(no subject)

[auntiemeesh]

I've got a lot of thoughts today. They revolve around this War on Women, women's rights as individuals vs their responsibilities as baby carriers, and such. Due to the fact that there are some things in the conversation that may be triggering for some people, I've put it all under a cut.



This is the sort of thing that gets my blood boiling and makes me nearly incoherent with impotent rage. A 15 year old girl, in Mississippi, faces life in prison because she had a miscarriage. She's being charged with depraved-heart murder because she used cocaine during the pregnancy. The article goes on to list several other women who are also currently facing murder charges because they miscarried or the baby died within a few days of birth. This is insane. I'm sorry. Yes, it would be good if women who were pregnant didn't do drugs during their pregnancy, but charging them with murder, especially when only one of the baby's deaths was proven to be a result of the mother's actions (a despondent woman who attempted suicide) is just beyond unacceptable.

I have resisted paying attention to politics because all the bullshit makes me want to tear my hair out and start strangling people with it, but I can see that I'm going to have to become a bit more active going forward. This is not a culture that I'm willing to be a part of. It's true that right now, these cases are limited to women who did drugs (or are merely accused of doing drugs) during their pregnancies (not that I think that's even remotely reasonable on its own), but there are so many other things that could be criminalized if this step isn't where we all stand together and say 'uh uh, no way, sorry.'

For the record, I've never been pregnant, never had an abortion or miscarriage. Based on my current lifestyle, I don't imagine that I ever will get pregnant and need to deal with these issues. No one knows what their life will bring them and things in my life could always change, but it doesn't seem likely. So this is not an issue that affects me because I have some fear that I could be next or anything like that. It is simply a line that I'm not willing to have our lawmakers cross. It is a line that I am willing to defend, to say "No, you conservative republican men (and any other like-minded folks) don't get to say that what I am doing right now is a crime just because I happen to have a fetus inside me."

I've tried to avoid starting any sort of religious or political debates here, because I tend to not be terribly well-informed, and because I never feel terribly comfortable with debating (it's a little too much like arguing, which I'm extremely uncomfortable with), but I have a feeling this journal may be seeing more posts about politics in particular, as I move forward with trying to be better informed and more active in what is happening in the world around me. I hope you'll all stick around to see what happens next, to provide support, information, and debate if you disagree with me. I won't be offended, though, if anyone decides to unfriend me due to extreme differences of opinion.

Comments

[dreamflower]

I don't happen to disagree with you. I think you are right on target-- and women need to wake up and smell the coffee.

First of all, we need to take away from the conservatives the right to define the terms in which the subject is debated. "Anti-abortion" does not equal "Pro-life", as many of these people are for capital punishment and the actions they propose also often endanger the lives of the mothers!

Personally, I consider myself to be both pro-choice and pro-life. I am not against reasonable laws to regulate abortion-- for example, I don't think an abortion should be the only operation an underage child does not need parental consent for. But I am against silly and dangerous laws like the one in Mississippi; or like the ones they are trying to pass here in Oklahoma, in which human life is defined as beginning in conception. I think an abortion ought to be a last resort in a desperate situation-- the life or health of the mother, rape or incest, or other serious considerations-- but I think the decision should be left up to the woman and her doctor.

The hypocrisy of the Republicans makes me sick. They go around proclaiming that the Democrats want to let big government run everything (by which they mean putting a leash on big business) but then they want to make laws sticking the government's nose into personal health decisions and relationships between consenting adults! I think people should ask themselves WHICH party is more like Big Brother!

[auntiemeesh.livejournal.com]

They go around proclaiming that the Democrats want to let big government run everything (by which they mean putting a leash on big business) but then they want to make laws sticking the government's nose into personal health decisions and relationships between consenting adults!

This exactly. It's not that they want government to butt out of people's business. They want government to butt out of big business's business, but they want to control every aspect of the little people's lives.

[piplover.livejournal.com]

I agree whole heartedly. It makes me absolutely sick to see what these people are doing to women, and it amazes me that every woman isn't up in arms about this.

I don't even have the words to express how mad this makes me.

[auntiemeesh.livejournal.com]

It's a weird thing, where everyone I know is angry and frustrated about it, and there's a lot of talk about the 'war on women' but there don't seem to be any marches or protests or anything like that. Just endless petitions to sign, telling senators and reps to say no to all these horrible bills that keep coming up. I'm not much of a protester, but I'd make the trip to D.C. to add my voice to this one, if it were to ever happen.

[dreamflower]

"Every woman up in arms" sounds great, but at least here where I live, many of the most rabid conservatives are women. I do not understand it at all: they buy all the propaganda about the liberals being "against family values" without, so far as I can tell, any evidence whatsoever. Most of them seem to buy into the whole idea that you can't be a Christian unless you are a conservative Republican.

It's terrifying.

[westwindschild.livejournal.com]

Welcome to the war, sister-soldier. I'm glad you're here. I agree; this is entirely insane. The line must be drawn here and women must unite to put an end to this nonsense. The uber-religious, uber-conservative right-wing nutjobs have already made serious inroads into the hardwon rights our mothers (and cousins, aunts and grandmothers) fought to gain, and I am afraid the battle is going to be vicious, and filled with casualties. But it is a battle we cannot afford not to fight.

[auntiemeesh.livejournal.com]

It's a very discouraging thing. I hope it's a war we're able to win. I feel like it is, in the long run, but we may lose some very painful battles along the way.

[topaztook.livejournal.com]

I always wonder, at the citing of the in-cite-ful statistics about the "number of unborn babies killed" in anti-abortion crusaders' rhetoric: just how many women were killed in the "good old days" of coat hangers, and/or will be with the passage of some of the more draconian laws. I guess we're about to find out. :(

[auntiemeesh.livejournal.com]

It all reminds me of my dear old dad, who would have much preferred my mom die in childbirth than get the hysterectomy she had after baby number nine. How a baby that hasn't even been conceived can be of more value to someone than his own wife is just completely beyond me.

[wbkbb.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad you posted this. When I saw this article I could hardly even believe it. I thought Mississippi just defeated that awful personhood bill!! So this is what it's like when we have a victory??? The combination of policies being proposed is just mind-boggling: no coverage for birth control, no Planned Parenthood, no abortion, no adequate health care for poor women (pregnant or not), not enough spaces in treatment programs for women with substance abuse problems, and then, of course, no funding for the care of the children who these lawmakers insist must be born - and it will all be the mother's fault, in their opinion.

We really do need to fight this on every front, in every way we possibly can, because it's already unbelievably bad, and if we don't stop it now, the lives of women will be completely unrecognizable in the very near future.

[auntiemeesh.livejournal.com]

It's a huge issue. And as AFD pointed out below, a lot of these laws have been on the books for many years, designed to protect pregnant mothers, but they've been altered over the years and new interpretations have allowed them to be used against those mothers. Changing the mindset that allows that to happen is going to be an uphill climb, I suspect.

[shirebound]

I appreciate your post, Meeshie. I'm going to pay closer attention to all this as well.

[auntiemeesh.livejournal.com]

Hopefully, if all of us pay a little bit closer attention, we'll be able to find some ways to get the tide reversed.

[kay-brooke.livejournal.com]

I'm like you: I hate debating, and the recent war on women stuff just makes me sick at heart. I don't even want to look at it. But I should.

What I am most afraid of is that yes, a lot of women right now are waking up to this and trying to do something. But people's attention spans are short, and I have no faith in anyone to remember their outrage when it counts at the polls. I have a lot of thoughts about why so many woman-hating conservatives have ended up in positions of power, but they are thoughts that make no one look good. Basically, I despair for this country.

[auntiemeesh.livejournal.com]

I admit that I'm one of those people with a short attention span, but I'm going to make a big effort to stay informed on this one.

[ani-no-mouse.livejournal.com]

I wish this fight could be won as easily as defeating a horrendous law once.

[auntiemeesh.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's fighting a mindset that will just keep finding new ways to say the same horrendous things.

[arthurfrdent.livejournal.com]

No respite I have for you, but I suggest after you are well and truly up in arms over this, that you dig, and keep digging to find facts. Not truth, but fact.

An important one in this, is that these laws in 38 states are written to punish people who kill or injure mothers who are carrying babies, injuring or killing the baby in the process.

The problem happens when the law is written in a vague way to cover many different situations, and then lets loose on unintended targets, like the mother herself. Importantly, some of these laws are not new... parts of the Mississippi law are from the 60's, much is from 1972, and then changes were made in '97... when this really took off was the passage of updates in 2011 that defined the fetus as a human being.
I thought that part had been defeated. They have defeated that law 4x here in Colorado, because it's stupid and the idea of "at conception" is unprovable as they have it written.

But, all of this is an exercise in unintended consequence. I don't think you could point to laws in 38 states, some of which are fairly old, and hang it all on Republicans, any more than you could say it was Dems.

It DOES branch from the idea that the government can and should do something about X thing. Two sides of a coin are 'that girl killed her baby by being a drug addict, there should be a LAW' vs. "That baby was killed as her mother walked across the crosswalk while she was pregnant, there should be a LAW."

This is a continued outgrowth of our society poking around the outside of the Definition of Life. Right now, when you are considered human, you are considered alive if you are living, but they get around that by not considering a fetus alive in that way until it is able to survive outside of it's mother.

It's a complicated thing deciding what life is, especially because it's illegal to take your own life, even if you have stageIV brain cancer and are in unparalleled misery.

That's why these laws aren't really straightforward and have difficult to understand consequences. It's hard to attack directly. The science of what is life doesn't include what is it to BE alive.

Naturally, I don't write you to sway you one way or other, rather to throw out some ideas... and a warning.
When you ask the government for a remedy [there should be a law], it will give you one, but that doesn't mean it will apply the way you think it should, nor to whom you think it should. For well or ill.

For this reason, don't give up your rights easily. and always look for unexpected ways that laws can be applied. Anything implicit or based on 'common sense' can be twisted... and ANYTIME you ask the government for money, it will own the process.

My dear Hobbit, you've a good head on your shoulders... don't stop thinking... ;) AFD

[arthurfrdent.livejournal.com]

oops, forgot the link:
http://www.ncsl.org/issues-research/health/fetal-homicide-state-laws.aspx

[auntiemeesh.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link and the thoughts. I definitely have a lot to learn if I want to get up to speed on this issue, and you're absolutely right that reading inflammatory articles on the 'net isn't enough to give me a solid understanding of what's going on.