Anti-American Anti-Choicers
May 14, 2008 by L
Nine Deuce, at Rage Against the Man-chine, called anti-choice activists anti-Americans today. And I’m inclined to agree with her.
In my beloved home state, Colorado, as I’ve reported here before, 20-year-old Kristi Burton and her pals at Colorado for Equal Rights have gathered over 130,000 signatures, ensuring that their proposal to define personhood as beginning at fertilization will be on the November ballot in Colorado.
If this proposed amendment to the state constitution were to be approved by voters, it would mean that women’s rights to abortion in the state, as guaranteed by Roe v. Wade, would be on shakier ground than ever. Women’s access to birth control would be in danger, as well, since so many hormonal contraceptives prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterine lining (though anti-choice unpatriots like to overlook the fact that HBC usually prevents ovulation in the first place). This would also spearhead similar ballot initiatives to take place in other states.
Obviously, this is very, very bad.
Anti-choicers in this country are holding American women hostage. Legislation proposed and behavior intended to limit men’s freedoms and liberties would be called terrorism, as terrorism is defined. This ballot initiative is terrorism, anti-woman, anti-choice, anti-American terrorism. It is violence against women to prevent them from caring for themselves, to restrict their identities to baby-makers, to limit the choices and amount of agency they have, to ignore the contexts of their lives for the potential life of the cell-clusters inside them, and this ballot initiative is inciting systemic and institutionalized violence against women.
Sign the petition or donate money to Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, or donate to Protect Families Protect Choice. Help keep women’s bodily autonomy a legally protected right.
Colorado endorses marijuana, but thinks personhood begins at fertilization?
Dear Colorado: make up your mind if you are “progressive” or not.
Indeed.
To be perfectly accurate, it’s only Denver that’s got the whole low priority for pot arrests thing — the rest of the state is still pretty fucking conservative.
Colorado, I believe, isn’t progressive overall, but has pockets of progressivism along the Front Range, such as Boulder, some of Fort Collins, and parts of Denver. I blame the patriarchal epicenter called Colorado Springs for this bullshit — Ms. Burton is from Peyton, a little town a few dozen miles east of the Springs.
I’m curious what proceedure women would be required to go through in order to get an abortion of an ectopic pregnancy.
I realize this is only one of many questions that a constitutional amendment of this sort would raise, but it is the first thing that cropped up. There would have to be a legal process, petitioning the court for permission for a theraputic abortion. Since 20 out of a thousand pregnancies are ectopic, and the woman will die if it is not aborted in the first trimester, I can’t help but wonder how many will die waiting for their case to be heard.
Then, of course, there will be all the women who will be incarcerated for murder for having a spontaneous abortion, to say nothing of all the women who will be charged for having an illegal abortion.
I suspect the judiciary will be freaked out at the prospect of this amendment.
I think we ought to start applying this terrorism thing to as many feminist issues as we can. I hope I don’t become repetitive, but I think I’m going to write a series of blogs on the different kinds of terrorism women in America face.
This is an excellent idea. Let me know if you need some brainstorming help.
[...] Deuce at Rage Against the Man-chine has begun her latest series about the subtle and not so subtle terrorism women face daily, called “The War on Terr’r.” Part 1 and Part 2 are up so [...]