Last February I wrote a
blog entitle “Wackadoodles” which described some of the more ridiculous actions
of some Republicans. To wit: Congressman
Daryl Issa of California holding a Congressional hearing on women’s health
issues without having any women on the panel.
After a considerable uproar, on the second day he had two women,
carefully screened ahead of time to make sure they were in line with men making
these decisions for women. In that
hearing, Bishop Lori compared government involvement in the requirements for
employers to provide birth control (which never really existed) to government
requiring a Kosher deli to serve pork.
Needless to say, there was even more of an uproar since there is no
woman who likes being compared to a piece of meat, regardless of whether it is
pork, lamb or beef.
At that time Rick
Santorum was sounding off about birth control, and at the same time wanting to
take away state and federal funding for education. Also I wrote about the stupid comment Mitt
Romney made about tying his dog’s kennel to the roof of the car, with dog in
it, to take a 12 hour long trip. He said
there was no problem, the kennel was airtight.
Had the kennel been airtight, after 12 hours the poor dog would have
been dead. As it is, no one has
particularly mentioned whatever happened to the dog after that trip.
I thought we had reached
the end of our wackadoodleness until this personhood thing turned up wherein a
fertilized egg would be proclaimed to have full human rights, perhaps even including
property rights. This would, of course,
require a constitutional amendment, but don’t let a little thing like that get
in your way. So we have Todd Aikin,
current Congressman and Senate candidate from Missouri pronouncing that rape
cannot result in pregnancy because a woman’s body knows that little illegal
sperm is up to no good, and shuts itself down!
And we have Congressman Joe Walsh, Illinois, saying that with modern
science and technology there is no way a pregnancy can harm the mother; that
claiming this is just the way to get an abortion!
There have also been proposals,
which fortunately have gone nowhere, to make miscarriages criminal, just as the
fundamentalists want to make abortions, probably because the medical term for a
miscarriage, the lay term, is spontaneous abortion. After a Google search of the frequency of
spontaneous abortions, it is estimated that about 1 in 3 women will have, and I
return to the lay term since that is what I am, a miscarriage. Some women experience this so early in the
pregnancy they may not even know they are pregnant, unless they are using a
pregnancy kit to determine if they are.
This is a subject that
most women don’t talk about. If they
didn’t know they were pregnant, the reason for not talking about it is
obvious. But later in the pregnancy,
particularly if the baby was desperately wanted, the event was too personal and
painful to discuss with anyone but their partner and/or doctor. If the personhood amendment would actually be
passed, and any cessation of a pregnancy would be criminalized
as the murder of a real person, how devastated the woman would be by the fact
that not only did she lose her baby, but now she is in jail, at best! I assume that this would apply to married
women as well as unmarried women. To
avoid the stigma of being criminalized, women will not report that they have
had a miscarriage. Generally speaking
this is ok, but not always. If the
‘spontaneous abortion’ is not complete, and some tissue remains, certainly a
septic condition can occur. The sepsis
may damage her uterus, thus preventing future pregnancies, or at is worst,
cause the death of the woman. Is it
reasonable to assume that if a personhood amendment passes, the same
fundamentalists will have eliminated Obamacare in favor of high-priced medical
Insurance, as we have now?
What is it with these
wackadoodles anyway? They talk about how
they are so pro-life, about the miracle of life, but when it comes to women,
they seem to be pro-who cares?
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