{"id":1674,"date":"2005-07-02T22:43:41","date_gmt":"2005-07-03T05:43:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/07\/02\/what-women-who-value-their-reproductive-rights-have-lost\/"},"modified":"2005-07-02T22:43:41","modified_gmt":"2005-07-03T05:43:41","slug":"what-women-who-value-their-reproductive-rights-have-lost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=1674","title":{"rendered":"What women who value their reproductive rights have lost"},"content":{"rendered":"

With Justice O’Connor’s retirement, we have lost something on the highest court in the land. On CNN<\/em>, I heard one of the anchors refer to her as a “classical moderate”, who ‘drove the other justices crazy because she didn’t have a consistent philosophy’ when it came to handing down rulings. This weekend so far, I have received numerous “alert emails” from pro-women’s-reproductive-rights organizations such as NARAL: Pro-Choice America<\/a><\/strong> and Planned Parenthood<\/a><\/strong>, all of which foreshadowed the arduous battle that lies ahead for those of us who value women as autonomous human beings, deserving of civil rights and liberties–that should not<\/strong> be trumped and declared null and void<\/em> the moment they become pregnant or suspected of being pregnant. Because you know, women’s humanity and civil rights\/liberties become too incovenient for the ideologies of conservative politicians and religious zealots to permit, once they become pregnant or should they ever in their lives. Being a pre-menopausal female in this<\/em> country–in this<\/em> political and ideological atmosphere–is slowing but surely becoming a liability and even a threat to a woman’s (and even girls’) own civil rights and liberties. It is truely unfortunate that we live in a society that enjoys playing misogynist politics with women’s bodies, sexuality, and lives. No surprise at all that the perpetrators behind this are mostly men (with their female enablers by their side of course, don’t forget them).<\/p>\n

Now<\/em>, here is Justice O’Connor’s opinion from the Planned Parenthood v. Casey<\/em> decision, via Pandagon<\/a><\/strong> and MediaGirl<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

Though abortion is conduct, it does not follow that the State is entitled to proscribe it in all instances. That is because the liberty of the woman is at stake in a sense unique to the human condition, and so, unique to the law. The mother who carries a child to full term is subject to anxieties, to physical constraints, to pain that only she must bear. That these sacrifices have from the beginning of the human race been endured by woman with a pride that ennobles her in the eyes of others and gives to the infant a bond of love cannot alone be grounds for the State to insist she make the sacrifice. Her suffering is too intimate and personal for the State to insist, without more, upon its own vision of the woman’s role, however dominant that vision has been in the course of our history and our culture. The destiny of the woman must be shaped to a large extent on her own conception of her spiritual imperatives and her place in society.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

RE<\/em>: ‘men mostly being the perpetrators behind misogynist anti-choice politics,’ here’s some brilliant commentary from Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon<\/a><\/strong> (with a link to Culture Kitchen<\/strong><\/a>)…<\/p>\n

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again–the repeated insistence that human life begins at conception is not grounded in any theology or science other than the one that insists that men are the center of existence and women are merely handmaidens made for men’s use. To insist that something is a baby when the sperm meets the age is a nice way of saying that a man’s effort is the one that counts, and even more tellingly, it’s a way to discredit the hard work and emotional rollercoaster that pregnancy really is. Abortion rights–the right of a woman to say I am not going to make a baby–mean our society understands fully that it is women who make babies, our bodies that nourish and build new humans, not men’s. And that’s the angle, I think, that O’Connor was working from in this paragraph.<\/p>\n

The dehumanization of women and the redefinition of us as nothing but vessels for men’s efforts has been linked, suffice it to say, to some of the most unpleasant times in human history<\/a><\/strong>. I doubt very seriously that those agitating for control of women’s wombs will be satisfied with just that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They never are. Women are just transparent vessels with uteruses and ovaries to them. They hold women to the same esteem as prized livestock or a very efficient assembly line. Oh, but they’re sure to romanticize their misogyny and devaluation of women’s humanity with all sorts of rhetoric, from melodramatic religious dogma to the ‘Cult of Natalism’s’<\/em> ideals for women’s reproductive destinies (and bodies). Besides why give two shits about women or recognizing and treating them as human beings entitled to the same civil rights and liberties that men enjoy, when you can easily gloss over them, and objectify them as mere incubators–birthing chattel, as a most convenient means of reminding them of their “proper place”? And reminding them (women) of what little or no humanity society, patriarchal religions, and the government believe they possess.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With Justice O’Connor’s retirement, we have lost something on the highest court in the land. On CNN, I heard one of the anchors refer to her as a “classical moderate”, who ‘drove the other justices crazy because she didn’t have … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,95,102,31,111],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abortion-reproductive-rights","category-anti-feminists-and-their-pals","category-conservative-zaniness-right-wingers-etc","category-feminism-sexism-etc","category-supreme-court-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}