A week ago, I didn’t really get it. Roe v. Wade is something my loud-and-proud Republican history teacher taught me in 9th grade. To my mind, it was ancient history and a boring chapter at that. (I liked the stuff about Nazis, Nat Turner rebels, and Viet Cong guerillas!) A deeper understanding of abortion politics required reading Agate-font medical terminology, and I’ve always hated science even more than I love Obama. Lastly, I was raised Baptist, and it’s not really polite to talk about “reproductive rights.” So it’s taken quite a lot stir this old pot. But, as of today, the pro-life constituency has taught me a few things–whether they meant to or not:
1) The definition of the word baby. I got curious, because the term is being thrown fast and loose at the Texas capitol. Turns out…
“baby. noun. A very young child, esp. one recently born”; “fetus. noun. an unborn offspring of a mammal more than eight weeks after conception”
I get it. “Killing babies” sounds more dramatic, but now everyone just sounds stupid. I’m also offended as an English teacher.
2) Most of the bills sweeping the nation want to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Most doctors think that the 24 to 28-week zone is where it’s at, or where the debate about life really begins. But since 99% of all abortions already take place before the third trimester, it’s not all that fun to argue about. It almost seems as though politicians chose the 20-week abortion cutoff for the sake of being edgy. Who wants to be Neil deGrasse Tyson when you can be Lady Gaga? (I do.)
3) There is, however, at least one scientist who believes that fetuses can feel pain at 20 weeks. This perked my ears, and I instantly wanted to give this Dr. Kanwaljeet “Sunny” Anand dude the benefit of the doubt. But, alas, thousands of scientists and medical journals refute Sunny’s research. And while the 20-week fetal pain theory is not good enough for the nerds at the Journal of the American Medical Association, it’s totally doing the trick for state legislatures in Texas, Ohio, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Indiana, and Alabama.
Arkansas took it up a notch and banned abortions after 18 weeks. North Dakota has the tightest restriction in the country at 6 weeks. (I can forgive their Canadian accents; I cannot forgive this.)
4) Republicans don’t want to make our abortion clinics “safer for women.”
Yesterday, deep in the heart of Texas, some Republican senators stated they wanted to raise the standards of our facilities (without funding them) to create better, safer abortion clinics across the land. Then they called abortion itself an “American holocaust.” Both reasons for new legislation can’t be true. That’s silly.
5) U.S. women have a 1 in 5 chance of being raped and thousands more go unreported. 32,000 pregnancies result from rape about every year and our bodies have no “way of shutting that down.” Most recent anti-abortion bills do not acknowledge rape as a factor. Yeah, who cares. Eff them.
6) There is no form of contraception that is 100% effective, and 50% of women who undergo abortions used some form of birth control at the time of conception. But double-eff them, too.
7) Republicans want more religion written into law.
For some reason I was surprised–no traumatized–to find that relatively all pro-life leaders are arguing a constitutional issue employing terms like “evil,” “murderers,” “slavery,” “babies,” “mighty”, “God,” “blessed,” “miracle,” “savior,” and, of course, “American holocaust.” Their message is a religiously-based one, and the Republican rank-and-file are lined up in support.
Personally, I’ve straight up thrown doooown at a Wednesday night church service or two, but I wasn’t raised thinking it appropriate to have one during a legislative session. If I wanted to live in a theocracy, I’d comfortably relocate to a woman-friendly, politically-stable region like Iran, Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, or Sudan.
8) Illegal abortions = more unsafe abortions.
Countries where abortions are legal have the lowest abortion rates worldwide. Where abortions are illegal and most routinely performed, 95 to 97% of abortions are unsafe and women fatalities are greater. Here I don’t see a strong correlation between secular and non-secular regions, good populations and evil-doing populations. I don’t see the laws doing anything to detract from the act. I think…it’s a poverty thing. And, as such, it’s an education thing.
But these fools in the Texas capitol are also trying to take down Planned Parenthood, its ever-controversial contraceptives, and every form of sex education in its wake. It’s almost as if they want women to stay barefoot and pregnant…
9) Too many men–not men alone–but *too many* men are testifying and making big decisions about what’s going on inside of my body. It’s not about what is written in our constitution. It’s not about science or health. It’s not even about the preservation of life. (How many in this party support war, the death penalty, and right to bear automatic assault weapons?) It’s all about the murder that they “feel” is happening in my body. Unfortunately, men possess the majority of voting power on this particular issue–and all issues–in every single state legislature in the U.S.
What I really want to say to them is this: sit your asses out on this one, enjoy a beer, watch the game, and go get paid your extra quarter on the hour. You have a relatively shorter lifespan; I have to go through childbirth and everything that comes with it.
That’s the deal, and if you stick to it I’ll love you long time.
(I can’t even look at this brah.)
The Billie Holiday Lover 