I awoke in the night worried about the fate women – not just pregnant or childbearing-age women, but all women. This society has never protected women well from domination and abuse by men, let alone from rape. Women have been little more than property, trophies, or slave labor. When my mother was born, women could not vote in this country. Now it has been declared by a handful of individuals that states can, if they wish, invade the relationship between a woman and her doctor and make medical decisions about her body and the subsequent course of her life. She is a hostage of the state.
To that, I say this: if the state forces a woman to carry a pregnancy to term, the state must be held accountable along with those who implement such an abomination. So, if the state claims this authority to take dominion over a woman, her body, and her future, the following factors become the state’s responsibilities:
- Healthcare and proper nutrition for the mother throughout the pregnancy, birth, and childcare years, through to the child’s independence.
- If the mother is the primary childcare provider, she is owed not only wages for this important work, but also compensation for the disruption to her educational and vocational trajectory.
- Financial support of the child’s healthcare and education, through to gainful employment in a trade or profession.
After all, if the state assumes control, the state must assume responsibility for the outcomes of that control.
No state has any right to tell a woman what happens inside her body, for her life, or to take away her self-determination. Whatever happened to the idea that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are inalienable? As for the father, he has contributed one cell and that is the proportion of his rights in comparison to all that the mother’s body and life contribute to the life of the child.
As I said in the first sentence, this is not just about pregnancy. This decision by these people reveals the value of women in our society in the 21st century. Women are expected to be second class citizens – if citizens at all – whose role is birthing, childcare, and service to men regardless of their dreams, education, talents, and potential contributions to our society. If women are diminished, we are all diminished.
This is not the society I wanted my daughters and grandchildren to grow up in. I want the females in my family – and women everywhere – to have all the rights that men enjoy: sovereignty, bodily autonomy, and self-determination. To do less is an affront to us all and brings shame on our society and its political, secular, and religious institutions that have promoted this patriarchal misogyny.
For many of us, peaceful sleep may be difficult to come by until these heinous acts are corrected, their creators are removed from power, all citizens have the same rights, and we can move once more toward a compassionate, democratic, people-centered, secular society based on shared values rather than domination, greed, and power invested in a minority of twisted power brokers.