Friday, August 24, 2012

So Let Me Get This Straight

You are legislatively, politically, culturally, and holistically in control of every fertilized egg in the U.S.
You have signed the rights of fertilized eggs into law.
You have decided no cultural or lawless act can challenge these egg rights.
You have controlled the whole of the language which describes egg rights in your political party platforms.
You have written and hope to pass legislation  in state houses, which will add rights to unfertilized eggs.
This reality as I have described it seems much worse than any Orwellian horror I imagined growing up to
fear big government.
If you are someone who has endowed eggs with rights you have the power to control, and the egg in turn
has the power to control thirty to forty years of reproductive life in every person able to bear children, then where does any woman turn to express her own individual rights as a fully formed independent human being?
Does she simply wait to be past child-bearing age?
The words coming out of Paul Ryan's mouth about a woman's rights are nothing more than sound bites,
because he has not contraindicated the actual legislation he co-sponsored, things that don't match
he is saying now about assault.
The words coming out of Mitt Romney's mouth about a woman's rights are nothing more than sound bites.
because he has aligned himself with the Republican platform language which gives no quarter to women
who have been assaulted.
One of the points people have been missing in these discussions is that a criminal case, and a successful criminal prosecution cannot be of timely use to a woman or girl who finds herself in need of expressing her own reproductive freedom.
In the fifties and sixties we used to lament the fact that only poor women would suffer from a lack of these
freedoms. Rich women have always done exactly what it is they choose to do.
I do know this: an unintended consequence of all this reproductive wrangling may mean the kindergarten class of 2018 may be way too small to pay anything meaningful into either Social Security or Medicare.
So if we want to save those programs, we really may have to institute a real 'dream act' for those who may
have wanted children next year, and for citizens we may need to import from countries with even fewer
freedoms than women may have in the U.S. future.
Of course another thing we may overlook when speaking about reproductive rights, is the fact that it's
completely inappropriate for one person to question another about his or her reproductive plans or
status, even if the questioning person is some sort of legislator.

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