Or maybe today it's imploding....
From today's W. Post, pg. A13, the almost unnoticeable item:
"Jackson, Miss. - Gov. Haley Barbour (R) said he will probably sign a bill to ban most abortions in Mississippi if it is approved by lawmakers. The bill that passed the House Public Health Committee on Tuesday would allow abortion only to save a pregnant woman's life. South Dakota lawmakers passed a similar bill last week."
Even when I was a teen-ager in Wisconsin, if I recall correctly, a woman could get an abortion if she had been raped. Not that anyone ever told anyone when that happened back then. So, how far backwards are we going to have to go before people take this seriously again? Who and/or how many women are going to have to die or be permanently damaged from botched abortions provided by unqualified predators before this fundamental right, the right to decide what lives your body provides life support systems for, if any, is taken seriously? Seriously enough by the people who think that should be the case that they retake the state legislatures and the national Congress?
Of course, the people who make these rules are not the people who have to live with them, unless of course they CHOOSE to. Most of their daughters, sisters, nieces could, if they wanted, generally afford to fly off to another country or state should they not accept the law and feel the need to rid themselves of some accidental and unwanted intruder in their body. The women who are stuck with the law are the women who cannot afford to leave. So not only are they victimized by the law, but they too often become the "welfare mothers" who are vilified by the same people who made the law in the first place. And only now are legislators starting to understand that, if tradition is to prevail, as they seem to want it to, it is not welfare mothers so much as welfare fathers, aka deadbeat dads - equally unwitting sperm donors - who are the ones not taking responsibility, who have no consequences to pay (taking care of unwanted children being the natural consequences of having unintended children). And, research clearly demonstrates that unwanted children are at increased risk for abuse and neglect....duh...
So, the cycle of abuse goes on.....including mostly men forcing mostly poor women to host and support uninvited, unintended, unwanted lives in their bodies...or risk death, permanent damage, and/or jail, if they rebel against this tyranny.
So what is wrong with these legislators, many, if not most, of whom are also opposed to any effective forms of birth control? It appears to me that many, if not most, are so firmly entrenched in patriarchal religious traditions and invested in the domination and oppression of women, that it's impossible not to hold those inimical religious traditions responsible, and it's impossible not to attribute ill will towards women to the men perpetrating them. It makes me so angry I could spit nails. I guess I've inherited my father's temperament. My father, one of the good men, of whom I know a few. But I digress...
I can't remember the quote exactly, but it's something like - all it takes for the triumph of evil is for enough good people to do nothing. Well, good people, when are you going to stop doing nothing?
