An
acquaintance died recently. Abbot David
Geraets of the Monastery of the Risen Christ, San Luis Obispo, CA. I didn’t know Abbot David very well, but I
did attend a workshop he gave several years ago. During that workshop he quipped, “When one
thinks in black and white only, then one ignores the grey matter in between.”
This
so-called War on Women has reminded me of that quip constantly. Also as I have mentioned before, I don’t like
the term “War on Women” because a war by definition must have a winner and a
loser. From the perspective of those
who are waging this, it may be a war because they want the fundamentalist
right-wing radical Christian view of women to win. From women’s perspective, however, it is a struggle
for justice.
So,
Limbaugh calls any woman with an original thought, that is, one not dictated to
her by a man, a feminazi. I’ve never
really thought of myself as that, but then he does have the right to his
opinion, and the term is not really directed at me personally, so other than
generally complain, I’ve never taken issue with it.
But
Limbaugh’s personal attacks on individual women have escalated recently, as
have the some 1100 laws passed on the federal, state, and some local levels by
Republican controlled governments aimed at limiting women’s rights to control
their own bodies and destinies. There
have been a few of these laws that are really egregious. Let me be really clear about something. I happen to be generally against
abortions. But I am really against some
of these laws because I believe that they will cause women to go back to having
so-called back-alley abortions in unsanitary conditions, which will cause many
women to die unnecessarily. All Roe v.
Wade does is allow a woman to have a medically safe abortion. It does not require her to have one. With that being said, let me comment on some
of these laws.
Tony
Perkins, Family Research Council (radical right wing Christian), stated on
Martin Bashir’s program on MSNBC that his organization is pushing the laws that
a woman must at least have an external ultrasound and subsequently see the
image of the fetus she is contemplating aborting. His further comment was that a woman must
have all of the information possible before choosing an abortion. In other words, men must decide what
information a woman should have before making the abortion decision. What utter nonsense. Any pregnant woman has all of the information
she needs. Her body is talking to her in
a manner that no man could ever understand.
To infer that men know more than she about what is going on with her is
pure misogyny. At least, for the moment,
the Virginia legislature has dropped the requirement of a transvaginal
ultrasound, although 7 states already require external ultrasound procedures
prior to abortions.
Other
laws being contemplated in some areas is that any woman who has a miscarriage
should be criminally prosecuted. Or that
a woman who has a miscarriage must have a picture of the fetus which she must
view. Now I know personally that
miscarriages may occur even when the woman desperately wants the pregnancy. The following quote is from The Mayo Clinic: “Miscarriage
is the spontaneous loss of a pregnancy before the 20th week. About 15 to 20
percent of known pregnancies end in miscarriage. But the actual number is
probably much higher because many miscarriages occur so early in pregnancy that
a woman doesn't even know she's pregnant. Most miscarriages occur because the
fetus isn't developing normally.” I know that some may
occur from hormonal imbalance. To
criminally charge a woman for a miscarriage, or to force her to view the miscarried
mass of tissue is completely unjust.
These
are just a few of the black and white (and I don’t mean race here) beliefs as
one can imagine. It has become totally a
matter of I am right and you are wrong.
Consequently no resolution to these arguments can ever be found with
this type of rigid belief system.
It
is just as Abbott David said. “The grey
matter in between is being completely ignored.”
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