How Rightwing Politics are Controlling Women and Turning Back Time
Typhani Brooks
It is International Women’s Day as I sit and type this, on March 8th of 2012, but I couldn’t feel less like celebrating than now. In fact I have quite the opposite emotion of joy; rage pulses through my veins at the current political climate that is now trying to drive women back into the dark ages of the 1940’s. You may think I am exaggerating but in the past two months Republican lawmakers have done more to turn back the clock on the progress woman have made than they have since the feminist movement began.
New Hampshire has not been one of the states unharmed by current political issues, in fact it’s just beginning to show the damage. On February 16th New Hampshire’s House Oversight Committee held a meeting to discuss a bill that would restrict women access to birth control. The world watched as five men, who had denied any female speakers, spoke in support of allowing religious institutions to deny certain medical coverage if it was something that opposed their moral values. Arguably the most use of this would be by these said institutions to deny hormonal contraceptives to women. Sandra Fluke asked to be a witness to state that hormonal contraceptives are not just used to prevent pregnancy but can also treat legitimate diseases. After a small uproar House Democrats took the initiative to hold their own meeting and allow Sandra Fluke to testify. She told a story about a friend who lost an ovary that could have been prevented had she been on The Pill. In response to this testimony the royalty of right-wing rhetoric, Mr. Rush Limbaugh himself, vomited up words like “slut” and “prostitute” to describe this well respected young woman, even going so far as saying he wasn’t going to pay for women to have “so much sex.” Yes, this coming from the man with the immaculate record, the one who has had one wife and lover and a plethora of children only by her. Oh wait, that’s not even remotely his record. He’s been divorced three times, married four, and has absolutely no children. Am I to believe he’s sterile or was he and his multiple lovers using the defamed birth control? Are we really to swallow this verbal bile? Are we really supposed to believe that women, and women only, are the sole purveyors of sexual morality, that they should, as Rick Santorum’s billionaire supporter Foster Friess claim, just use an aspirin held between her knees for contraception? In other words, keep your legs closed you damn whores! If you’re going to go running your mouth off about that do expect women to come back with, “Than keep your fly closed! Works just as well!”
This whole idea that women should be virgins until marriage, and then are given their rightful job as baby machines, is not only outdated and disrespectful it’s downright obscene. In case you’re wondering this particular bill did pass on March 7, 2012, allowing any religious institution to deny any medical coverage it deemed immoral. You might be interested to know that the same institutions that are crying out about hormonal contraceptives are still allowing for their insurance companies to cover Viagra. That’s right, pregnancy is not something to worry about, but whether or not a man can still get it up, now that’s something that needs immediate medical attention! I mean, what are we to do if our men can’t force more babies upon us? That’d be just horrible!
What is up with all this talk about contraception anyway? What are these old white men getting at? Do they really hate women that much? Yes, and no. You see the issue goes so much deeper. These super conservative politicians can’t fix any real problems so in order to maintain control over something, anything, they’ve targeted someone they think is weaker than themselves, the female sex. You see things like virginity were concepts invented by like-minded people of eons ago in order to control women. After all who wants to marry a woman whose been sullied by another man? Who may have children who aren’t yours? Imagine the complicated family trees and paperwork! No, let’s stick to this extreme nuclear family concept where there is one man married to one woman who have a plethora of children together. Sweet image isn’t it? All behind the white picket fence… too bad it’s a delusion. This is not the norm anymore, and maybe it never was. Name one woman you can think of who remained a virgin until she was married and then stayed married for life. One. Nothing? I didn’t think so.
If you think New Hampshire’s getting bad we should look at Virginia who now has two horrifically anti-woman bills to contend with. Virginia governor Bob McDowell proposed that all women having an abortion should be forced to have a transvaginal ultrasound. This is a not-so thinly veiled attempt to punish women who choose to have an abortion since they can’t out and out deny them the right. The bill passed only after a small uproar convinced these lawmakers to write an exception to this rule for any women who have been the victims of rape or incest, but only those who chose to report the crime previous to this intrusion of her personal space. This attempt to look politically correct and empathetic is such a sham and only enforces the idea that these idiots don’t know anything about women’s health or issues. Technically speaking most women who are the victims of incest or rape do not report the crime to the authorities and the thought of then forcing them to have a 6-10 inch rod shoved up their vaginas for no real medical reason is just an outrage. Later GOP lawmaker Dave Albo told the world that he could not support the bill because his wife, bless her heart and brains, had decided to deny him sex if he did. I don’t generally condone using sex as a weapon like this but I must say it was a good move. The bill has been proposed in two dozen states and has passed in Virginia and Oklahoma. Alabama is now debating their version of the bill which not only does all the above but also forces the woman in question to look at the images taken by the ultrasound. If I were a doctor in these states I think I would plead the Hippocratic oath, first do no harm.
The Personhood Bill has been suggested in several states. It basically states that all fertilized eggs that a woman could be carrying should be given full personhood under the law, basically giving zygotes citizenship and protection. This would mean women who have an abortion or use Plan B could be prosecuted for murder and women who have a miscarriage could potentially be prosecuted for manslaughter. It may also someday be used to outlaw all forms of contraception for stopping potential life. The bill is so focused on women and what their reproductive organs are doing that it completely overlooks what the men are doing. Sick of these attacks on women’s rights senator Constance Johnston of Oklahoma amended her state’s bill, giving it an Every Sperm is Sacred twist. She wrote that any sperm not deposited into a woman’s vagina should also be prosecuted as a crime against an unborn child. It was obviously a satirical attempt to highlight the ridiculous but it still had a valid point. If lawmakers are going to just target women in their reproductive war they should watch out because there’s not many of us that are going to cow to that without fighting back, even if that means prosecuting them for the murder of their own sperm. Though the Personhood Bill was killed in Oklahoma and Mississippi it passed in Virginia where woman immediately responded, yelling, “SHAME!” in the hallways of the senate.
And then there is the most recent attack, a profound one, which basically makes medical malpractice to the point of death perfectly legal. Arizona passed a bill making it legal for doctors not to inform their pregnant patients about any issue that may cause them to have an abortion, including conditions that may in the end kill the mother during the pregnancy. Now doctors who feel abortion is wrong can watch as women with ectopic pregnancies (that’s a fetus developing somewhere other than her womb, which occurs in 1 in 50 pregnancies) hemorrhage to death because they didn’t tell them of the condition that would cause her to have an abortion! Ectopic pregnancies and many other conditions are lethal. Not only will these babies die due to the laws of nature, so too could their now ill-informed mothers. Not only this but now mothers will have no preparation if the doctor sees some abnormality they don’t want to tell her about. Imagine the joy of birthing a baby with no limbs or some other severe birth defect that her ass of a doctor knew about the whole time!
And then there are those laws passed that effect people from all states. Currently our military is refusing coverage to pay for abortions of rape victims that are serving their country even though this is a long standing problem that has resulted in at least 1 in 3 women in our armed forced being raped, usually by their male peers.
These attacks on women’s reproductive rights are obsessive and obscene. They are driving us back into an age without contraception and without legal and sanitary abortions where women are forced to go to back-alley clinics and have coat-hanger abortions like in the good old days when they risked their own lives in doing so. Not only this but I can guarantee without proper contraception women will have more babies in unfavorable circumstances meaning that whole welfare thing is going to skyrocket. And I know how much right-wingers like to support welfare babies! And let us not forget their repeated attempts to cut funding to Planned Parenthood in attempt to cripple the clinics because 3% of what they do might be abortions. Planned Parenthood not only provides contraceptives and prenatal care for the poor and desperate it also gives thousands of mammograms. So, just because someone somewhere disagrees with abortion thousands of women are going to be left without cancer screening. You know deaths will result and I hope these people are OK with the thought of the slow painful death of their constituents because that’s what’s going to happen if they keep pulling stunts like these. Luckily despite their attacks Planned Parenthood is now stronger than ever, with the full support of the people.
It is time for us as women to speak up, to go out and vote, and perhaps if we’re feeling particularly peachy we can find out who voted for these bills and deliver them a special message on behalf of all womanhood – repeated kicks to the nads. Maybe then they’ll understand that the opposite sex’s reproductive organs are not their right to rule over and control. After all if our senate did not have a vast majority of men (83 to 17) we as women would not be callous enough to start making laws on men’s behalf. For instance we wouldn’t be making vasectomies legally required for any men we deem needs one even though this might lower unwanted births and welfare bills. We understand this would be constitutionally, morally, and ethically wrong, so why don’t you give us the same respect?
New Hampshire has not been one of the states unharmed by current political issues, in fact it’s just beginning to show the damage. On February 16th New Hampshire’s House Oversight Committee held a meeting to discuss a bill that would restrict women access to birth control. The world watched as five men, who had denied any female speakers, spoke in support of allowing religious institutions to deny certain medical coverage if it was something that opposed their moral values. Arguably the most use of this would be by these said institutions to deny hormonal contraceptives to women. Sandra Fluke asked to be a witness to state that hormonal contraceptives are not just used to prevent pregnancy but can also treat legitimate diseases. After a small uproar House Democrats took the initiative to hold their own meeting and allow Sandra Fluke to testify. She told a story about a friend who lost an ovary that could have been prevented had she been on The Pill. In response to this testimony the royalty of right-wing rhetoric, Mr. Rush Limbaugh himself, vomited up words like “slut” and “prostitute” to describe this well respected young woman, even going so far as saying he wasn’t going to pay for women to have “so much sex.” Yes, this coming from the man with the immaculate record, the one who has had one wife and lover and a plethora of children only by her. Oh wait, that’s not even remotely his record. He’s been divorced three times, married four, and has absolutely no children. Am I to believe he’s sterile or was he and his multiple lovers using the defamed birth control? Are we really to swallow this verbal bile? Are we really supposed to believe that women, and women only, are the sole purveyors of sexual morality, that they should, as Rick Santorum’s billionaire supporter Foster Friess claim, just use an aspirin held between her knees for contraception? In other words, keep your legs closed you damn whores! If you’re going to go running your mouth off about that do expect women to come back with, “Than keep your fly closed! Works just as well!”
This whole idea that women should be virgins until marriage, and then are given their rightful job as baby machines, is not only outdated and disrespectful it’s downright obscene. In case you’re wondering this particular bill did pass on March 7, 2012, allowing any religious institution to deny any medical coverage it deemed immoral. You might be interested to know that the same institutions that are crying out about hormonal contraceptives are still allowing for their insurance companies to cover Viagra. That’s right, pregnancy is not something to worry about, but whether or not a man can still get it up, now that’s something that needs immediate medical attention! I mean, what are we to do if our men can’t force more babies upon us? That’d be just horrible!
What is up with all this talk about contraception anyway? What are these old white men getting at? Do they really hate women that much? Yes, and no. You see the issue goes so much deeper. These super conservative politicians can’t fix any real problems so in order to maintain control over something, anything, they’ve targeted someone they think is weaker than themselves, the female sex. You see things like virginity were concepts invented by like-minded people of eons ago in order to control women. After all who wants to marry a woman whose been sullied by another man? Who may have children who aren’t yours? Imagine the complicated family trees and paperwork! No, let’s stick to this extreme nuclear family concept where there is one man married to one woman who have a plethora of children together. Sweet image isn’t it? All behind the white picket fence… too bad it’s a delusion. This is not the norm anymore, and maybe it never was. Name one woman you can think of who remained a virgin until she was married and then stayed married for life. One. Nothing? I didn’t think so.
If you think New Hampshire’s getting bad we should look at Virginia who now has two horrifically anti-woman bills to contend with. Virginia governor Bob McDowell proposed that all women having an abortion should be forced to have a transvaginal ultrasound. This is a not-so thinly veiled attempt to punish women who choose to have an abortion since they can’t out and out deny them the right. The bill passed only after a small uproar convinced these lawmakers to write an exception to this rule for any women who have been the victims of rape or incest, but only those who chose to report the crime previous to this intrusion of her personal space. This attempt to look politically correct and empathetic is such a sham and only enforces the idea that these idiots don’t know anything about women’s health or issues. Technically speaking most women who are the victims of incest or rape do not report the crime to the authorities and the thought of then forcing them to have a 6-10 inch rod shoved up their vaginas for no real medical reason is just an outrage. Later GOP lawmaker Dave Albo told the world that he could not support the bill because his wife, bless her heart and brains, had decided to deny him sex if he did. I don’t generally condone using sex as a weapon like this but I must say it was a good move. The bill has been proposed in two dozen states and has passed in Virginia and Oklahoma. Alabama is now debating their version of the bill which not only does all the above but also forces the woman in question to look at the images taken by the ultrasound. If I were a doctor in these states I think I would plead the Hippocratic oath, first do no harm.
The Personhood Bill has been suggested in several states. It basically states that all fertilized eggs that a woman could be carrying should be given full personhood under the law, basically giving zygotes citizenship and protection. This would mean women who have an abortion or use Plan B could be prosecuted for murder and women who have a miscarriage could potentially be prosecuted for manslaughter. It may also someday be used to outlaw all forms of contraception for stopping potential life. The bill is so focused on women and what their reproductive organs are doing that it completely overlooks what the men are doing. Sick of these attacks on women’s rights senator Constance Johnston of Oklahoma amended her state’s bill, giving it an Every Sperm is Sacred twist. She wrote that any sperm not deposited into a woman’s vagina should also be prosecuted as a crime against an unborn child. It was obviously a satirical attempt to highlight the ridiculous but it still had a valid point. If lawmakers are going to just target women in their reproductive war they should watch out because there’s not many of us that are going to cow to that without fighting back, even if that means prosecuting them for the murder of their own sperm. Though the Personhood Bill was killed in Oklahoma and Mississippi it passed in Virginia where woman immediately responded, yelling, “SHAME!” in the hallways of the senate.
And then there is the most recent attack, a profound one, which basically makes medical malpractice to the point of death perfectly legal. Arizona passed a bill making it legal for doctors not to inform their pregnant patients about any issue that may cause them to have an abortion, including conditions that may in the end kill the mother during the pregnancy. Now doctors who feel abortion is wrong can watch as women with ectopic pregnancies (that’s a fetus developing somewhere other than her womb, which occurs in 1 in 50 pregnancies) hemorrhage to death because they didn’t tell them of the condition that would cause her to have an abortion! Ectopic pregnancies and many other conditions are lethal. Not only will these babies die due to the laws of nature, so too could their now ill-informed mothers. Not only this but now mothers will have no preparation if the doctor sees some abnormality they don’t want to tell her about. Imagine the joy of birthing a baby with no limbs or some other severe birth defect that her ass of a doctor knew about the whole time!
And then there are those laws passed that effect people from all states. Currently our military is refusing coverage to pay for abortions of rape victims that are serving their country even though this is a long standing problem that has resulted in at least 1 in 3 women in our armed forced being raped, usually by their male peers.
These attacks on women’s reproductive rights are obsessive and obscene. They are driving us back into an age without contraception and without legal and sanitary abortions where women are forced to go to back-alley clinics and have coat-hanger abortions like in the good old days when they risked their own lives in doing so. Not only this but I can guarantee without proper contraception women will have more babies in unfavorable circumstances meaning that whole welfare thing is going to skyrocket. And I know how much right-wingers like to support welfare babies! And let us not forget their repeated attempts to cut funding to Planned Parenthood in attempt to cripple the clinics because 3% of what they do might be abortions. Planned Parenthood not only provides contraceptives and prenatal care for the poor and desperate it also gives thousands of mammograms. So, just because someone somewhere disagrees with abortion thousands of women are going to be left without cancer screening. You know deaths will result and I hope these people are OK with the thought of the slow painful death of their constituents because that’s what’s going to happen if they keep pulling stunts like these. Luckily despite their attacks Planned Parenthood is now stronger than ever, with the full support of the people.
It is time for us as women to speak up, to go out and vote, and perhaps if we’re feeling particularly peachy we can find out who voted for these bills and deliver them a special message on behalf of all womanhood – repeated kicks to the nads. Maybe then they’ll understand that the opposite sex’s reproductive organs are not their right to rule over and control. After all if our senate did not have a vast majority of men (83 to 17) we as women would not be callous enough to start making laws on men’s behalf. For instance we wouldn’t be making vasectomies legally required for any men we deem needs one even though this might lower unwanted births and welfare bills. We understand this would be constitutionally, morally, and ethically wrong, so why don’t you give us the same respect?