During the 2009 health care debate, fundamentalist congressmen inserted language that eliminated public funding for abortions. They are now proposing legislation (H.R.3) that would make it impossible for a woman to buy private insurance with her own money, if that insurance includes coverage for abortion. Other legislation being considered (H.R.358) would allow medical personnel to refuse to perform abortions even to save the life of the mother.
It makes me wonder: Who exactly owns the uteri of America? Do they belong to the women who were born with these organs? To their husbands, fathers, or significant others? To the men who attack these women in projects or suburban homes, in parking lots or dark alleys? Do these organs belong to the government? Do they belong to the Radical Fundamentalist Primarily-Republican Senators and Representatives, so they can be controlled and regulated for the good of the Republic?
Right-wing conservatives in Congress seem intent on making certain any woman who becomes pregnant carries that fetus to term. After that, they don’t seem to care.
But women do.
The decision to end a pregnancy is not an easy one. It is a devastatingly difficult decision reached after all possibilities are considered, all avenues explored, all scenarios examined. A woman may believe she is too young to have a child. She may have no family, no one to help her. She may have been the victim of rape or incest. She may not know who the father is. She may believe she needs more education, that without it she can never earn enough money to properly care for a baby. She may have other children who need her, and who would suffer if she brought another child into the world. She may desperately want a child, but at some other time in her life. She may have taken drugs and worry about the effect they might have on the fetus. She may have been given drugs that can cause defects. She may honestly believe she can not provide a home for the baby she is carrying. A pregnancy, once it became known, could endanger her own life. Her parents could disown her, beat her, throw her into the streets. If she lives under Sharia law, male members of the family can kill her.
There are hundreds of reasons a woman may decide not to carry a baby to term. Some may be good, some not so good, but they are hers. And she is the one who will be responsible for her decision.
How have we come to the point where we will allow the government to dictate to women what they are allowed to do with their own bodies? Have women in America become nothing more than mindless “hosts” whose purpose is to bring forth new citizens for the republic?
Rita, I am of the opinion that this is not “the government” deciding anything. It is a collective group of “enabled” men with absolutely no interest in or concern for women. Men who see women as possessions and are quite willing to aid and abet one another to ensure that they stay in their proper “place” (subservient).