Editor:
I know that what is happening in Texas is deeply distressing, but I have a hard time summoning shock or outrage at this point. I have been grimly anticipating the erosion of women’s reproductive rights ever since McConnell stole Scalia’s seat in 2016 and we handed the Federalist Society Kennedy’s and Ginsburg’s seats by allowing Trump to beat Hillary that same year.
For me, that is when the death knell for #RoeVWade rang across the land. That’s when women began stockpiling Plan B and trying to make plans to have access to Depo-Provera (the three month birth control shot) so that they could avoid unwanted pregnancy if abortion clinics and Planned Parenthood are outlawed in their area. That is when other women and I began joking about running away to Canada before our uteruses officially became public property.
Sadly, as was the case before Roe v. Wade, wealthy and privileged women and girls will always be able to travel to Canada, Europe, or anywhere else in the world to access discreet abortions if they need to end a pregnancy. It will be poor women and other people who can get pregnant whose bodies will no longer belong to them for nine months if a stray spermatozoa manages to invade their birth control measures. It will be them who suffer permanent health consequences or even potentially death because their right to access reproductive healthcare has been effectively nixed.
Honestly, though, when have our uteruses ever NOT been public property while we are of childbearing age, at least to some extent? I am subject to a higher premium on my health insurance because I am a fertile woman of childbearing age. Seriously, even the insurance companies are allowed to impose a penalty on me because of my uterus. And they will not stop monitoring the status of my fertility until I hit menopause and my uterus is no longer considered a public asset and/or liability.
I don’t think people on the Left ever truly understood the intense focus and discipline of the people on the Right who want to curtail access to abortion and birth control. There is actually a law school that was founded for the sole reason for training law students to be judges with the ultimate intent of placing Catholics on the Supreme Court.
American women, girls, and other people with uteruses have been in the crosshairs of a gigantic, powerful, intellectual brilliant, and extremely well funded movement that is willing to kill people to reassert dominance over us. Perhaps we never stood a chance with this radical notion that our bodies belong to us and not our patriarchal society. It just breaks my heart that young people growing up in the generations to come won’t know what it is like to be free. We lost the war. We failed them. I’m so sorry for the pain, the misery, the botched abortions that end in permanent injury or death that they will endure.
Regards,
Jenna Nand
Edmonds
Thank you Jenna for this. I am old enough to remember the carnage that back street abortions caused. Abortion will not go away no matter how many laws are passed or how many greedy snitches there are to tell on you. And of course, once again, the men get a pass.
It is terrifying. All of the stories about girls falling downstairs, asking their friends to smash bricks or frying pans into their midsection, hemorrhaging to death after attempting an at-home wire-hanger abortions, it’s all been haunting me for days.
Have you ever read a detailed account of Savita’s torturous death in Ireland? She lay in that hospital bed for days, getting weaker and weaker, while the doctors refused to remove the non-viable fetus from her body until it rotted to the point that sepsis entered her bloodstream and killed her. Savita and her husband begged for the doctors to save her life, but they responded that they legally couldn’t because “Ireland is a Catholic nation.”
I think the supreme court essentially said (on the Texas law): Try it at the lower courts before you come to us. Nothing to do with the content. Just the process of challenging laws.
Time will tell where this ends up.
We haven’t lost the war. It’s a setback. I worked in a women’s clinic a number of years ago and I had helped hundreds if not thousands of women who had to make some tough choices. I suppose if I lived in Texas and was still doing this kind of work I could possibly be charged. Although it was always the patient’s decision. I just gave her the facts and her options. I would do the same today if a woman came to me asking for help.
I am a woman on the Left and a Catholic. We know what’s happening. We’ve always known. We are women first and will never give up the fight.
Thank you, Alison, your work has save lives.
I felt awkward about including a reference to Ave Maria Law School, but it honestly was founded to be a Catholic law school and train law students to join the judiciary, with hopes that one of them would be appointed to the Supreme Court.
There are so many brilliant and brave Catholic women, especially many of the nuns, who are fighting on the ground to protect women and children in this fight for bodily autonomy. May God bless them and their work.
Very well said, thank you Jenna. It’s an outrage.
Jenna-
So beautifully stated. When will we men wake up and protect women’s reproductive rights? Share the responsibilities of family planning!
Vasectomies anyone?
Ed Gordon
With all due respect Mr. Gordon, it is not “We men”. Your point is well taken however, I do not want to be lumped in with men who do not respect and stand at the side our Females. I am constantly in awe of the power of Women and will continually defend their right to have total say over their bodies. Please do not include ALL men in this. There absolutely are old, rich, white men in powerful positions that strip women of their rights as well as some men who only think of their own desires, but I can assure you that the overwhelming majority of men support Women’s rights and will stand beside Women in their fight to be free and equal Human Beings.
A country doctor way back in the 1930’s performed an abortion on my Grandmother because it was the Depression and there were already six mouths to feed everyday and she was highly distraught and about to have a breakdown over it all. Was it legal? No. Was it the right thing to do to save and protect an already hard pressed farm family? Yes, in my opinion.
These decisions should be between a woman and her health provider, not controlled by a tax exempt religious organization like the Catholic Church; sticking it’s collective nose into non-believers personal and legal lives. The Church certainly has the right to tell it’s devout members that if they get an abortion they are committing murder and going to Hell, but they shouldn’t have the right to control the laws regarding abortion for everyone in the country. The results of their meddling, is people with money ( even many in the Catholic Church) will get their abortions from competent practitioners and the poor women will get theirs from the incompetent and unskilled spending money they can’t afford for bad medical care. The law of unintended consequences will prevail as usual.
Jenna –
So well said. I couldn’t agree more. Thank you!
Abbie Modjeska
Thank you, Jenna, for telling it like it is. We pretend to be an an enlightened society, but this horror that was allowed by the old men (and one woman) on the court demonstrates that we are not. It says that men are free in the US, but women are not; to think otherwise, is foolhardy. We must, and will, fight this travesty.
Are comments that are more centrist permitted here?
Yes they are
Matt, what is the “centrist” opinion regarding the Texas anti-abortion legislation? Is anyone concerned about the precedent involved? Moving forbidden behavior away from criminal law into civil law~ enforced by vigilantes?
I’m in agreement with the attack against women’s rights and additionally I would like to suggest the reason for the attack. These are my opinions based on what I see are important to the current Republican Party.
They are concerned about immigration, they believe the cultures of these groups encourages large families. These families will not represent northern European cultures and the current culture they know will disappear.
There will be some difficulties initially, but given time we will once again become the melting pot which includes everyone. Living here, watching TV, interacting with their computers this will cause this to happen at a faster rate.
There are many things to be gained by learning to appreciate what is added to our culture.
Fact check – the statement that insurance companies set medical premium by gender is incorrect. Since the implantation of the ACA all rates are unisex. Rates are based on age, the county in which you reside, (not all plans are offered in all counties), and if you are a smoker.
Check it out for yourself at https://www.wahealthplanfinder.org/ Choose, browse for plan, enter your zip code age and gender. If you add more info, it will just take you into the weeds, these basics with verify the rating methodology.
Then choose show plans, memorize a couple of the premiums displayed. Choose to edit your info, and you can then change your gender and shop again. Compare these rates to the you had for the other gender. They will be the same. Again, choose to edit your information and change your age by 10 years. Depending on if your added or subtracted 10 years, the premium will go up or down.
The insurance industry gets blamed for a lot of things, but this isn’t one of them.
When I founded my small business in 2015, a private insurance broker contacted me and offered me a plan with a startlingly high rate. He explained that the rate was driven by my age and gender. It was my understanding, based on that conversation, that the insurance companies have found ways to get around the Obamacare prohibition on charging women more than men for the same healthcare coverage. However, I am not a healthcare attorney, and this is not my area practice, so I have no expertise on this subject and would have to do additional research
Do any of you pro people watch children being torn apart or burned to death? Or in some states being killed after they are born. Your anger over not killing children is stunning..
And the Texas law says nothing again about the male involved! I agree that it is men in power controlling our society, a patriarchal society… and the women who go along. Ed, how about castration for rapes? How about rounding up the “father” under the Texas law! As someone I read recently said “Men will never be pregnant or faced with the decision many women face, nor will you.” My body is my own.
My understanding is that the goal here is to gin up the base, but as an adamant pro-choice male, who strongly supports the right of women to choose, and the legal precedents. I suggest toning down the male bashing, and anti-Catholicism bigotry. Our current president is a Catholic who supports the right of women to choose let’s remember.
As a person without a uterus, let me say that I am in agreement with most comments here, in particular that a woman’s decision to have, or not to have, an abortion is none of my – or your – business. That decision should be left to her, her family, and her health care provider. The recent Texas legislation is a culmination of decades of efforts by religious zealots to impose their beliefs on the general population, in particular, females. Sadly, those beliefs find purchase in legislatures composed largely of conservative white males. The phrase “the American Taliban” – while perhaps overwrought – comes to mind. Ironically the Texas law does absolutely nothing to address the need or desire of women to have abortions – it makes them pariahs, will result in more women having abortions using unsafe methods, and creates a vigilante mentality that encourages people to rat out their friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens. Let’s not forget that the majority of Americans – as is the case with most western societies – believe that abortion, with certain restrictions, should be accessible, safe, and legal. We must keep fighting to uphold that standard.
Killing human fetuses is immoral domestic violence of the first order.
What is moral about making a 13 year old female child carry and birth another child as a result of being raped by her own father? The Texas law makes it illegal for this 13 year old to abort the child anytime after six weeks when it would be highly unlikely she even knew she was pregnant. She most likely would only know she had been raped by her father. On top of that the Texas law would encourage the rapist father to file civil charges against his own daughter’s action and any other people involved in seeking the illegal, after six weeks, abortion. This isn’t just about what is moral or immoral; it is about a very bad law that will have unintentional consequences if allowed to stand. What is moral about punishing a woman for the mere fact that her body is designed to reproduce the species? That will be the true result of allowing this law to stand in many, if not most, cases.
I’m not anti Catholic Church in terms of what they want to believe and why. That’s their business and their followers should follow their faith, if they choose to do so. In fact I used to be a member of the church. For personal reasons I no longer choose to be a member or contribute to most of their causes. That doesn’t make me an “anti Catholic bigot.” It makes me irritated with the way many members of the all male Clergy have violated their vows in how they treat children and female members and I chose to vote with my feet and my pocket book which is my right under the doctrine of religious freedom in America.
I don’t want every member of the Supreme Court to be of the Catholic faith and interpreting our laws based on their religious views any more than I want them all to be Protestants, Jews or Muslims. I just want their religious views out of the equation. The last three appointees danced around the issue of abortion during their confirmation hearings and used the first opportunity to support bad law in Texas to begin to undermine the legal precedents around the issue of abortion. I think they will live to regret the backlash on this and the political fall out. I think most people in America don’t particularly like the idea of abortion being used as a form of birth control but they also don’t want it to be illegal in all cases and prefer the decisions to be made in medical facilities, not Court rooms.
Seems like many commenting on this thread want to peg the pro-life movement solely on those who believe in God, but that is not the case.
https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2017/10/19/atheists-case-against-abortion-respect-human-rights
The $10,000 bounty to anyone who reports someone considering an abortion is especially troubling. There is no bounty for reporting rapists, murderers or drug dealers but reporting women who don’t feel ready to take on another mouth to feed are bounty worthy. And if the government requires women to carry to term, the government should pay for days when women have morning sickness, preeclampsia, other medical complications and recovery from childbirth.
whoa, the pro abortion advocates got their panties in a twist over a state making a decision in regards to abortion.
I do have to hand it to you Ray, you are definitely a master of simplification and you stick to your guns. Don’t much agree with you about anything; but I do admire your tenacity, being kind of a tenacious and opinionated old coot myself. It’s a tough old world and getting tougher, I’m afraid. I just hope and pray none of this gets out of hand to the point of more and harsher violence. I think our society has become a powder keg, getting ready to go off the rails, if we don’t figure out some ways to actually get along with each other.
Mother Teresa won the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize. In her acceptance to world dignitaries, she shared that abortion is the greatest destroyer of peace and that the unborn child was the greatest gift from God. Forty-two years later and the world is less peaceful than ever. Isn’t it about time we actually listen to and act her words? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I36Nistc9wE