In the last several days, The New York Times has published information about the new constitutional amendment on the ballot next week in Mississippi. This amendment, which is gathering momentum in six other states as well, would prohibit abortion, even in cases of rape, incest, or the endangerment of the mother’s life. It would ban birth control pills and IUD’s, or any method of contraception that prevents the egg from being fertilized. It would make murderers of patients, doctors who perform abortions and women using birth control.
The Personhood Initiative, the amendment is called. Its proponents claim that fertilized embryos are legal entities, despite the science.
Is this 2011? Because it sure sounds like they’re trying to push us back to the ugly days before Roe v Wade, when women had no reproductive rights. It was an unlovely time when we had to seek out sleazy abortion practitioners who may or may not have medical knowledge, risking our lives and the possibility of complications which would render us unable to bear children in the future.
Okay, nobody likes an abortion, but there are valid reasons for having one: rape, incest, and danger to the life of the mother head the list, as well as the inability to care for a child, either emotionally, socially or financially.
Denying not only abortion access, but access to contraceptives will plunge us into an age of darkness, where women’s rights don’t exist. What’s next? Will we have to wear burkas? Will we be forbidden to work, to vote, to drive? What can these people be thinking? What would happen to the already impoverished Americans who can hardly afford to care for the children they already have? Who will care for the unwanted children? Unplanned pregnancies happen, regardless of the care taken to avoid them: no contraceptive device is 100% effective.
If we can’t have access to contraceptives, how can we prevent unwanted pregnancies? Abstinence?
Oh wait. We can put those children in foster care, then into prison, when they’re old enough, and at least the prison industries will benefit—nobody else will, that’s for sure.
Unbelievable. Is this bill going to pass? In the U.S.? You’re absolutely right–it’s a return to the Middle Ages, to the age before the light of reason tempered cultish and fanatic prejudice. No one likes an abortion, and I highly doubt there are many, if any, women who would use abortion as “birth control”. But the issue here isn’t about rationalizing abortion–it’s about choice, about women’s rights to make decisions about our own bodies. It always has been. No one wants to have to make that decision, but it IS a decision. And no one can make it for us.
I’m not in the U.S. I’m not even American. Why do I care? Besides the fact that human rights would be trampled, and that’s a global concern, I care because of the precedent. This gets approved in the U.S. and chances are lots of other legislations will try it too. This has got to be stopped, before it gains any kind of momentum.
Thank you for sharing this, Myra!