Link to the most profound entry I have read in a Very Long Time...
For those of you on my Flist, but who have not friended naamah_darling (yet), and who have the potential to be affected by the United States Department of Health and Human Services proposal to classify contraception as abortion - I implore you to go and read her post on the topic, and to re-post/link to this entry in your own journals/spread the word however you can.
She says what I feel much more eloquently than I ever could.
Currently I do not live in the US. I am not going to be directly affected by this proposal unless Australia (by virtue of our political leaders living in Bush's arse pocket and our not-so-slowly becoming the 51st (52nd?) state) goes down the same path - of kowtowing to the fundamentalists - but we know how these things have a ripple effect, and in time it could quite forseeably spread to Australia, the UK and other western countries who currently give a woman at least some semblance of power over her own reproductive decisions, her own body, her own destiny.
It must be stopped.
If contraception is reclassified as an abortifacient - and therefore becomes either illegal or incredibly hard to obtain, the call for herbal abortifacients will skyrocket - along with the associated deaths from backyard abortions and the herbs used (which are often toxic to the pregnant woman as well as the unwanted pregnancy) - something the de-criminalisation of abortion and the ease of access to contraception virtually halted.
But it is more than the contraception/abortion debate. It is absolutely the dis-empowering of women all over again, and it cannot be allowed to happen. It needs to be stopped. And it needs to be stopped NOW.
Since all I can do from here is raise awareness - this is what I am doing...
She says what I feel much more eloquently than I ever could.
Currently I do not live in the US. I am not going to be directly affected by this proposal unless Australia (by virtue of our political leaders living in Bush's arse pocket and our not-so-slowly becoming the 51st (52nd?) state) goes down the same path - of kowtowing to the fundamentalists - but we know how these things have a ripple effect, and in time it could quite forseeably spread to Australia, the UK and other western countries who currently give a woman at least some semblance of power over her own reproductive decisions, her own body, her own destiny.
It must be stopped.
If contraception is reclassified as an abortifacient - and therefore becomes either illegal or incredibly hard to obtain, the call for herbal abortifacients will skyrocket - along with the associated deaths from backyard abortions and the herbs used (which are often toxic to the pregnant woman as well as the unwanted pregnancy) - something the de-criminalisation of abortion and the ease of access to contraception virtually halted.
But it is more than the contraception/abortion debate. It is absolutely the dis-empowering of women all over again, and it cannot be allowed to happen. It needs to be stopped. And it needs to be stopped NOW.
Since all I can do from here is raise awareness - this is what I am doing...