We’re in the midst of a new political season, and ergo I have a renewed urge to blog. It’s been way too long – and much has happened in my life.
I’ll catch up with changes anon . . . at this point, my political frustration is at a boiling point with the Virginia legislature’s recent foray into helping us poor women with informed consent if we decide to terminate a pregnancy by basically forcing us to consent to a rape with medical equipment. The House bill is here; the Senate bill is here.
I understand the issue of abortion. I don’t like abortion, and I think that we, as a society, should make all efforts to decrease the numbers of abortions. Yet after all is said & done, abortion must remain an option.
Women’s reproductive rights have essentially been unchallenged since I was a young woman. I’ve never had to live without access to birth control (not that I’d need it now), and abortion has been legal throughout the US since Rowe v. Wade, decided in 1973, the year I received my undergraduate degree from university.
Women who are closing in on 40 have never known anything but freedom of reproductive choice. Is this changing? I hope not. I fear so.
I’ve long struggled to understand the arguments against reproductive freedom. Note that I didn’t say the arguments for abortion – no one is “for” abortion. No one. But it’s quite different to be pro CHOICE. I’m not for abortion, I’ve often struggled with whether I could have one. But that struggle is for me – the individual – to make, not for the government to dictate.
It’s so curious to me that the legislators who are so in favor of controlling a woman’s body and life choices are the same ones who scream about individual rights and freedoms. There’s a huge fight right now in Virginia about whether to rescind the law that residents can’t buy more than one gun a month – one gun a month! One interviewee said that the law was “inconvenient” so needed to be repealed. Yet women can be subjected to any amount of inconvenience – and worse – that legislators deem appropriate.
It’s time for women to rise up. I just hope it’s not too late.