Women aren’t losing rights; they are being taken away

It seems to have finally happened: the Supreme Court appears to be ready to dismantle Roe vs. Wade and Casey vs. Planned Parenthood, thus taking away rights that women have had for over 50 years. The far right is ready to make women carry babies to term come hell or high water, with no exceptions for anything – not ectopic pregnancies, the health of the mother, the health of the fetus, or anything else. As I read somewhere today, we women will have fewer rights than a corpse, which has the right to keep it’s organs unless they have signed to give them away.

According to some people, women have no rights at all – we are here to have babies, or to die in childbirth. It does not matter if the baby will not live anyway, the woman must carry to term. It does not matter if the pregnancy is ectopic and the baby cannot even be born, the woman must carry to term. It does not matter that the woman was raped, she must carry the baby to term. It does not matter that the mother is 12 and impregnated by her father, brother, or uncle, she must carry the baby to term.

How long will we keep the right to use contraception? That is probably the next right to go.

I was in high school when Roe vs. Wade was decided. I thought it was a done deal. Silly me! Women aren’t losing their rights, they are being stripped away. And they are being stripped away primarily by men, but also by other women.

I will say what I have always believed: those women and men have the right to believe and do for themselves as they please. But they have no right to make those decisions for other women.

It is time for Congress to make the Roe vs. Wade decision a law that covers this entire nation. I read Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale when I was in high school and it scared me then. It terrifies me now.

 

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