Category Archives: reproductive rights
“Protect Life Act” Promotes Death: Girls. Women. A Presidency.
The “Protect Life Act” is being considered right now in Congress. Paired with the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” these two bills claim to be “pro life” yet seem more geared toward death for desperate girls and women… and a presidency.
Under HR 358 hospitals receiving federal funds can refuse to perform abortions, even when a woman’s life is in danger.
HR 3 eliminates the tax deduction for employer-sponsored health plans covering the procedure. The real goal? Force employers to drop abortion coverage from their policies.
The actual aim of both bills is to chip away access to safe, legal abortion, making it so difficult to obtain or afford that it is effectively prohibited, if not legally banned.
Interestingly, a global study found that even when abortion was officially illegal, there was little affect on abortion rates. Instead, desperate women die when untrained providers lack knowledge and skill, or when women try to abort, themselves.
Back before Roe v. Wade, a young Air Force doctor named Robert Duemler walked into an emergency room where blood was splattered all over the walls, the floor, the gurney, the towels, and the emergency crew. Beneath them a woman lay bleeding from a sharp object that had been pushed up her vagina. She died, leaving behind a bewildered husband and five impoverished children.
Scenes like these led many medical professionals to fight for a woman’s right to choose.
Personally, I don’t especially like abortion, and I wish that women never felt a need to get one. But restricting it has little effect. Instead, women and girls end up dying.
If prohibiting abortion doesn’t actually stop it, what are the real goal of bills like HR 358 and HR 3?
Getting the GOP base enthused and out to vote in the next major election may be one aim.
Meanwhile, amid high unemployment the GOP turn their attention away from the economy, perhaps hoping continued bad economic news will eventually kill a presidency.
Georgia Platts
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Patriarchy’s Role in Shielding Pedophile Priests
Vatican Warned Bishops Not to Report Child Abuse. Vatican Shielded Dublin Priest Until He Raped Boy in Pub, Inquiry Says. Pope Lashes Out at Belgium After Raid on Church (investigating sexual abuse by clerics).
All are New York Times headlines revealing Vatican efforts to shield pedophile priests – and itself. I could go on.
Odd that the Church, which incessantly preaches morality to the masses, is so unconcerned with its own.
In stark contrast, a Catholic nun was immediately excommunicated for saving a woman’s life. Sister Margaret was senior administrator of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix when a 27-year-old mother of four arrived, suffering from pulmonary hypertension. Doctors determined the condition would likely kill her. So Sister Margaret okayed an abortion in the eleventh month of pregnancy to save her life.
Even when priests are defrocked for pedophilia they are not normally excommunicated, remaining able to take the sacrament.
The Vatican shielding pedophile priests while excommunicating life-saving nuns seems nonsensical. Confusing.
Yet one thing ties it all together: a rabid support of patriarchy. Really, patriarchy in its old sense: “rule of the fathers.” Or in this case, church fathers.
In patriarchy’s origins, old men ruled young men and women. Such is the case here. Old men are free to do as they will, while young boys must take what they get. Women are not allowed to control their bodies, or let their lives be saved. Old men control all.
Even Mel Gibson’s staunch rejection of birth control and Vatican II liberalization had seemed odd to me, given the many movies he appeared in promoting sex and violence. Not to mention real-life adultery and battering. Until I realized that the consistency in his life is patriarchy, as well. Men doing as they please, sleeping with whomever they wish (despite church prohibitions). But not allowing a wife to control he own womb (suddenly he cares that the church prohibits birth control). And feeling entitled to lash out and “discipline” women at will.
Vatican patriarchy has certainly not been good for women or children, inflicting suffering upon the “minions.”
Georgia Platts
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Doctors Let Woman Die to Protect Fetus
A Polish woman named Edyta died because doctors refused to provide medical care. Each physician she approached worried that treating her colon condition could lead to miscarriage or abortion. Eventually her disease worsened until she miscarried, anyway, not long before her death.
Recently, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe failed to pass a resolution meant to keep incidents like this from happening. Unfortunate, because if she had lived in Italy, Hungary, or Croatia she could have expected the same outcome. Doctors in any of these countries can refuse medical care on moral grounds.
Apparently, letting a person die is not a part of their moral compass. At least not when a fetus is involved.
Meanwhile, the Vatican censored their top bioethics official because he defended doctors who aborted the twin fetuses of a nine-year-old child who was raped by her stepfather. He felt that saving the girl’s life called for mercy. The Vatican thought otherwise.
This is what happens when fetal rights come before human rights. Are a fetus and a human being really equivalent?
My brother-in-law was completely against abortion until his wife’s life was threatened by her pregnancy. When the doctors told him he may have to choose between his wife and his unborn baby he knew he would choose his wife. He talked about how his wife was someone who he loved, who he had strong connections to. Losing her would be too great an emotional loss. And, she is an actual human being.
Meanwhile, many think that embryos and humans are equivalent, and protest stem cell research. Yet if a research center caught fire and you had to choose between saving a one-year-old child or a vat of stem cells, which would you choose – thousands of “lives” or one child?
I wonder if doctors and governments would prioritize a fetus or an embryo over a human being if men were the ones who had babies.
The doctors’ refusals remind me of the Arab guards who forced girls back into a burning building to save themselves from seeing women who weren’t properly covered. In each case women were forced to die to preserve men’s moral sensibilities.
Whatever that means.
Georgia Platts
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Sources of Power in Relationships
There are many sources of power in relationships, but a few stand out:
1. Higher education, income, and occupational status, especially in marriage relationships when men make more money. Both partners tend to feel that a man should have more say since he contributes greater resources to the family.
When wives are economically dependent and fear they can’t support themselves, husbands can become especially powerful. Some abusive men purposely get their wives pregnant (by destroying their birth control) to increase their wives’ dependency – and their control over their partners.
Women are less likely to become more powerful when they make more money because they generally don’t want to diminish their partners.
2. Relationship options. Perhaps a woman is economically dependent, but she is beautiful and she knows it. She also knows that if she leaves the relationship, she can quickly find someone else. This gives her a lot of clout.
3. Traditional gender roles. People who hold traditional notions about gender are more likely to accept male authority. While our society has achieved greater equality, men still typically have a bit more power in relationships.
Interestingly, young men today more often say they prefer equal partnerships.
4. Strong personalities. Even among the traditional-minded, some women just have stronger personalities. The couple will often deem the man, “head of home” when really, the woman is in charge.
5. Whoever cares least about the relationship has more power because the partner who cares more is more likely to cave in.
There are two ways of looking at this. On the one hand it may simply be a sad, but true, fact of life.
Yet there may be some poetic justice. If one person is poorly treated, he or she will be more likely to leave. And this can create an incentive to change. If the relationship moves back into a better balance of happiness, equality can be regained.
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Are You Pro Life, Or Do You Just Want To Control Women?
When I was young I heard feminists say that “pro-lifers” were more concerned with controlling women than preventing abortion.
That line of reasoning didn’t make sense to me at the time. Now it does. I don’t think that everyone who is prolife is disingenuous. But some are.
The Food and Drug Administration recently approved new emergency contraception known as ella, aka “Plan C.” Unlike the emergency contraception currently available, Plan C can be taken up to five days after unprotected sex, and is 98% effective when properly used. The drug stops fertilization by preventing eggs from being released.
Some pro-lifers protest that Plan C brings us one step closer to “over the counter abortions” – though medical studies prove otherwise.
These same folks say stem cell research equals abortion. Yet they don’t worry that fertilized eggs are thrown in the garbage if they aren’t used for research. Garbage isn’t constantly publicized while breakthrough science is.
Pro-lifer, George W. Bush, didn’t seem to have a problem sending young men to die in Iraq and Afghanistan. But as one cartoonist put it, “No stem cells were hurt.”
I once heard Christopher Reeve pose the following question: if you were in a research lab with a two-year-old and a fire broke out, would you save the child, or would you leave her to die so that you could save thousands of stem cells? I suspect most of us would save the actual child.
Utah Senator, Orin Hatch, says it’s fine to use fertilized eggs for research. But destroying eggs implanted in a woman’s womb equals murder. In one case a woman’s body is controlled. In the other, it isn’t.
Pro-lifer, Pat Robertson opposes a woman’s right to choose abortion in America. But he supports forced abortions in China. Once again controlling women is the only common denominator.
Pro-lifers don’t seem to be too concerned with making sure poor women get prenatal care, or that their babies have food once they are born.
Pro life? Sometimes it’s all about controlling women.
Georgia Platts
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