The Talibanizing of America’s Women

By Mary MacElveen

June 19, 2006

As elected officials around this country seek to turn back the clock when it comes to Roe V. Wade, in essence they are talibanizing American women.  They no longer see these women as independent, but dependent on crushing laws that will punish them should they find themselves pregnant.  As we approach July 4^th which is supposed to be America’s Independence Day from tyranny, can these lawmakers actually look women in the face and say that they have liberty?

While I can understand this move coming from a Republican governor, Michael Rounds of South Dakota to prohibit women from asserting their rights, I cannot understand a Democratic governor in Kathleen Blanco.  According to Reuters: “Louisiana Democratic Gov. Kathleen Blanco signed into law a ban on most abortions, which would be triggered if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns its 1973 ruling legalizing the procedure, a spokesman said on Saturday.” What she just did through this move was to tell women that their rights under our constitution mean nothing and in my opinion she is pandering to her conservative constituents. In the next gubernatorial election, she needs to be taken out of power since she thought nothing of stripping women of their power.

Women and young girls under this new way of thinking are nothing but chattel. They will have no rights to control their reproductive system.  What is next? Will our women down the road have to wear burkas just like women in Saudi Arabia? Some will say that is a bit extreme, but many pharmacies will not fill prescription contraceptive drugs.  They say that the pharmacist has the right to assert his or her moral beliefs above sound medical practice.

Why must women be at the mercy of these professionals when it comes to preventing unwanted pregnancies?  You would think that the Christian thing to do would be to prevent an abortion and contraceptive measures do just that.  But, then again, they only work if our young girls and boys are taught how to use them. 

Many teenagers have at times disobeyed their parents when it comes to the small stuff in life such as staying out late, or listening to music that we as parents may not like: So, will they really pay attention to abstinence only programs that conservatives feel is the best way in preventing unwanted pregnancies?  The heat of the moment and raging teen hormones may supersede this program. Also, abstinence only programs do nothing to address the spread of AIDs and other sexually transmitted diseases.  Only by teaching our children how to use condoms will do that.  My teenage children already know how to use a condom and I have left the door open so if they have questions, even the embarrassing ones, they do feel free to come to me.

By taking away a woman’s right to choose, are these lawmakers ready for the fallout that will occur?  Even with a woman’s right to choose still legal there are some women such as Andrea Yates (who drowned her five children) that will procreate by practicing the tenets taught by Christianity.  According to Wikipedia, I was chilled to the bone upon reading, “Andrea's psychiatrist, Dr. Eileen Starbranch, testified that she urged the couple not to have more children, to prevent future psychotic depression, but the procreative plan taught by the Yates' spiritual mentor, Michael Peter Woroniecki, a doctrine to which Rusty Yates subscribed, insisted she should continue to have "as many children as nature allows".  Imagine if you will had Ms. Yates were allowed to practice safe sex, in all likeliness, she would not be in prison today facing yet another trial, since her first conviction was overturned.  I say allowed since I feel that she was brainwashed.

Ms. Yates even stated, “It was the seventh deadly sin. My children weren't righteous. They stumbled because I was evil. The way I was raising them they could never be saved. They were doomed to perish in the fires of hell."  With this line of psychotic thinking, these Christian zealots failed Andrea and her children.

Some even believe that her former husband Rusty Yates was responsible for bringing this on by continually impregnating her with very little support.  Is that depraved indifference murder?  In my opinion, yes it is, but the Harris County D.A. thought otherwise.  Perhaps, Rusty should have used a condom to prevent the massacre of his own children.  Rusty Yates has since divorced Andrea and has remarried.  I shudder to think of what can happen should he start a new family.

This is the mania that is sweeping this country and this is why separation of church and state must be protected.  Will there be other Andreas in our future because of crushing anti-choice laws? We are all but guaranteed this.  Oh and our elected officials and the courts will demonize them when they could have prevented this in the first place.  I even wonder how many will face the death penalty in these ‘red states’.

Should Roe V Wade be overturned in the future, I shudder to think of the horror that many police officers will stumble upon as they come across a crime scene of a botched abortion.  Will they have to walk through a bloody mess since that woman was forced to seek out a butcher?  We have failed our daughters and our women should they seek out such a butcher.  Should Roe V Wade be overturned and when states such as South Dakota have already chosen to make abortion illegal, we have already doomed these first responders.  Do we as a civil society have the right to subject these men and women sworn to defend the laws of this nation to this bloody nightmare?  Conservatives and religious right-wing nuts do. They have become America’s Taliban.

To these right-wing-nuts that state abortion is murder, most likely you do support Bush’s war in Iraq and how many pregnant women in Iraq have been killed?  Many right-wing-nuts oppose national health care, but when a child is born, they need their shots and physicals.  What happens to the children whose parents have no health insurance coverage?  They go on to face many debilitating diseases.  How very Christian of you.

Senator John F. Kerry stated of choice in one of his presidential debates held on October 14^th, 2004, “I believe that choice is a woman's choice. It's between a woman, God and her doctor.”  All women should agree with that, even Governor Kathleen Blanco.

*An addendum to this piece:  It has been reported by the AP today that enough signatures were collected to let the South Dakotan ban go to the voters in November.  It was originally set to take effect on July 1^st.  Let us hope that the voters teach our esteemed elected officials a lesson of what true freedom and liberty is all about.