Hi.
When you find out that the Taliban's abortion laws are more lenient than those of the country that screams "FREEDOM!" through bull horns at every opportunity, let's just say it causes one to pause.
We saw this coming. It's been in the works for years. That's why the 3 Supreme Court inductees that the grand Cheeto put into place completely and deliberately lied to Congress and the American people during their interviews to get the job. They lied. They had to in order to at least put forward the facade of legitimacy. Of course, they wouldn't say out loud in front of people that they were looking forward to stripping people who have a uterus of their most basic human rights.
Then they follow this up with whispers of banning contraception, banning the morning after pill, and banning same-sex marriages. Those whispers will only get louder, if those who speak them remain on the bench, and if the bench remains so unbalanced.
Well if this is what they want to do, they better follow it up with the next logical steps.
If life begins at conception, so should child support.
Paid parental leave, continued medical care, and child care. If the government is forcing you to have a child, that same government, by default, should be, at the very least, financially responsible for that child.
The men who participate in an unwanted pregnancy should be forced to bear all of the things that go with it, to be fair to the one who is being forced to give birth. All of the restrictions, no booze, no seafood, limit coffee, limiting physical activity, etc. They should be forced to carry all of the physical discomforts the bearer does. They need to be strapped with increasingly heavy weights, be given medications that put you at risk for diabetes, high blood pressure, swelling, nausea, keep you from sleeping, trigger extreme mood swings, whatever the male equivalent of pre-eclampsia, miscarriage, or hemorrhaging would be, and all of the other fun things.
Just what is supposed to happen to all of these unwanted babies? Is the next step to be perpetrated upon those who were already forced to carry out an unwanted pregnancy and birth, is that next step to be forced to raise these children too? Are the men going to do it? Because the foster system is already beyond all of its limits. There is no support for social programs to help, at least not from the people who hate women having the freedom to choose.
No, really. Don't come at me dismissing this as an absurd argument without backing it up with logic. Prove to me it's not valid. I dare you. Is the assumption that those who are forced to birth these children will automatically be responsible for them? Because that assumption is not made of the men. If this is truly about life and not controlling women, then women are no more responsible than men. Right?
From the outside looking in, the only demographic in the United States that is, and has ever been truly free, are the straight white men. I know there are those out there who will scoff at this, claiming I'm being dramatic, but if I'm wrong, show me. Prove it.
It makes my heart hurt.
Maybe it's time for the United States to live up to the persona it likes to project to the world.
You want to claim that you are a country of freedom? Interesting.
You want to claim that you are some sort of cornerstone of democracy? Interesting.
You want to claim to be the country in which everyone is clamouring to call home? Interesting.
Land of the free, home of the brave, that's how it goes, right?
Prove it.
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In the meantime, to those Americans that have a uterus and would like to, without interference, remain in charge of what happens to it:
May you know that we feel the weight of your oppression, your anger, your fear, your heartbreak.
May you know we are here, a place to come to, a voice to fight with you, the fight to determine your own fate.
May you gather in droves, march, protest, and strive to regain fifty years of lost ground.
May you create the momentum needed to defeat this misogyny, take away its oxygen until there is no sound.
May you see this as the crucial call to action that it is, in this battle you can not fail.
May you see, if you give up, you are that much closer to living the Handmaid's Tale.
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