Letter #3: Women's Rights are Human Rights
Dear Fellow American,
There is no doubt that women's rights are under attack in America, and it is under the guise of pro life. But before you write me off, hear me out. We've lately been so quick to dismiss each other, and even quicker to give credence to base and false fantasies; it's no wonder we've found ourselves in this mudpuddle.
As I've come to realize in my 82 long years of life, Liberty is a balance struck between causes, and not a blanket statement for all. What you do and how you live your life has an impact on mine, and vice versa, and so the inevitable conflicts that result require the scales of justice to be balanced. Isn't it quite so fitting for this discussion that our representation of justice in America is "Lady Justice?"
True to my cause, I would like to start by pointing you to the US Constitution. In it are all the freedoms we Americans enjoy daily, and I cringe to see it used as a tool, or disregarded, at the expense of my fellow Citizens, for the benefit of a seldom few. Amendment XIV, Section 1, states:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Let's look at this as Lady Justice would in regards to abortion (surprisingly, old, rich white men aren't on the scale for this topic - though I believe they think they are). No doubt, the balance to be struck, in the case of abortion, is between the woman and the child. Both are deserving of protection under the law, are they not?
But wouldn't you also agree that it is a special case? Childbirth is already, after all, by nature a sacrificial arrangement. A woman sacrifices a great deal bringing a child into the world, and sometimes that sacrifice is her life. In many ways, they are one.
A history of abortion bans
Is it in the name of Liberty that we would wish to force women into impossible situations? In the old days (even older than I), death was commonplace for pregnant women. Thankfully, with the advent of modern medicine, this trend began to change.
But even still, women have always had to make terribly difficult choices when it came to their most sacred ability to give life to the world. Childbirth is the greatest miracle of existence that happens every single day, and it is also the most painfully dangerous - and only women bear it.
Due to the complex nature of giving life, abortion has been practiced throughout the world for a variety of reasons. In fact, sometimes nature goes ahead and does it itself (otherwise known as miscarriage). Abortion bans weren't common in America until the 19th century, but why?
I imagine it had something to do with control over women's rights, likely playing into the ultra-rich's agenda of maintaining a privileged status over other, marginalized groups. And it wasn't again until 1967 that Colorado became the first state to decriminalize abortion in cases of rape, incest, or in which pregnancy would lead to permanent physical disability.
Not so surprisingly, these strides in democracy did not long precede the creation of the Far Right-Wing think tank, The Heritage Foundation (Creator of Project 2025 and Reagan's Mandate for Leadership).
Even still, during that time, women participated in all sorts of illegal back-alley and self-procedures, at great risk to their freedom and their life, many times leading to death (I know, I know, they should have just come to term, those murderers). I suppose it was perhaps because they felt they had no choice.
Isn't it intriguing that the same Far Right conservatives so adamant to invade the privacy of women in order to protect unborn children are the same pundits crying for the elimination of government aid programs? Pro life unless you're alive?
SCOTUS precedents - women's rights to privacy
This brings me to my second point - privacy. I always try to take the moderate view when possible, as I'm a philosopher at heart, but removing abortion right seems to be a slippery slope for the privileges of women under the law, as compared to men. For what man would ever accept the sharing of his medical information with the government without his explicit consent?
I'm not making this stuff up either. Many precedents for "zones of privacy" have been established by the Supreme Court over time, one of which was 1969 Griswold v. Connecticut, which protects married couples' rights to use contraception under the same interpretation of the Bill of Rights. Maybe they would like to overturn that one too? Perhaps privacy isn't covered by the Fourteenth Amendment? I think we would agree, our business is none of their business.
The men making these decisions (except for the wonderfully corrupt, Trump-appointed Supreme Court Judge, Amy Coney Barrett) simply do not have to worry about dying in childbirth, or about giving birth to a child of rape or incest. And perhaps you are now thinking, "well, I suppose in those cases exceptions can be made."
The only problem: an abortion decision is private. States, and the federal government, are now free to inject themselves into a woman's private health, and then send her to trial by jury for any reason whatsoever having to do with an abortion (the fact that most states haven't been so draconian - yet - is beside the point).
Is it that we now believe women have become so evil that they just go against their own instincts to kill their babies? I'm not saying there aren't some women like that, but are we really willing to violate women's rights to privacy in order to catch those bad apples?
It has long been known that the bedrock of our justice system holds to the principle of the preeminent English jurist, William Blackstone, that it is "better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer." Why should this be different for a woman?
From abortion to prison
One could reasonably bring up the point that a medical professional is always mandated to bring information to the authorities when there is a life at stake. Don’t get me wrong, I do believe unborn babies deserve protection too. I just think that in almost all cases, the mother is the one who cares the most about the life growing inside of her.
Whose agenda are we serving when we believe the lie that women, in general, are rampantly promiscuous and using abortion as birth control? The real question should be: where is the line drawn between the mother and the baby’s protection since the arrangement is sacrificial?
If you really give it a nice, hard look (underneath the fluffy surface), you’ll see that the reason that women’s rights aren’t being protected at the federal level is because they don’t actually care about babies or mothers. They are, instead, about the rights of women — more specifically, taking them away.
Who, in their sound mind, would give the government the power to whimsically impose itself on a woman’s privacy and call that Liberty? And then, to make matters worse, after invading her privacy and seeing that she received an abortion due to probable death, rape, incest, or lethal fetal anomaly, to subject her to trial by jury.
This is the medieval platform on which we are currently operating, and I’m not sure if it is that we have so quickly forgotten our great societal strides towards humanity, or that we have just become so blindly ignorant of history, that we would allow such a tragic group of primitive (and very rich) individuals to guide our thinking on such matters.
Women's rights - final note
Before I end, as always when this topic is broached, I am reminded of a George Carlin skit I enjoyed so many years ago. So, in his memory, and may God rest his soul, I would like to quote his poignant words on the subject (pardon his language):
So, my dear friend, I do understand why you are interested in saving the unborn babies. They are such precious things, after all. But, please ask yourself honestly, whose agenda are you serving? Who benefits from a woman being forced to have a child of rape or incest, or dying on the table, or going to prison for abortion? Do you benefit from that? Does any woman benefit from that?
I think not. I think the people in control benefit from that - the families of the robber baron's of history, the billionaires of companies who profit from war, genocide, pollution, drug crime, racism, sexism, and the destruction of government - the people who would like nothing more than to own you completely and become your Big Brother. Choose your path forward wisely.
Your Faithful Friend,
Old Patriot
PS - If you enjoyed this content, please press the heart, comment, subscribe, and spread the word. Thanks for reading!
Comments