Come On, Guys. Grow Up!

What are these crackpot Republicans trying to do to women now? 

When ‘the pill’ was finally put on the market, women’s access to birth control was pretty primitive.  There was the diaphragm which was to be inserted prior to intercourse, or IUD’s, which apparently didn’t work very well either, and also could cause infections if left in place too long.  Once inserted I never learned how one got an IUD out.  So the pill was really terrific. 

It was not only terrific for women, it was great for families, also, since the economy started going to pieces in the early to mid-1970’s.  Salaries of the main breadwinners began to flatten out while the cost of almost everything was steadily going up.  A salary that had been adequate no longer could be stretched by frugal housekeeping to cover a family’s basic necessities, much less some of the frills that could make life interesting, such as extra curricular activities for children still in school, or music lessons.  Because of this predicament that certainly was not the fault of the average householder, women had to enter the workforce.  

Fortunately for families, the pill enabled women to prevent the pregnancies that would have insured not only another mouth to feed, clothe and educate, but with even less income.  Seldom did women get more than sex weeks maternity leave with the birth of their child, which then meant they had to find child care when they returned to work.  With families living away from their extended families, this became a great problem.  So the pill was most welcome. 

At the same time, and this certainly had both an impact on, and was impacted as well, was the social movement called feminism.  Women were made fun of, criticized, denigrated and whatever for imagining that they could actually think and function without a man to tell them how.  No longer was the phrase, “Don’t worry your pretty little head about this.  We’ll take care of it” not acceptable to women, it became, at least for me, fighting words!   

As time went by it seemed that women had finally come into their own.  Their talents and gifts were being appreciated, although not always compensated for at work fairly.  There were a few battles left to fight, but contraceptives were generally accepted and abortion was safe and available.  Women’s voices were being heard throughout the land, so to speak. 

Then 2010 happened, and for women, all hell broke loose.  Suddenly contraception became a sin again.  Restrictions were put on how a woman might go about getting an abortion.  Abortion clinics were bombed, and abortion doctors were killed.  There has even been a real push to declare that a fertilized human egg is a person.  And because of that, women who have miscarriages could easily become criminals, regardless of whether they really wanted the pregnancy to continue.  It was proposed that women in Virginia who want an abortion have to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound procedure that appear to women to be nothing more than legal rape, since it would occur without their full consent. 

Do not misunderstand me.  I think an abortion is a horrible decision to have to be made.  But I also firmly believe that there are all sorts of other means of preventing abortions than to criminalize and humiliate women.  Wherever there are good economic and social programs to support pregnant women who on their own cannot find a way out of the dilemma they are in, sometimes not of their choosing, the rate of abortion drops dramatically.   

So this is the terrible pickle women find themselves in, and it is not of their making.  They must work to help support their families.  But in order to do that, they must resort to contraceptives, which are once again under attack, both from the radical religious right, as well as the radical political right which are often the same. I think it is time some men (and by no means all) take a good look at the fear on their part that is driving these attacks on women’s sexuality.  It is so obvious to so many of us that the main reason for these attempts to squish women back into the constrained roles they had prior to the 1970’s is fear of women and their sexuality.   

Come on, guys.  Grow up.  You’re not going to succeed.  Women have had a marvelous taste of freedom, and they are not about ready to give it up.  Being barefoot and pregnant is over.  Get used to it.