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
