Today I am outraged, I must say.
You’ve heard about the fight on the hill regarding forced rape as opposed to…um, actually, I’m not sure what, because the proponents made no sense, as well as hospitals being allowed to deny you an abortion even if it endangered your life (ectopic pregnancy anyone). And now they are trying to pull the funding from Planned Parenthood.
Then there’s South Dakota’s insanity. Guess what? If some guy is beating the hell out of me I can legally defend myself whether I am pregnant or not, and I can already use lethal force if I believe my life to be in danger. If some one is repeatedly kicking you in the stomach it counts, because that is where most of your internal organs live and you can die from the rupturing of any of them.
And the unions Wisconsin is targeting most heavily? Teachers and nurses, the professions that are traditionally held by women and in which women are still the majority.
In my home state they’d like to change the legal term from rape victim to rape accuser- cuz you know us womens, we just go around looking for opportunities to cry rape, it’s the defendant who is the real victim in these things, right?
They’d also like to roll back funding for domestic abuse victims.
The really infuriating move here, though, is HB 1. Let’s see, they’d like to turn over Roe v Wade within the state of Georgia, they’d like to outlaw birth control, they’d like to investigate every miscarriage to determine whether it was intentional and therefore murder. Wait, wtf? Attempts to overturn Roe v Wade are par for the course round these here parts. What infuriates me is a) the birth control thing and b) the miscarriage thing.
Even if you stipulate that life begins at conception- which I do not believe, by the way- birth control is just lowering the odds of that conception taking place (as a woman who once became pregnant on the pill I can assure you that no pill will thwart the intentions of God, however you define God). In order to class it as illegal by their own logic you would actually have to stipulate that life begins before conception, and if we are going to wander into that territory every man is going to have undergo sperm screenings to ensure his sperm are swimmers, and if not there will have to be penalties for engaging in behavior that is detrimental to them. And then we end up in Monty Python’s territory.
As to miscarriage, these idiots need to read an embryology 101 textbook, which will inform them that every single woman has dozens of miscarriages she is not even aware of through out her life time- something like seven out of ten conceptions end in spontaneous abortion within the first month. So what, I have to go in every two weeks for a pregnancy test and if I test positive one week and negative the next you are going to haul me in for an investigation? What exactly would constitute a prosecutable action? Heavy exercise? Bad genes? Too much stress? WTF? That’s not even going into how it feels for a woman to have a miscarriage later in her pregnancy and the grief that ensues. You are going to compound it with intrusive questioning into every aspect of her life? What exactly are you going do if it turns out she had a glass of wine before she knew? Or couldn’t afford pre-natal vitamins? Are you going to prosecute a grieving woman for murder over that?
The sheer impracticality of these ideas will mean that, if any of this bill gets through, the most objectionable will probably be struck out. I don’t think they are even really trying to pass it for real, they are making a statement. They probably think the statement they are making is that they have good-old-fashioned-Christian-morals, and the thought of all those dead unborn keeps them up at night because they are just that compassionate and concerned with human life. The message I am getting however is that my state legislature not only considers me “less than” and subject to the type of control that violates habeas corpus just because I have a uterus, but that I am loathed, I am hated, and every opportunity is being sought to insult and bully me. However, since that kind of hatred is only inspired by fear I actually feel rather powerful- apparently me and my uterus are so much of a threat that my state legislature has to try and attack me on every available front.
Phew. Glad I got that off my chest. I will have another chance to make my feeling known on Saturday February 26th at noon, and you might too! Check here.
There are so many more arguments against these proposals. But I think I will leave you with:
“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.” -Gandhi
“Your right to swing your fist stops at my nose.” -Ben Franklin
Update: The comments on RHReality’s post about this make me feel a little better (because they see what insanity it is) and it pleases me that RHReality posted about it, as I don’t see nearly the coverage on it as I do on South Dakota’s equally disgusting maneuvers.
This bill is born of ignorance … thank you GA school systems…
because it is obvious that this elected bozo, for lack of a more honest term, knows nothing about biology, obstetrics and gynecology, reproduction as it occurs in human females, and he has shite from brains with regard to the emotional state many, many women are in after a miscarriage. I doubt this bill will pass. GA is too broke to fund a uterine police force, or to incarcerate all the women who have miscarriages, (1 in 5 pregnancies?) but the fact that it is even being written in a serious manner tells us a lot about how legislators in general, and those in this state in particular, view women. We have no value, and therefore should have no rights, to our own bodies, to the extent that if you miscarry you must be investigated, for surely you are up to no good. This is a point of view of the feminine that sees the rights of the fetus superseding the rights of the woman In. All. Circumstances. All of the “isms” are currently dancing about right before our eyes.