By Jacqueline S. Homan, author of Classism For Dimwits and Divine Right
People say that even though Ron Paul is anti-woman and against freedom where a woman’s human right over her own body is concerned, he is the lesser of two evils to vote for and that women’s access to birth control and safe legal abortion is less important than the “big picture.” I disagree.
Anyone who trivializes depriving women of our most basic and fundamental human right to have control over our own bodies, i.e. control over our own reproductive health, wellbeing and lives, with a false dichotomy should really know exactly what they’re using their unearned male privilege to impose on us women and the depth and degree of the harm inflicted on us because of that.
In pre-Roe and pre-Griswold America when a woman’s human rights over her own body concerning reproduction were a “states’ rights” issue, countless women who couldn’t/didn’t want to go through pregnancy and childbirth for whatever reason were denied the right to get birth control, not just denied the right to a safe legal abortion. Many died from botched back-alley and/or DIY abortions as a result.
Young girls barely beginning to menstruate that were impregnated as a result of rape/incest faced either death or permanent disfigurement and disability from being forced by states’ laws to endure pregnancy and childbirth because of being unable to get a safe legal abortion. They were usually shipped off out of state to unwed mothers’ homes (called “homes for naughty ladies”) where they were constantly slut-shamed until they gave birth (and forced to give away their babies that they suffered tremendously in carrying and bearing), and frequently abused by nurses and doctors by being denied pain relief during labor and delivery as additional punishment for not keeping their legs closed in the first place. (Because everyone knows that rape and the resulting unwanted pregnancies only happens to “undeserving whores”, right?)
Those who were lucky to be born into upper-middle class families that actually gave a damn about them and viewed them as human beings rather than as disposable reproductive chattel had to pay through the nose for illegal semi-safe abortions that often required cross-country travel to procure.
Others who were not so lucky were either pressed into prostitution to get the money to pay for a black market abortion or risk death by hemorrhage or sepsis from a DIY abortion at home, like my ex’s late grandmother who was one of those many casualties. She suffered horribly from uncontrollable bleeding, swelling and septic shock for about 5 days before she finally died. She was desperate to terminate her 11th pregnancy (after the exhausting experience of giving birth to 10 kids back-to-back) because she just couldn’t physically or emotionally handle enduring one more pregnancy and childbirth. She was only 26 years old.
The “merry widower” dumped all ten of his kids off on nearby farms, in orphanages, and on relatives and then went on to find a replacement brood mare wife. He never once bothered to try and get his first children back and never cared about how the loss of their mother impacted them. His attitude was not unusual; most men are STILL like that. Especially white men, who think the “natural order of things” is an order where women are their “property.” [If you doubt this, then why were miscegenation laws aimed solely at punishing white women whereby we could be murdered with impunity for committing the "crime" of bearing a black or Indian baby as a result of making love with a non-white man?]
Of course, telling this inconvenient truth gets women like me accused of being “man-haters” and “lesbians” who are “anti-American” and out to “destroy capitalism” and “kill children.”
Another grisly truth about pre-Roe and pre-Griswold America is the “package deal” of psychological terror and being sexually assaulted by underground “doctors” willing to provide this medical service for women that was all part and parcel of getting a semi-safe abortion when one had to travel to states like New York where abortions were not legal but not really prosecuted, either.
Anyone who thinks a woman’s fundamental human right over her own body is “nothing” or is something expendable that should somehow be thrown under the bus in lieu of “more important issues” is obligated to know and fully understand EXACTLY what it is that they are advocating. Fuck the sugar-coated bullshit. And fuck you too if your delicate sensibilities are offended by the grisly truth of what unearned male privilege has really cost women and girls, and ultimately the whole planet. Women’s rights ARE human rights!
Women are people — not property. We are not “prizes” to be seized as war spoils (like in the Ron Paul/libertarian wet dream of “free market” Somalia), nor child chattel “brides” to be awarded to the highest male bidder in too many parts of the world that has been infested by the disease of patriarchy.
http://www.lifeandlibertyforwomen.org/gerri_twerdy_santoro.html
Tags: abortion, anti-woman, human rights, pro-choice, Ron Paul, womens rights
December 30, 2011 at 6:24 am |
Very well and powerfully written Jacqueline, although I haven’t been following the candidates closely enough yet to know about Paul’s position on abortion. I *do* have a strong perception that he’s being deliberately ignored and trounced by the media and anti-Paul folks though so if you haven’t already done so you might want double check on exactly what his stand is.
Your male privilege observations are also well stated, although I think the problem is not as bad in today’s America as it is in a lot of other countries or even here in the past. Yes, there’s a lot more than we see and normally think about and your writing helps a lot to expose that, but I think women like you have done a lot over the last 40 years to change things.
Keep writing and fighting in the New Year!
- Michael
December 31, 2011 at 1:04 pm |
Actually Michael, you’re wrong. Dead wrong. Over the last 20 years the anti-woman, Rapists’ Rights bowel movement has done a hell of a lot to turn back the clock and they’ve succeeded.
There are “conscience clause” laws that now exist in every state, whereby pharmacists and ER staff can refuse to not only dispense Plan B to rape victims brought into emergency rooms, but also pharmacies who refuse to carry any prescription birth control for women. In several rural flyover states, Planned Parenthood has had to close its doors due to government defunding of Title X, leaving women in places like Indiana, Idaho and many other areas without ANY access to reliable contraception — disproportionately harming POOR women who had no alternative outside of Planned Parenthood for getting reliable contraception.
Where I live in Erie, PA, the closest Planned Parenthood clinic to me is 90+ miles away in Cleveland, OH or Buffalo, NY. Two women within the past month were criminally prosecuted for resorting to early term DIY abortions because of lack of any other option. One was out in Idaho, if I’m not mistaken. She was prosecuted for ordering RU-486 online and taking it within the privacy of her home. The second woman was in New York; she couldn’t afford an early term abortion when her birth control failed so she resorted to drinking some sort of special tea (not specified) to bring on a miscarriage.
Just this past week, Pennsylvania lawmakers joined the rest of the red state cockroach conservative misogyny brigade in enacting backdoor prohibitions through unreasonable clinic regulations that have NOTHING to do with patient safety and health. The result: every existing abortion provider in Pennsylvania will have to close their doors. Waiting in the wings is a “fetal personhood” law that will also criminalize the Pill, the Depo shot, Plan B, and the IUD.
Last year, a 10 yr old rape/incest victim who got pregnant as a result was denied the right to an abortion by her “pro-life” court-appointed guardians and the judge here in western Pennsylvania. No follow-up was conducted to report anything on the permanent damage to her body, or psyche, that being forced to carry that pregnancy to term has had on her.
So don’t mansplain to me how things are better for women now versus 40 years ago when we’re already back 40 years ago with women’s human rights.
December 31, 2011 at 9:34 am |
Thanks for the great website and info with which to fight the anti-choice fanatics. You stories of the suffering of women under the Neanderthal rule of patriarchy were moving and stirred me to great anger on behalf of women and their reproductive rights and freedom. In the end, abortion is a human rights issue. It is also a freedom issue. Too bad the hypocrites who scream the loudest about freedom care not for the freedom of women to make their own medical decisions!
January 1, 2012 at 10:42 am |
Thank you, Jacqueline, for royally putting that male poster in his place! Misogyny is alive and well when we have a country that breeds monsters like Warren Jeffs and the FLDS cult that uses women and children like sperm receptacles while continuing their hatred for generations. We have been put back at least fifty years of all the past accomplishments we THOUGHT we’d achieved in this country! No, we have a most mighty struggle ahead and the public must be educated in the ways you have depicted. Carry on.