I was in Springfield, Illinois, that day in the eighties-some when a cabal of men in the state Capitol voted against the Equal Rights Amendment and effectively killed it. Like they just did not believe that women were people, as in “equal in their humanity” with men.
Today June 24, 2022, that collusion of corruption of (can’t call most of them “justices” because there is nothing just about denying women bodily (and personal, and professional, and economic) self determination. And effing shite, pregnancy and childbirth are in themselves difficult, possibly life threatening for women, now even teens for effing sake, are to endure that trauma even if rape or incest is the cause.
(To quote Elizabeth Warren). “We have six extremist justices (one creepy rapist and one sexual harasser, quoting myself) on the United States Supreme Court who have decided that their moral and religous values should be imposed on the rest of America (sorry, not sorry, there’s nothing either moral or religious, quoting myself again, and won’t name it with value, because it has none). “This is not what America wants.” Non-fake data shows it is not what America wants.
And the effect of this decision, we know, hits hardest women of color and those with limited economic means.
Some states (including my sane home state of Illinois, with its sane Governor Pritzker) have made medically safe abortion still legal, and already are beginning to set up providers’ and patients’ resources on the state borders so that the travel and medical expenses for women close enough to a sane state might be able to get the care they need.
Sane people, and the organizations they have set up, are making available charitable resources to provide financial help for women who desperately need, but cannot afford, to get to a place where they can access safe reproductive medical care.
But next the really extremists will be going at in-home pregnancy options (abortion pills, even more needed now for women without the funds to travel to a state where they can attain medical services).
And then, then, after that some of the black-robed idiots think they might “quote” “rule” on contraception (which if you perverse black-robed idiots don’t get, helps to reduce abortions and effing shite, is a private health matter anyway).
You do not belong in women’s medical records, their bedrooms, their bathrooms. Or those of anyone else.
Never seen, in my lifetime, any black-robed judgements on men who don’t pay child support or otherwise betray their female partners and children or much about domestic violence where non-fake data suggests women are way more victims than perpetrators. There’s a word for that and it is misogyny. There’s a pretty substantial element of racism in it too.
“Witch Trials.”
The film Suffragette, awfully painful to see in a theatre what those women more than a century ago had to endure so that women my age, and younger, could take ours/their rights for granted. Personally, I have been inspired and supported by strong women a little older than me and want myself and my generation of women to be the best possible models and fighters so that today’s young women can live with freedom and empowerment over their (underscore “their”) lives.
How right, and truly scary, Margaret Atwood (Handmaid’s Tale) was. Prescient. To be living in it, though, I never expected in my lifetime.
Admiring the pro-choice protestors, of all ages and genders, who clogged up downtown Austin (and a lot of other places) last weekend, and will keep it up, (to quote Gandolf), “this shall not stand.” I have a bit crazy summer but will pitch in as soon as and how I can.
(Digression. Don’t get me started on guns. I hate guns. That will be another post, more on the abject hypocrisy of some of the black robes.) The NRA is losing some of its political purchase power so there’s that. Yet more people here than in any civilized nation have their idiot guns, with unfathomably tragic and sometimes just stupid, mindless consequences. And the black robes are just with fine with that. Value life? Value mass shooting, homicide, suicide, domestic violence (don’t get me started on hunting for sport)…but not a woman’s knowledge that she does not have the resources…which American policy choices do not support…to bring into this crazy world a baby, a child, a valuable life.
What kind of dsytopia have a minority of apes created.
Dayna Finet 