So when it came to pass that my birthstate of Georgia decided to go full wingnut, I had to pay notice (via Kathleen Krawczyk at The Week):
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) signed a "heartbeat bill" into law on Tuesday, effectively outlawing most abortions after a doctor is able to detect a fetal heartbeat, which typically occurs around six weeks. While it does include some exceptions for rape, incest, or a mother's health, it also makes women liable for murder charges if they have an abortion — and could land them in prison for life...
Under the new law, different murder charges apply to women who terminate their pregnancies in different ways. A woman who self-terminates — something that wasn't punishable under a previous Georgia law — will have technically committed murder and could be imprisoned for life or face the death penalty. Those who get an abortion via a health care provider could be found guilty of being a party to murder, punishable by life in prison.
My immediate reaction to this news was "Girl, get your shit together in a bag and get the hell outta there."
After that, I calmed down a bit. Given how these anti-women laws tend to affect the poor the worst, many of them can't afford to flee the state for safer climes (like say Illinois or California or Oregon). The women of Georgia can't just head to Ohio (passing their own harsher bill) or neighboring Alabama (oh hell no) or even Florida (I do not trust the GOP in Tall Hassle).
So the women of Georgia are going to have to consider other options.
I know I joked before about Utopian-like compounds where the Far Right fantasized about fleeing a librul world, and that it would be hypocritical of me to suggest this to women. HOWEVER, desperate times desperate measures.
It's time to pull a Lysistrata Gambit, ladies. Before the men decide to round you up for breeder camps, you should flee and build your own defensive compounds. Every one of you from puberty to menopause. There's like 5 million women in Georgia. If you're stuck in the Peach State and you can organize that 5 million, find the smallest populated counties - there's a lot of 'em barely under 3,000 total - where 50,000 women per group can relocate to seize control of the biggest towns, throw up some barbed wire and chain-link fences, put sentries everywhere armed to the teeth (this is Georgia, you should be able to find gun stores every five miles and raid them accordingly), and claim your new homes with the determination to stay put until these damn anti-women laws are gone.
Why should crazy wingnuts have all the fun forming their own militia protests? Only this time, with women at the helm, they'll be better organized.
It's time to let the crazy-ass men obsessing over controlling women's bodies and choices to wake up one day and find out their slaves to the kitchens have all fled without cooking anything, or doing any laundry, or balancing the family checkbooks.
They're expecting women to keep playing by the rules of social hookups? Dating (with the likelihood of unwanted pregnancies) or getting married (with the likelihood of pregnancies suffering miscarriages)? Time to turn half of Georgia into one big stag party, where there's no women to even date or chat up.
Women can't afford to run the risk of pregnancy, then or now. Pregnancies aren't safe, they aren't cheap, they aren't healthy. The United States already has one of the worst maternal mortality rates in the Western world. And these laws don't do anything to fund more prenatal and birthing care. These laws won't help women improve their ability to survive the difficulties of birthing. These pro-fetus bills will make all of that worse.
But the assholes passing these "heartbeat" bills don't give a flying fuck. They enjoy being judgmental holier-than-thou pricks. They don't even care if these Godly laws even reflect the faith these women have on their own terms. They just want women to know their place.
But women's place in society is more important than you assholes realize. What will happen if all the women flee for safety, leaving behind their clerical jobs... their nursing jobs... their college enrollments (just think of the state universities suddenly losing most of their students)... how many things in our economy and society will grind to a halt if the women of America realize they no longer have a say in The Game and decide "Fuck it, we're out of here"?
Maybe now's the time women should. If we can't value women as full and equal citizens of this nation, if we keep treating women as though they're cattle, if we take away their choices and their own values and chain them to someone else's, they should break from such a dark and unloving country.
Why should women pay anything into a United States where their health, their souls, their voices are denied?
1 comment:
The first written mention of abortion was in 1550 BC. And pretty much nobody except the Catholics cared about it, even evangelical Christians, until the right decided to turn it into a political issue.
They have the morality and biology of it all wrong, which is to say they are lying about them.
Also, if the goddamn Republicans want to avoid a massive backlash from women like the one that kicked their asses in 2018, perhaps trying to turn the country into "The Handmaid's Tale" isn't the best way to go about it.
Also, they are making a bad mistake here, politically. Previously, their abortion regulations mostly affected poor women, as wealthier women could and did leave the backwoods on airplanes to obtain safe, legal, abortions.
What they're trying to do is make that time honored process illegal, and those women of means newly staring down the barrel of a felony for the kind of indiscretion that has always gone along with being female in our culture will be motivated to do something about it, at the ballot box, and with the men in their personal orbits.
Those women have more influence than they are bargaining for.
-Doug in Oakland
Post a Comment