In Defense of Life
Womens’ lives, that is. Today is the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, two landmark cases that recognized that women are thinking, intelligent human beings capable of making decisions; autonomous human beings that have the right to bodily integrity, beings that own the flesh they inhabit. Women are human beings, not property, and it is their right to decide whether they’ll abort, prevent, or carry a pregnancy. No one else, not her pastor, her family, her politicians, or anti-choicers who’ve never met her, has the right to make or limit that decision.
Every year, Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) introduces the Sanctity of Life Act:
H.R. 227: 1/7/2009–Introduced.
Sanctity of Human Life Act – Declares that: (1) the right to life guaranteed by the Constitution is vested in each human and is the person’s paramount and most fundamental right; (2) each human life begins with fertilization, cloning, or its functional equivalent, at which time every human has all legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood; and (3) Congress, each state, the District of Columbia, and all U.S. territories have the authority to protect all human lives.
I’m not linking to it,* but Broun posted this statement on Redstate:
As we ring in the New Year and begin the 111th Congress, the need to protect the unborn remains front and center in the national political debate. Each year, in keeping with my promise to my constituents, the first bill I introduce provides Constitutional protections to unborn children.
His first bill, his trademark, his symbolic opening every year, is a bill that proclaims that women have fewer rights to their bodily integrity than corpses; that women cannot and should not make decisions for themselves; that women are worthless and unintelligent. He stakes his commitment not to human rights, or fighting poverty, or helping children get a good education, or ending war, or making healthcare affordable, but to degrading and infantilizing women. Broun is a symbol of the stubbornly misogynistic anti-choice movement and their determination to destroy our rights wholesale, if we do not remain wary and committed to fighting for reproductive justice.
The 2009 Blog for Choice topic is “What is your top pro-choice hope for President Obama and/or the new Congress?”
My answer: Repeal the global gag rule immediately. I was hoping that Obama would do that via executive order today, as Clinton did on the 20th anniversary of Roe in 1993, or explicitly repeal the HHS rule change, but he’s failed to do so thus far.
You have to be pro-choice every day, or the anti-choicers will win. This Saturday, 1/24, the Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights (BACORR) is staging a pro-choice, pro-GLBTQI, pro-immigrant rights rally at Market & Embarcadero, to protest the Walk for “Life” WC.* The Walk for “Life” brings tens of thousands of anti-choice misogynists to San Francisco’s Embarcadero to demonstrate against the humanity of women. The anti-choicers have historically outnumbered the pro-choicers, so please come out! There will also be a pro-GLBTQI “Pieces of 8″ performing arts street fair along Embarcadero, celebrating creativity, love, and civil rights.
* As part of general SEO strategies and not driving traffic/revenue to offensive sites, I’m not going to link to sites I find offensive. In the interests of citing and being accountable, though, I will provide enough information that anyone interested in doing so will be able to find the original post or image herself.
