Hello Middle Ages.
Apr. 18th, 2007 01:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
angharaThe United States Supreme Court has just put one more nail into the coffin of progress and the kind of thinking that signifies enlightenment.
It's always nice to know that I, as a woman, am part of a subspecies of the human race which ranks lower than a zygote, or a handful of cells with the potential to become something... in time... but is at its inception no more sentient than my liver. But it is still considered more important than the woman within whom it resides.
I would guess that anyone contemplating a third-trimester abortion is *in dire need of one* - perhaps an essential one in terms of the health of the woman herself. NOBODY waltzes up to a clinic at 28 weeks and announces, "Sorry, changed my mind, don't want to be pregnant any more". But the "not even if there is concern for the woman's health" language incorporated in this particular ruling makes it impossible to contemplate even an emergency option any more.
Already, especially in the more conservative States and often (although not exclusively) those in the Deep South, it is very difficult if not completely impossible to obtain a safe and legal termination. What this means, in practice, is that rich people who are in this predicament can travel to a different state or even a different country, if necessary, to deal with the problem. The ghetto sixteen-year-olds, the lower-income-group women who might have got pregnant as a result of rape, the women who already have five or six kids under the age of ten and are finding it hard to find the wherewithal to keep the entire family fed and clothed - those walking incubators are plumb out of luck.
First the CDC decides that all American women are pre-pregnant, and require "interventions" so that they are in a position to bear early and bear often. Now the Supreme Court decides that even if my life is in danger, a life forty years in the living and the making and the shaping, forty years of achievement and dreams and loving and being loved, that apparently counts for nothing, is vastly outweighed, by the spectre of a life not yet begun.
As far as I am concerned, the Government's fiat ends where my body begins. Whether or not I bear children, or when I do so, should be *my own choice*. Not subject to a vote by apparently addled middle aged men (IS there still another woman on the Supreme Court?) who seem to think that they are in charge of my life and how I live it.
Children should be born where they are wanted, and where they can be loved and cared for. Not just because they can be. Least of all because someone who is not their mother or father decides that they *have* to be.
It's always nice to know that I, as a woman, am part of a subspecies of the human race which ranks lower than a zygote, or a handful of cells with the potential to become something... in time... but is at its inception no more sentient than my liver. But it is still considered more important than the woman within whom it resides.
I would guess that anyone contemplating a third-trimester abortion is *in dire need of one* - perhaps an essential one in terms of the health of the woman herself. NOBODY waltzes up to a clinic at 28 weeks and announces, "Sorry, changed my mind, don't want to be pregnant any more". But the "not even if there is concern for the woman's health" language incorporated in this particular ruling makes it impossible to contemplate even an emergency option any more.
Already, especially in the more conservative States and often (although not exclusively) those in the Deep South, it is very difficult if not completely impossible to obtain a safe and legal termination. What this means, in practice, is that rich people who are in this predicament can travel to a different state or even a different country, if necessary, to deal with the problem. The ghetto sixteen-year-olds, the lower-income-group women who might have got pregnant as a result of rape, the women who already have five or six kids under the age of ten and are finding it hard to find the wherewithal to keep the entire family fed and clothed - those walking incubators are plumb out of luck.
First the CDC decides that all American women are pre-pregnant, and require "interventions" so that they are in a position to bear early and bear often. Now the Supreme Court decides that even if my life is in danger, a life forty years in the living and the making and the shaping, forty years of achievement and dreams and loving and being loved, that apparently counts for nothing, is vastly outweighed, by the spectre of a life not yet begun.
As far as I am concerned, the Government's fiat ends where my body begins. Whether or not I bear children, or when I do so, should be *my own choice*. Not subject to a vote by apparently addled middle aged men (IS there still another woman on the Supreme Court?) who seem to think that they are in charge of my life and how I live it.
Children should be born where they are wanted, and where they can be loved and cared for. Not just because they can be. Least of all because someone who is not their mother or father decides that they *have* to be.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-18 10:01 pm (UTC)We need her desperately to stay on that bench for as LONG AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE.
My only hope is that the next time a position on the court opens up, the sitting president will not be a criminally insane chimpanzee like the one we have now.
It frightens me, frankly, to think about how much ground American women are losing.
I agree with you completely, and it's nice to know that I'm being classified as an incubator rather than a person who has their own rights.
First the CDC decides that all American women are pre-pregnant, and require "interventions" so that they are in a position to bear early and bear often
The thing about that was that if the CDC had somebody working for it who knew what they were doing, they could've gotten what they wanted and still not offended women as a whole.
I think at it's heart, the "pre-pregnant" thing had good intentions, but hey, it's the CDC. Great with viruses, bad with people.
They could've avoided being so terribly offensive and medieval sounding if they'd said: "women who plan to become pregnant should be urged to take certain measures as early as possible, even before conception".
The difference being that it leave the choice up to the woman if she will become pregnant and what measures she wants to take.
*shakes head*
I am so, so scared for my country sometimes.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-18 10:10 pm (UTC)What was this?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-18 10:12 pm (UTC)in response to
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5506a1.htm