save it's del.icio.us
Starting with the good news…
Lately it feels like heroes are in short supply, and we all need a few people to admire, right? It’s like a physical manifestation of optimism, something to hang onto while you hunker down and try to weather the scary stuff.
Cecilia Fire Thunder, President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, is a throw-yourself-to-the-ground-in-prostration kind of hero. This woman is going to be on a coin or a stamp one day, and not some randomly-sized dollar coin no one uses either (sorry, Susan).
In response to South Dakota’s draconian and misogynistic abortion legislation banning abortions, she has announced plans to open an abortion clinic on Sioux land.
Fire Thunder, a former nurse and care giver, is exercising the sovereignty of the reservation independent of the state of South Dakota to circumvent anti-abortion laws should they be deemed constitutional.
In addition, due to federal laws that forbid the use of Medicare funds for abortions, the clinic is to be funded entirely on donations, and she is confident that it can be done. This is both visionary and pragmatic since poverty is a pervasive issue in the community.
Now the bad…
Ohio is considering a bill that would not only make an abortion a felony, but would also make it a felony to transport a woman across state lines for an abortion elsewhere. This is, of course, as unconstitutional as the South Dakota law, but it’s also crazier because it takes a further step in controlling women’s bodies by attempting to legislate what women do with their bodies outside the state’s jurisdiction. You can read more about this bill at the NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio website.
And the terrifying,..
Forensic vagina inspectors.
Bet that’s not a job title you ever thought you would hear, eh?
Ever wonder what it would actually be like for women if abortion was made illegal in this country? Jack Hitt gives us a bit of an idea in his New York Times article Pro-Life Nation. El Salvador modified its constitution to ban abortion in the late 90s and has created a pretty extensive enforcement and legal machine for going after women who attempt to terminate their pregnancies.
Some of the fun includes a literal investigation of the “crime scene” in which the police stop just short of rigging yellow caution tape around the woman’s uterus, as well as convictions that send women to prison for up to 30 years – leaving, of course, more children without mothers. It’s a rather Orwellian picture of what could happen if the American Right were to gain enough control in the legislature to make something like this happen here. It’s well worth the free registration to read.
It may be time to dust off that copy of The Handmaid’s Tale....
Powered by 