Let’s talk about women’s bodies

ncga

I’ve had enough of right-wing lawmakers making decisions about my body, what I can or can’t do with it and whether I have any right to control it.

I’m tired of right-wing nuts posting on my threads with their lousy grammar and spelling about the rights of the unborn.

And most of all, I’m tired of them calling themselves pro-life.

There’s a bill in North Carolina right now, HB465, that would make physicians show women’s ultrasounds to lawmakers without women’s consent.

That’s right, a bunch of old white men want to see your ultrasound, my women friends. And most of these dried up old prunes would want to know how your pregnancy ended if you have a miscarriage.

They also want to deny you access to contraception while making Viagra even more available. Seems to me they have fantasies about being able to have wild sex with young, fertile women.

“It’s about the babies,” they say when they talk about abortion.

No, it”s not. If it were really about the babies, you’d expect support for babies after they’re born. But these same old white men are dead set against helping parents raise their children. They’re against making minimum wage a living wage so people can care for their children. They’re against increasing food stamps so people can feed their kids on the slave wages employers are allowed to pay. They’re against safe, affordable housing for families. They support sending jobs overseas and then cut unemployment compensation to the bone.

They are among the first to cheer for “boots on the ground” whenever there’s conflict in the world, whether it’s our business or not. They send people into war zones for five or six deployments and then cut veterans benefits so we lose more people to suicide than we did in the wars they’re so eager to fight.

These old white men would have you believe women are skipping merrily down to the abortion clinic three or four times a year, happily denying men the children they would cherish and support.

In reality, women who decide to have abortions face a heart-wrenching decision. No one takes it lightly.

When I was six weeks pregnant with my second child, I had a rare virus. My doctor told me I should “terminate this pregnancy try again.”

It was an awful experience, thinking about whether my child might be born blind, deaf, with developmental disabilities and/or heart deformities. But the chair was at the table. My child was on his way, and I would love him no matter what.

He did have birth defects, and one left him very vulnerable to colon cancer. But because a birth defect is a pre-existing condition, he couldn’t get insurance, and without insurance, he couldn’t get the colonoscopies he needed, and by the time he got any attention, he had stage 3 cancer and it was too late to save his life.

I will never get over the loss of my son. I consider his death negligent homicide, and I don’t think anyone should have to go through what my family has endured — and continues to endure.

Now, these same old men who are calling for more limits on women’s choices are the same ones who refuse to expand access to care by taking billions in federal dollars to expand Medicaid. That money, by they way, comes from our taxes and it’s going to states that have expanded Medicaid.

In other words, these old white men support life only as far as the end of the birth canal. They support forcing women to bear children they can’t care for and then criticize women for having children they can’t care for.

Of course, they shouldn’t have to shoulder the responsibility for the child they created once they have forced a woman to have it. It’s all her fault, after all, even if she was raped.

I’ve said it before and I will continue to call out these old white men: If your support for life ends at the end of the birth canal, you are not pro-life and you should get your nose out of women’s business.

 

One comment

  1. Great post full of common sense. I’m so sorry for your loss.

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