Monday, February 20, 2012

The Harm the Catholic Church, the Religious Right, and the Political Far Right Culture Wars Does to Women with It's Contraception Policies and Economic Policies


I am sick and tired of men on the right waging culture war on women, whether it is restricting abortion rights choices, whether it is restricting contraception, whether it is trying to re-define rape so as to exclude statutory rape and rape where a woman is incapacitated by rape-drugs or other substances, whether it is dictating that state mandated medically inaccurate information be given to women, including in your horrible abstinence only sex ed curricula.  I am tired and mad as hell at those states where the political right have passed legislation which REQUIRE medically unnecessary medical procedures such as invasive or other ultrasound be performed, even when contrary to a woman's desire or the best judgment of her doctor. I am deeply angry at those states - like Minnesota - which have tried to repeal protections for women, like equal pay laws.

I would argue that whether this is recognized by all supporters or not, the position of the culture wars devalues women as human beings, and effectively - and in some cases intentionally - is about dominion over women, control over women, including through government.

Dear religious tyrants, dear religious right, dear political right - GET THE HELL OUT OF OUR BODIES AND OUR RELATIONSHIPS, including our relationships and decisions with doctors and clergy and our families.  You may believe you are responsible for our souls, but ultimately that is our choice, our free will, our freedom of religion.  Your belief doesn't make it so.
The anti-abortion position is NOT supported by all religions, nor is the notion that contraception is abortion, among all versions of Christianity.  You do NOT have a political consensus, you do NOT have a moral consensus, and you sure as hell do not have OUR permission to interfere in our relationships with our families, especially our spouses, or with our clergy of choice, or with our medical advisors.  You are jack-booted thugs who are pushing in where you have neither right or business in order to do ONE THING and one thing ONLY - enforce YOUR ideas, your beliefs on others who do not share them.  GET OUT.  You have narrow minded scientifically invalid beliefs, that are that and ONLY that - disputed beliefs, not fact.
The rest of us do NOT think sex is dirty, or that it is only for reproduction; that is your problem, your hang up. Keep it to yourself.  We can make our own choices. Stop trying to take them away from us.
If you can't make your point by persuasion - and clearly you CAN'T, you've failed to do so - then stop doing it by force, DAMN IT.  Damn YOU, for being fascist authoritarian bullies under the guise of religion.
EVERY single tyranny, every form of dicatorship has to pretty itself up by some claim to being for a worthy cause, most often religion or patriotism. That claim doesn't make it so.  We are calling you what you are, not what you try to claim you want to be.  We don't believe you. We know you by your actions.  As the Bible tells us in  Matthew 7:20, "By their fruits you will know them".  You are not the only ones who know religions, our own and others.  You are not the final authority, except for those who choose to accept you as such, and who choose to conform to your views.
Many women I have known over the reproductively active period of my life have been prescribed birth control for other reasons than contraception, either entirely or in part.  Like the woman described by Sandra Fluke in the video below, my own mother - my adoptive mother - required hormone replacement therapy in the form of birth control, in her case after a hysterectomy and radical mastectomy surgeries for cancer.  The same was true for one of my maternal aunts, and for many other women I have known.   Approximately  44% of women who are  menopausal and peri-menopasual women use some form of hormone therapy that is in the form of hormone birth control.  I've known many women of reproductive age who took birth control for problems ranging from skin conditions to prevent disfiguring acne scars, or for treating difficult or irregular menstrual periods.  The very notion that some religously dictating administrator could DENY necessary therapy to any woman because they don't agree with that woman's choices, over-riding HER decision and her doctor's decision, is deeply disturbing, and even more deeply offensive under guise of religious conscience.  It is not appropriate for any bureaucrat or religious administrator to second guess the choice of a woman and her doctor.

The positions on the right, including religious conservatives in the Catholic church, have shown us that they hold women's lives too cheaply.  They deny women abortions or other necessary reproductive care even when it results in the death or subsequent disability of women.  This was clearly demonstrated in the case of a Catholic nun, Sister Mercy Margaret McBride who participated in the decision made by an ethics board to allow a woman who would have died without an abortion to have that procedure.  Without it, she would have died, leaving her four children without a mother; without it, the fetus she was carrying would have died anyway.  Sister Mercy Margaret McBride was excommunicated for her participation:.  The positions of the right wing candidates for president are no better, and just as extreme, all of them.  They are wrong. They are bad.  And they are about to find out they represent a very small minority.

Allowing political and religious extremists to dictate medical coverage and medical care choices kills women, it injures, disfigures and disables women, it makes women sick who could be well, it can cause tremendous pain and suffering.

It is NO ONE'S BUSINESS but theirs why they want any form of reproductive care.  The Catholic church, or any other church, has no business dictating business matters, be it hiring or promoting women if you are dominionists, or meddling with their medical benefits, to impose YOUR preferences, DON'T.  Stop imposing a religious institutions views on catholic women, protestant women, women of other faiths, atheist or agnostic women. Don't. Your rights are that you can practice for yourself whatever you wish; when you start enforcing that in any way on others, you have exceeded YOUR rights and BEGUN TO VIOLATE OTHER PEOPLES' RIGHTS.
Shame on you - now GO.  You are dangerous and unhealthy and anything but holy.

Women are full and equal human beings; we are not subordinate to men, we are not subordinate to reproduction, and we are not subordinate to far right wing or extreme religious domination, not politically, not educationally, not economically.  Respect; there are more of us than there are men in the population, and more of us vote.   You ignore that at your peril in the 2012 election cycle.

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