May 15, 2019
On a daily basis, the news has us all cycling between alternate feelings of rage and dread. Around the country, puritanical zealots are locked in a competition to brand every woman in America like Hester Prynne. Not content with punishing women for daring to assert sexual agency, the Alabama legislature passed a bill yesterday that would make all women the powerless victims of depraved and criminal men. The Alabama bill, which contained no exception for rape or incest, was stunning in its cruelty (Source: “Alabama Lawmakers Vote to Effectively Ban Abortion in the State,” by Timothy Williams and Alan Blinder, The New York Times, 5/14/19). With this spate of legislation, anti-abortion extremists seem closer than ever to their long sought goal, to tee up a challenge that would give the newly ultra-conservative Supreme Court the chance to overturn Roe v. Wade. Although women have always known that this was the endgame, the abject ignorance of actual biology and naked contempt for women displayed by these anti-abortion militants still feels like a punch to the gut. Continue reading “The “right to life””