WTF?!! (Warning - ranty!!)
This isn't usually the kind of thing I post on my LJ (and I know, I haven't updated here for ages) but this is seriously weighing on my mind atm and I just need to get these thoughts down. So feel free to ignore if you want... but really you shouldn't, because this is scary shit... the kid of scary shit we should all be really angry about.
Following a discussion on the parenting website I hang about on, itself prompted by Sarah Silverman's "quickie aborsh" tweet (and all kudos to SS because until her tweet prompted this discussion, I had no idea this shit was going on!), I am just stunned and appalled at the unprecedented regression of women's rights being actively pursued by right-wing conservative Republicans in America right now.
This not only includes an active campaign by Presidential hopefuls to repeal Roe vs Wade, which would effectively make abortion illegal for women in the US, but also "personhood" laws that are being proposed - or indeed have already been passed - in several states. Laws that state that life begins at conception, laws that confer "personhood" rights on an embryo as soon as it has a detectable heartbeat (which happens at around 6 weeks, often before a woman even knows she's pregnant") and which equate terminating a pregnancy to child homicide. Laws which are so broadly worded that they could be used to ban abortion under ANY circumstances - even rape, even for medical reasons (e.g. the baby being found to have a medical condition classed as "incompatible with life" - meaning even if they survived the birth they would die very soon after, probably in a lot of pain), even if the life of the mother is at risk - which could be used to prevent treatment of ectopic pregnancies (even though the foetus has no chance of survival and the mother could die if not treated), to prevent women having life-saving cancer treatments, to ban IVF, to even ban contraception such as the hormonal pill or IUDs, laws which in fact are so broadly worded that they could even potentially be used to classify a natural miscarriage as unintentional manslaughter!
These laws basically put the rights of a small bundle of cells above those of a fully-grown, thinking, functioning woman. They serve to completely remove a woman's autonomy over her own body and her right to make her own decisions about reproduction. They are a huge step backwards in terms of women's rights and it just boggles my mind that this is happening right now in such a large, supposedly progressive Western civilisation! If laws like this were being passed in third world countries (and indeed, laws like this - and worse - do exist in many countries) we'd be up in arms over it, claiming human rights abuses!
The implications are horrendous. What comes next in the conservatives' anti-women agenda? A woman's property becoming her husband's upon marriage? Disenfranchisement of women? Denial of education to women? Let's face it, these people think women should be barefoot and pregnant and chained to the kitchen sink and they are actually putting in place legislation to make this happen! I would hate to be a woman in America right now. Honestly, just thinking about the implications of these laws sickens me.
And the awful thing is that there's nothing I can do about it. Because Representatives in the US don't care about what some woman in the UK thinks about all this... or even a whole bunch of women in the UK. Because we don't vote for them, so we have no influence on them or how they vote.
So all I can do is beg anyone reading this rant who IS in America and does have a voice on this matter to please use it - please please please, for the sake of women everywhere and the men who love them, write to your Representative, protest these laws, make it clear that you oppose these personhood laws and their implications for women's rights over their own body!
P.S. This is genuinely not meant to offend anyone who is pro-life and believes that life begins at conception... for me, this is not about an abortion debate or about when life begins, it's about the systematic degradation and removal of women's autonomy and rights by, let's face it, primarily male politicians.
Following a discussion on the parenting website I hang about on, itself prompted by Sarah Silverman's "quickie aborsh" tweet (and all kudos to SS because until her tweet prompted this discussion, I had no idea this shit was going on!), I am just stunned and appalled at the unprecedented regression of women's rights being actively pursued by right-wing conservative Republicans in America right now.
This not only includes an active campaign by Presidential hopefuls to repeal Roe vs Wade, which would effectively make abortion illegal for women in the US, but also "personhood" laws that are being proposed - or indeed have already been passed - in several states. Laws that state that life begins at conception, laws that confer "personhood" rights on an embryo as soon as it has a detectable heartbeat (which happens at around 6 weeks, often before a woman even knows she's pregnant") and which equate terminating a pregnancy to child homicide. Laws which are so broadly worded that they could be used to ban abortion under ANY circumstances - even rape, even for medical reasons (e.g. the baby being found to have a medical condition classed as "incompatible with life" - meaning even if they survived the birth they would die very soon after, probably in a lot of pain), even if the life of the mother is at risk - which could be used to prevent treatment of ectopic pregnancies (even though the foetus has no chance of survival and the mother could die if not treated), to prevent women having life-saving cancer treatments, to ban IVF, to even ban contraception such as the hormonal pill or IUDs, laws which in fact are so broadly worded that they could even potentially be used to classify a natural miscarriage as unintentional manslaughter!
These laws basically put the rights of a small bundle of cells above those of a fully-grown, thinking, functioning woman. They serve to completely remove a woman's autonomy over her own body and her right to make her own decisions about reproduction. They are a huge step backwards in terms of women's rights and it just boggles my mind that this is happening right now in such a large, supposedly progressive Western civilisation! If laws like this were being passed in third world countries (and indeed, laws like this - and worse - do exist in many countries) we'd be up in arms over it, claiming human rights abuses!
The implications are horrendous. What comes next in the conservatives' anti-women agenda? A woman's property becoming her husband's upon marriage? Disenfranchisement of women? Denial of education to women? Let's face it, these people think women should be barefoot and pregnant and chained to the kitchen sink and they are actually putting in place legislation to make this happen! I would hate to be a woman in America right now. Honestly, just thinking about the implications of these laws sickens me.
And the awful thing is that there's nothing I can do about it. Because Representatives in the US don't care about what some woman in the UK thinks about all this... or even a whole bunch of women in the UK. Because we don't vote for them, so we have no influence on them or how they vote.
So all I can do is beg anyone reading this rant who IS in America and does have a voice on this matter to please use it - please please please, for the sake of women everywhere and the men who love them, write to your Representative, protest these laws, make it clear that you oppose these personhood laws and their implications for women's rights over their own body!
P.S. This is genuinely not meant to offend anyone who is pro-life and believes that life begins at conception... for me, this is not about an abortion debate or about when life begins, it's about the systematic degradation and removal of women's autonomy and rights by, let's face it, primarily male politicians.