"We will stand up and speak out because we know that keeping people unhealthy is a tool of oppression and stripping reproductive health care is a tool of misogyny." — @DrLeanaWen, President & CEO @PPFA, President @PPact #StopTheBans pic.twitter.com/yQX0ywjYF6
— Planned Parenthood Action (@PPact) May 21, 2019
As I mentioned earlier, there are hundreds of events around the country today protesting the abortion bans being passed in state legislatures, and you can follow along on Twitter with the hashtag #StopTheBans.
I've been following with each free moment I've had today, often with tears streaming down my face because of a constellation of emotions: Pride in and solidarity with the protesters; anger at the actions by Republican legislators that obliged the protests; fear of what will happen to women et. al. if we lose the fight to prevent these bans from taking effect.
“We stand together to call out these anti-choice politicians who talk so much about life and yet ignore the lives of the half the population. YOU matter. WE matter.” —NARAL President @ilyseh #StopTheBans pic.twitter.com/WlLtVZSzXB
— NARAL (@NARAL) May 21, 2019
I have previously noted on many occasions (here, was probably the first time) that I'm hard-pressed to see why I should be any less contemptuous of a man (or woman) who sits at a big mahogany desk in a government building making decisions about my body without my consent than I should be of the men who used physical force to make decisions about my body without my consent.
It is an observation by which anti-choice folks are outraged. They are horrified to be compared, even obliquely, to sexual predators. As well they should be. I am horrified to have to make it. But anyone who holds the position that they should be able to legislate away my bodily autonomy and supersede my consent about what happens to my body shouldn't be too goddamned surprised by the comparison.
One must be ridiculously incapable of self-reflection to simultaneously argue that sexual assault (forcing a woman to do something with her body she doesn't want to do) is a Terrible Thing, but the denial of abortion (forcing a woman to do something with her body she doesn't want to do) is a Moral Imperative.
Disallowing access to abortion, i.e. forced birth, is an inherently violent position which values fetuses more highly than the people who carry them.
I am utterly unwilling to pretend it could ever be anything else.
Abortion bans are reproductive coercion.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 21, 2019
Forced birth is a violent act.
Abortion is healthcare.#StopTheBans
This is a war on agency. It's a war on autonomy. It's a war on choice. It's a war on consent. It's a war on women and anyone else who can get pregnant. It's a war that will be expanded to control any bodies that the authoritarian pigshits in charge want to control to limit people's freedom.
We matter.
Our agency matters.
Our autonomy matters.
Our choice matters.
Our consent matters.
Our freedom matters.
We matter.
#StopTheBans.
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