Malala and Texas

Last year, when then 15 year old Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head for advocating education for girls in the Taliban controlled Swat region of Pakistan, most people in the world who heard about it were outraged.  How could anyone choose to shoot a girl in the head for wanting other girls to be able to read books!  How could anyone just take aim at, basically, a child’s head, and then pull the trigger.  Fortunately, Malala survived and has become a nearly world-wide celebrity, receiving awards for her bravery in continuing her advocacy for the education of girls, even after such a horrendous experience.  I’m not an expert on the Muslim religion by any means, but I have a personal friend who is a Muslim and a medical doctor.  She is married to a medical doctor, and they have two children, a boy and a girl, and the girl is educated as well as the boy.  Obviously the Taliban is the radical right wing fringe of the religion. 

Probably many of us in this country felt rather smug because something like what happened to Malala could never happen in our country.  We are too politically sophisticated to even think of such a thing.  Right?  Wrong! 

In the United States at this time there is a concerted effort by the Republicans in both the federal and state legislatures controlled by Republicans to deny women the right to basic health care, all under the guise of preventing abortions.  As I type this, the state of Texas has closed women’s health clinics all over the state except for just three.  These clinics, and those in other states, don’t just provide abortions; they also provide, but not limited to, mammograms to detect breast cancer; they provide for cervical and other cancer screenings; they provide sex education and birth control information; diabetes detection and education.   

What these Republicans are doing in these states is basically taking aim at poor women and girls and taking away any hope they have of receiving the basic health care I have delineated above.  If anyone of these women or girls develops any one of the above diseases, does not receive health care in a timely manner, it is just the same as aiming a gun at their heads and pulling the trigger. 

The only difference between what the radical religious right is doing in this country, and what the would-be killer of Malala is, that man had the courage to at least come close enough to her to kill her.  What is happening in this country is that the men who are passing these laws from religious conviction are at a distance from the women and girls they will be killing.  The basic premise, however, is the same with both radical religious Muslim men and radical religious right Christians.  Women and girls do not have the same rights as men, in this country as well as in Pakistan.   

Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.  A radical feminist is the notion that women (and the decent men who support them) need to do something about this – now.