This week the Georgia State Legislature debated a bill in the House that would make it necessary for some women to carry stillborn or dying fetuses until they "naturally" go into labor. In arguing for this bill Representative Terry England described his empathy for pregnant cows and pigs in the same situation.
I have a question for Terry England, Sam Brownback, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry and too many others: I have three daughters, two of them twins. If one of my twins had been stillborn would you have made me carry her to term, thereby endangering both the other twin and me? Or, would you have insisted that the state order a mandatory fetal extraction of the living twin fetus from my womb so that I could continue to carry the stillborn one to term and possibly die myself? My family is curious and since you believe my uterus is your public property, I am, too.
Mr. England, unlike the calves and pigs for which you expressed so much empathy, I am not a beast of burden. I am a woman and I have these human rights:
The right to life.
The right to privacy.
The right to freedom.
The right to bodily integrity.
The right to decide when and how I reproduce.
Mr. England, you and your friends do not get to trade these rights, while "dog and hog hunting," in return for a young man's chickens.
My human rights outweigh any you or the state corruptly and cynically seek to assign to a mass of dividing cells that will eventually turn into a "natural" person. Personhood-for-zygote based bills and related legislation, like Georgia's and hundreds of others, bills and laws that criminalize pregnancy and abortion and penalize women for being women, violate my human rights.
Just because you cannot get pregnant does not mean I cannot think clearly, ethically, morally, rationally about my body, human life or the consequences of my actions. Just because you cannot get pregnant does not mean that I do not have rights when I am pregnant. I have responsibility but am powerless. You have power but are irresponsible with my rights.
By not trusting me, you force me to trust you. And YOU are not trustworthy.
I gestate humans, you do not. I know how it feels to be pregnant. You do not. I know what happens to a fetus in a womb. You do not. I have carried three fetuses to term. You have not. What I experience when I am pregnant is not empathy. It is permeability. The fetus is me. And the state is you, apparently. But, no matter what you say or do I have fundamental human rights. What makes you think that you, who cannot have this fully human experience, can tell me anything about gestation or how I experience it? Especially when you compare my existence and experience to that of brutish animals.
The rest of the civilized world thinks this country has lost its mind. It's no wonder. Look at this list of frenzied misogyny:
1. Making women carry still-born fetuses to full term because cows and pigs do. This week, Mr England, you supported a bill, the net effect of which, taken tandem with other restrictions, will result in doctors and women being unable to make private, medically-based, critical care decisions and some women being effectively forced to carry their dead or dying fetuses. Women are different from farm animals, Mr. England, and this bill, requiring a woman to carry a dead or dying fetus is inhumane and unethical. By forcing a woman to do this, you are violating her right not to be subjected to inhuman treatment and tortured. And, yes, involuntarily carrying a dead fetus to term, although not torture to you or to a pig, is torture for a woman. It is also a violation of her bodily integrity and a threat to her life and as such, violates her right to life.
2. Consigning women to death to save a fetus. Abortions save women's lives. "Let women die" bills are happening all over the country. There is no simple or pretty way to put this. Every day, all over the world, women die because they do not have access to safe abortions. Yet, here we are, returning to the dark ages of maternal sacrifice. Do really have to type this sentence: this is a violation of women's fundamental right to life.
3. Criminalizing pregnancy and miscarriages and arresting, imprisoning and charging women who miscarry with murder, like Rennie Gibbs in Mississippi or at least 40 other similar cases in Alabama or like Bei Bei Shuai, a woman who is now imprisoned, is charged with murder after trying to commit suicide while pregnant. Pregnant women are becoming a special class subject to "special" laws that infringe on their fundamental rights.
4. Forcing women to undergo involuntary vaginal penetration (otherwise called rape) with a condom-covered, six- to eight-inch ultrasound probe. Pennsylvania is currently considering that option along with 11 other states. Trans-vaginal ultrasounds undertaken without a woman's consent are rape according to the legal definition of the word. This violates a woman's bodily integrity and also constitutes torture when used, as states are suggesting, as a form of control and oppression. Women have the right not to be raped by the state.
5. Disabling women or sacrificing their lives by either withholding medical treatment or forcing women to undergo involuntary medical procedures. We impose an unequal obligation on women to sacrifice their bodily integrity for another. For example, as in Tysiac v. Poland, in which a mother of two, became blind after her doctor refused to perform an abortion that she wanted that would have halted the course of a degenerative eye disease. If my newborn baby is in need of a kidney and you have a spare matching one, can I enact legislation that says the state can take yours and give it to her? No. We do not force people to donate their organs to benefit others, even those who have already been born. One of the most fundamental of all human rights is that humans be treated equally before the law. Denying a woman this right is a violation of her equal right to this protection.
6. Giving zygotes "personhood" rights while systematically stripping women of their fundamental rights. There is too much to say about the danger of personhood ideas creeping into health policy to do it here. But, consider what happens to a woman whose womb is not considered the "best" environment for a gestating fetus in a world of personhood-for-zygote legislation: who decides the best environment -- the state, her insurance company, her employer, her rapist who decides he really, really wants to be a father? Anyone but a woman.
7. Inhibiting, humiliating and punishing women for their choices to have an abortion for any reason by levying taxes specifically on abortion, including abortions sought by rape victims to end their involuntary insemination, imposing restrictive requirements like 24 hour wait periods and empowering doctors to lie to female patients about their fetuses in order to avoid prosecution. In Arizona, Kansas, Texas, Virginia, Colorado, Arkansas and other states around the country bills that make women "pay" for their choices are abounding.
8. Allowing employers to delve into women's private lives and only pay for insurance when they agree, for religious reasons, with how she chooses to use birth control. In Arizona, which introduced such a bill this week, this means covering payment for birth control as a benefit only when a woman has proven that she will not use it to control her own reproduction (i.e., as birth control). As much as I am worried about women and families in Arizona though, I am more worried about those in Alabama. You see, as recently revealed in a public policy poll in Alabama, conservative, evangelicals who support "personhood" related "pro-life" legislation and are fighting for their "religious liberty" -- 21 percent think interracial marriage should be illegal. So, what if they decide that an employee involved in an interracial marriage should not, by divine mandate, reproduce? Do they switch and provide birth control for this employee? Do they make contraception a necessary term of employment for people in interracial marriages? This violates a woman's right to privacy. My womb is one million times more private than your bedrooms, gentlemen.
9. Sacrificing women's overall health and the well-being of their families in order to stop them from exercising their fundamental human right to control their own bodies and reproduction. Texas just did that when it turned down $35 million dollars in federal funds thereby ensuring that 300,000 low-income and uninsured Texas women will have no or greatly-reduced access to basic preventive and reproductive health care.
10. Depriving women of their ability to earn a living and support themselves and their families. Bills, like this one in Arizona, allow employers to fire women for using contraception. Women like these are being fired for not.
You presume to consign my daughters and yours to function as reproductive animals.
This is about sex and property, not life and morality. Sex because when women have sex and want to control their reproduction that threatens powerful social structures that rely on patriarchal access to and control over women as reproductive engines. Which brings us to property: control of reproduction was vital when the agricultural revolution took place and we, as a species, stopped meandering around plains in search of food. Reproduction and control of it ensured that a man could possess and consolidate wealth-building and food-producing land and then make sure it wasn't disaggregated by passing it on to one son he knew was his -- largely by claiming a woman and her gestation capability as property, too.
This is not about freedom of religion. If it were, we would, for example, allow Christian Scientists to refuse to pay for coverage of life-saving blood transfusions for employees. Religious freedom means I get to choose whether or not to be religious and if so, how. It does not mean that I get to impose my religion on others. Paying for insurance is part of the way we compensate employees, even when they use their insurance in ways we don't agree with and are in contravention of our own personal beliefs. I think that it is stupid, dangerous and immoral to chain smoke, especially around children whose lungs it irreparably harms. But, I still have to pay for an employee to have access to lung scans, nicotine patches and oxygen tanks. I do not get to say that my religious beliefs, which include keeping bodies as healthy as possible, make it possible for me to withhold payment of this employee's insurance. Guaranteed coverage of contraception and reproductive health care has overwhelming benefits for society, including reducing unwanted pregnancies and abortions. By inserting your religious beliefs so egregiously into government legislation and my life, you are imposing your religious beliefs on me. You don't like mandated insurance coverage for basic reproductive health humans with two X chromosomes? I don't like being bred by state compulsion like Mr. England's farm animals. I have a MORAL OBJECTION to being treated like an animal and not a human. You do not have to use contraception, you do not have to use birth control. But, that does not mean you have any right to tell me that I cannot if I choose. That is my right.
Property, control, sex, reproduction, morality -- defining what is human. Sounds a lot like issues surrounding slavery 170 years ago. It is no surprise that of the 16 states that never repealed their anti-miscegenation laws, but rather had them overturned by the Supreme Court in 1967 more than half have introduced personhood bills. Like anti-miscegentation laws, anti-choice laws and bills that humiliate women, that treat them like beasts, that violate their bodily autonomy, are based on ignorance, entitlement and arrogance. These laws are not about "personhood" but "humanity." That women of color are massively, disproportionately affected by these assaults on their bodies and rights should also come as no surprise -- their rights and their bodies have always been the most vulnerable to assault.
This is about keeping women's wombs public and in other people's control -- the exact opposite of private and in their own control.
And, yes, I do know how complicated the ethics, bioethics and legal arguments related to these decisions are. You, apparently, do not. If you were truly concerned with sustaining life and improving its quality or in protecting innocent children, you would begin by having compassion and empathy for living, born people that require and deserve your attention. You feed them, educate them, lift them from poverty and misery. You do not compound these problems as you are with twisted interpretations of divine will. Only after that do you have the moral legitimacy to entertain the notion of talking to me about my uterus and what I do with it. By then, fully functional artificial wombs should be available and you can implant your own, since you are so fond of animal analogies, as was completed with this male mouse. What you are doing is disgraceful, hypocritical and morally corrupt.
And, no, I am not crazy. I am angry.
Mr. Santorum, Mr. England and Mr. Brownback and Mr. Perry you should consider not clinging so dangerously and perversely to the Agrarian Revolution ideas. Birth control and safe abortions are life-saving technologies. These archaic bills and laws, wasteful of time, money and lives, obscure an enduring and unchangeable truth: safe and effective family planning is the transformative social justice accomplishment of the 20th century. They will not go away. This is a revolution, too.
In an 1851 speech in which she argued for equal rights for women, Sojourner Truth said the following: "The poor men seems to be all in confusion, and don't know what to do. Why children, if you have woman's rights, give it to her and you will feel better. You will have your own rights, and they won't be so much trouble."
Do you, Terry England, Sam Brownback, Rick Santorum and friends even know who Sojourner Truth is?
This post has been updated since its original publication.
Follow Soraya Chemaly on Twitter: www.twitter.com/schemaly
In some states of the US the politicians care so much about the unborn (yet-to-be-voter or soldier -worker) that they rather see the carrier (mother) die. Next thing will probably be that it is only allowed to abort a female fetus and if the fetus is male and there is the slightest chance of survival, they rather see the mother die. Females are only to be seen as reproductive mammals.... cough cough....
Oh well, it does not matter when your voting rights has gone.
Welcome back to the stone age!
Just about everything a church tells us about the Bible is dead wrong. "Abortion is murder; the Bible says so." Now, how does that work with no mention of abortion anywhere in the Book to begin with?
Jesus Christ was God incarnate. Then why did Jesus clearly deny that idea in John 17:3? Read it and ask yourself who, according to Jesus is "the only true God?"
If you aren't saved, you'll go to Hell. Which Hell are we talking about here? Is it Sheol, which means the grave? or is it Hades, from Greek myth? or is it Gehenna, the valley outside Jerusalem where they burned their garbage? Those are the actual meanings of all three of the words translated as "hell" in the Bible. Anyone who can take any of those three seriously and literally is incapable of human thought, IMNSHO.
Wake up, people! It's all about butts in the pews and money in the collection plates and keeping people frightened enough to toe the line and stop asking embarrassing questions.
With love under will,
Bob, Adastra,
The Wizzard of Jacksonville
I haven't been proud to be an American in a long time.
The fetus is a part of them and yet they are at the mercy of the woman they've impregnated. They are trying to control and take away the power women have over their fetus, that scares them and I must admit I can understand their concern. How powerless they must feel having the fate of their offspring in someone else's hands (womb)! Gosh, can you imagine a world where women were cherished, loved, and respected for the service they provide, rather than controlled, maybe our divorce rate wouldn't be so extreme either.
It is incredibly sad, that the fetus (because it is a part of the man) has more rights than the woman who carries it. Women are still possessions and the way the government is handling women's reproductive rights proves it.
But, in a lot of ways the teaching makes sense.
For those who wish to learn more about the Church's teaching on contraception, an excellent commentary and further resource links can be found here:
http://allhands-ondeck.blogspot.com/2012/02/why-catholic-church-opposes.html
"In the case of abortions, where time is essential and providers may not be easy to find, delays in care are unconscionable. To enforce a waiting period violates the doctor’s ethical duty to provide appropriate, timely care and to avoid causing the patient unnecessary grief. The law forces us to violate our ethics. To force us to perform ultrasounds, transvaginal or otherwise, is battery
No procedure can be performed on a patient without their informed consent. To make another important procedure contingent on an unnecessary one is a clear violation of medical ethics.”
This is state mandated and approved rape.
I've had vaginal ultrasounds. For me the experience was painful.
What is to prevent a sonogram tech, who is rabidly pro-life, from being brutally rough and really hurting the woman undergoing the procedure? Where is the protection against that?
To force a woman to undergo this procedure for no good reason is an outrage.
That is one of the most intelligent and compassionate columns I have ever read on this subject.
My mother, who was born in 1931, once told me that she would not deliver her children in a Catholic hospital because if it came down to making the choice about who to save, she wasn't sure whether they would chose the baby or her. This was even more of a concern to her once she had her first child, since she had a responsibility to be there for that child, who already had a stake in the world. I'm not dishing Catholic people; I just want to point out that this idea seemed draconian to my mother, back in the 1960s, and now it seems this idea that the child's life is more valuable than a living breathing adult's is somehow being presented as a mainstream concept that we should all embrace.
I can't understand why--given that people who support the rights of women aren't passing laws that force women to have abortions or use birth control--why are people trying to force these ideologically based actions on all women? I won't force anything on anyone else. I expect the same respect from my lawmakers.
Because no one should have the right to deny women or girls of child-bearing age the right to choose. And if we as people in this nation do not have a guarantee of such a right for women to have, then we better damn well get politicians and leaders who will make such a law and never, ever even discuss or debate making womens' choice outlawed. That such an issue is not the place for states and the fed gov to make, or churches or activists, no one, except for the woman who goes to her doctor and should have the absolute, unchanging right to chose what she wants to do. Period, the end.
but but it's allll good for ya! now just shut up, make me a sammich, and wave the flag.
8D