B is for Belligerent

Why do people think it is within their rights to interfere with the rights of other people?  Why have groups of politicians declared war on half of the population?  Why are we the ones accused of being intolerant persecutors when we speak out against the religious zealots trying to take control of women and women's rights to their own bodies?  Why, why, why?

We can't win while the zealots are in charge.

The majority of women are responsible and hard-working.  We hold jobs or stay home and the choice should be ours.  We are worth more than the potential contents of our uteri.  At least we used to be.  Now politicians are trying to lower the status of women to walking incubators.  They want us to disclose our birth control status to our employers and lose our medical privacy, they want us to accept our doctors lying to us, and they want us to risk our lives by prohibiting training for D&C procedures, which are used for a lot more than abortions and can be lifesaving procedures.  They are stripping away the already wary trust of the medical establishment and replacing it with justifiable paranoia and fear.

Whoa.  Who voted these sadists into office?

These issues aren't about abortion.  They are about controlling women and reverting to more archaic and reprehensible traditions.  Putting women in their place -- under the men, in the kitchen, and chronically pregnant.  We are neither property nor chattel.  I also have a suspicion that all of this stomping around on top of women's rights is a diversion masking the fact that the politicians have no clue how to solve the real problems of the real world.

No one in the world has a right to tell me how many children I must have, how I can prevent the ones I don't want to have, or who I can sleep with at what time of the month.  My personal life and choices are no one's business but my own.   My body does not belong to them. No one has the right to force others to play by the rules of a religion they do not adhere to.  Are we fooling ourselves?  Do we really live in a theocracy?  It is starting to feel like it, and The Handmaid's Tale doesn't seem so far from reality anymore.

I keep hoping the modern political climate will be revealed as an enormous unfunny hoax, but sadly, it seems to be all too legitimate.  The bills in various state legislatures keep getting more and more oppressive and ridiculous.  And sometimes, they even pass.  In Oklahoma, it is legal for a doctor to lie to his patient about fetal anomalies found during ultrasounds.  Informed decisions no longer apply.  Physicians can legally allow families to believe they will be bringing home a healthy baby even though life-altering or fatal anomalies are apparent in prenatal exams.  How cruel to withhold such information!  A poor prognosis is not a guarantee of termination, and the many families who choose to carry to term need time to mentally prepare themselves and make decisions related to treatments, palliative care, or funerals.  Sonogram laws can be just as cruel when a family is faced with terminating a wanted pregnancy gone awry.

What is wrong with these people?  How can they be so boldly, so proudly heartless?

I don't want my daughter to grow up in a country where religious extremists and their pet politicians have decided her only value is her uterus and her homemaking abilities.  I want her to have the freedom to choose her own career, to get married or not get married to whomever she chooses, and have as many or as few children as she wants.  Her dreams should not be crippled by people who have decided she is not worth receiving basic and preventative medical care just because she doesn't want her fertility to be the deciding factor in the course of her life.

Please help get these people out of office and restore some sanity to the country.  If this continues, we will soon find ourselves stuck in one of the fantastically horrific dystopian fictions which used to be part of every high school curriculum.  Cautionary tales should never become reality.