger on July 1 was one from a woman whom I do not know, concerning the poor little infant recently found abandoned in a plastic bag. The circumstances were so universally disturbing that it seems rather cynical for someone to seize upon that moment to distort the public record on reproductive rights. 

In her letter, the Messenger  commenter misrepresented the pro-choice position,  as so many anti-abortion advocates are inclined to do; suggesting that giving women complete autonomy to make reproductive choices; choices about their own bodies; somehow endorses infanticide after birth.  It does not. 

I felt compelled to respond.

This incident took place in Georgia, one of the states that severely restricts women’s access to reproductive choices.  Some statistics from NARAL about issues arising from Georgia’s restrictions on reproductive choice and education may shed a bit of light on what might have precipitated the tragic circumstances.

96% of Georgia’s counties have no access to clinics that provide abortions.  One in five women of child-bearing age in Georgia is not covered by either public or private health insurance.

Teen birthrates in Georgia are higher than the national average, and less than one-third of high schools provide the full range of sex education topics recommended by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.  

The Atlanta Journal reports that one in three children in Georgia lives in poverty.  23.3% of children, 0-18 years of age, are malnourished.  That’s almost one-in-four.

No child should be unwanted, but in places where reproductive rights are restricted and ignorance of alternatives is considered a virtue, unwanted children are the inevitable outcome.  Quite apart from all this, safe and legal abortion saves lives.  Many who benefit from the procedure are little more than children, themselves.

The little baby in the plastic bag is as much a victim of opposition to reproductive choice as she is to her mother’s apparent despair over a situation with which she simply could not cope.

I deeply respect the individual beliefs of those who oppose abortion as a matter of conscience; but respect should be a two-way street, allowing for the beliefs and choices of others who disagree.

it might be equally well argued that forcing any woman, but especially a woman with serious physical or metal issues, to carry a baby to term against her will, leaving the vulnerable infant in immediate peril, is cruel and unusual punishment for both mother and child.

The ethics and morality street runs both ways.

As a powerful minority attempts to steer the entire country backward toward the 19th century in terms of women’s rights, I hope they will keep in mind the moral obligation they will have for the lifetime support and well-being of every single infant that they force into live-birth despite the odds that that life will be a living hell.  This means providing adequate food, shelter, health and mental care, and accepting the societal consequences of this unhappy population.  Let’s see those checkbooks open wide, Gentlemen!

Revive the Equal Rights Amendment

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In light of current attacks on a woman’s right to choose, it’s time to revisit the Equal Rights Amendment;  which, contrary to common assumptions, was not ratified and adopted by all of the states more than thirty years ago.  Had we gotten the job done right in the 1970’s and ’80’s, women would not now be facing the sweeping assaults on reproductive health that have scourged Alabama, Missouri, Georgia, and Louisiana…with other states waiting in the wings to do their worst. 

It is now necessary to replace and update it with language to protect people of all gender variations.

As the largest reliable voting block, it is also time for women to band together, applying their own “litmus test” to anyone, male or female, who seeks to represent them in government.

Here is a list of positions, vis-a-vis women’s rights, that I am looking for in a candidate:

. In all reproductive matters, a woman has full ownership of her own body and therefore the inalienable right to choose.   The relegation of what is a highly individual and painful ethical and moral decision to a crass engine of shifting political self-interest is an outrage against humanity. 

. She has the right to equal pay for equal labor, whether mental or physical.

. She has the right to equal opportunity.

. She has the right to say ‘no’ to anyone, even an insistent spouse.  If her refusal is not respected, the state has a duty to believe her unless there is persuasive evidence to the contrary.  

Violations of this right are by nature so intimate and humiliating for the victim, that it may be impossible to prove “beyond a doubt” that the violation has occurred.  For this reason, I believe a different standard of proof should apply for such crimes; but the penalty for deliberately misrepresenting an assault claim should be equally severe for the claimant as it would be for an assailant, since  such a misrepresentation is as injurious to victims as a whole as would be an actual assault.

. No law governing the behavior of women exclusively should be enforceable unless it has been formally ratified by a body comprised of at least 50% female members.

Despite the fact that we represent more than half the population, woman are so severely underrepresented in elected and appointed government positions that we are in effect a defacto minority group.

Nothing has more vividly illustrated this injustice than the passage of Alabama’s draconian anti-choice law without the vote of a single female legislator.

We can no longer hold up the United States as a beacon of democracy and social justice when we surrender women’s reproductive rights to what amounts to a “Christian” Taliban.

GOP War on Women Comes to Vermont

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The latest bulletin from St. Albans City Representative Corey Parent makes no mention of an amendment which he and 32 other Republicans supported; one which, if widely known, is likely to reinforce the perception that the national Republican war on women has descended upon Vermont.

The amendment in question, attached to H.620, was introduced by Rep. Willhoit of St. Johnsbury, but failed 107-33. To wit:

“In Sec. 1, 8 V.S.A. § 4099c, by adding a subsection (h) to read as follows:
(h)(1) Upon request by a religious employer, as described in 26 U.S.C. § 6033(a)(3)(A)(i) and (iii) and as certified by the Commissioner of Financial Regulation, a health insurer shall make available a health insurance plan that does not provide coverage for contraceptive services.”

I think we can safely assume that there was no such measure afoot to defund Viagra supply for the gentlemen of our fair state.

Funny how that works.

You would think that, after the multiple violations against female constituents that Republican Senator Norm McAllister is alleged to have committed, Republicans in both chambers would be inclined to tread more softly on the matter of women’s reproductive rights.

That 33 Republican members of the House had the temerity to give employers dominion over the private consciences and reproductive rights of working women suggests that it is time to take the argument to a new level.

I am not aware of any other restrictions on employees’ purchase of goods or services that have been similarly ceded to the prerogative of their employers.

Put very plainly, support for legislation that would  effectively restrict access to contraception should be understood to be a vote in favor of abortion.

With Donald Trump as the national standard bearer, and the stench of rape, exploitation, and party indifference  lingering in Franklin County’s GOP  like limburger cheese on a  humid day, it’s going to be ugly for Republicans in this election cycle.