I'm getting pretty tired of having a target on my back when it comes to national policy about women's health.
I know, I know, there are those ostriches who claim that there is no war on women. "Why, whatever do you mean, Char?"
I'm talking about our basic rights, as women, to control our bodies, to make decision about our health, in consultation with our doctors, which affect our health. I'm talking about being treated equally in the workplace.
I'm particularly upset about the poor girl who died because they discovered cancer in her body but she couldn't get chemo because she was pregnant and it might harm the fetus. (BTW, the fetus died when she did so they saved neither person.)
Come again??? Let me repeat that concept...her life was devalued over the value of a proto-human. I wonder what the value of a proto-human is who ends up being born female. The second she's born, she has less value than when she lived in the womb. A rational baby would just stay put, getting sustenance from her host/mom until at least the age of majority, when she might be able to vote people out of office who don't value her worth.
I'm inspired to take on this issue after last week's dumb ass remarks by Rep. Todd Akin, the idiot who somehow managed to wrangle a position on the "Science committee" of the august House of Representatives of the most advance nation in the history of our world. (He probably has some really choice views on evolution as well.)
He actually believes (although he now denies it) that a woman's body has super magical properties by which her magical glands secrete super magical chemistry which allows her to control which sperm get in and which sperm don't. The logical extension of this belief is, if you got pregnant, then you must not have been raped. You must secretly have wanted it, because if it were "legitimate" rape, your magical secretions would have kicked in. Rep. Akin, you are so full of it!
If women actually had that power of "conception/not conception", don't you think the poor women, who can't afford expensive fertility treatments, would have a talk with her super magical glands and tell these magical glands: "Look, fellas, my husband and I would kinda like to have kids, so you guys allow his sperm in, okay?"
The ultra-sad part of this very sad story about the gullibility and ignorance of one of our supposed smart politicians is, he not only believes this hokum, enough of his constituents believe this hokum to send him money. All I can say is, "I'm glad you're not my ob/gyn."
I guess Akin didn't look at the stats too closely, 'cause 32,000 women in the US get pregnant every year due to rape. And don't get me started on the definitions of "rape", "legitimate rape" and, the term Akin used in his apology of sorts, "forcible rape".
Evidently, according to some in our Congress, women should just "lie back and enjoy it" when raped...maybe that's the way to make the super-magical glands secrete whatever it is that they secrete to ward off unwanted sperm.
Oh, and another evidence of the war on women is the utter insanity of being against abortion and also against women's access to birth control. These folks do realize, don't they, that they are causing the need for more access to abortions, not less?
Planned Parenthood, one of the finest medical entities in the country, whose services are provided to all women, regardless of their ability to pay, is the big buggaboo, evidently. The great state of North Carolina's legislature just voted to defund PP, bless their little minds. Never mind PP's fertility counseling, their cancer screenings, their health services. Never mind that they have talked women out of abortions when they think the woman is responding to pressures from boyfriends, husbands, parents, instead of listening to their own hearts.
Let us never forget that, despite serious race issues in this country, black men got the right to vote 50 years before women, white or black, got it. Let's not forget that the ERA died an ignominious death at the hands of state legislators who, in at least one case, voted against his own constituents.
Don't let us forget that women just got the right to sue employers for equal pay, not the right to actual equal pay. And that "right" was granted in 2009. As in, in the 21st century. As in, in a country which isn't waging war against women. Right.
Let's not forget that when Senators and House members (most of whom are male, God love 'em) vote to slash social welfare programs like WIC, school lunch programs, birth control, etc. they are doing so on the backs of women. Evidently, they are more interested in the fetus not being aborted than they are of actually feeding it in utero and being born healthy.
(Did you know that, when birth control restrictions were placed in the Health Care Affordability Act, they were written by a group of Catholic bishops, not our legislators?) Let's never forget that when women demand access to birth control, they are called sluts and worse.
So, yeah, I've got a target on my back.
