~a column by Colleen O’Brien
Living in Florida has become precarious unless one is not pregnant or likely to be so.
My granddaughter flew into Florida to visit me, her Gramma Collie.
Impressed and delighted was I, looking forward to my little girl/grown woman at four months pregnant and 30 years old, healthy and eager for parenthood.
But when she said, “Really, Gramma – I shouldn’t be in Florida,” I was flummoxed.
“What are you talking about?”
“If I have a spontaneous abortion – you know, an accident that precipitated it maybe — while I’m here, I could go to jail because in this state there’s always a chance that the mother won’t be believed; they could say I caused it.”
What she said to me stalled my brain. I was more than disquieted by her fear, I was shaking. Her point of view had not dawned on me because I was thinking that her antipathy toward Florida, of which I was aware, had to do with the usual — mosquitos, no-seeums, red ants, alligators, pythons, stifling weather.
But no, her fear of Florida was because of a man, our governor.
She had to think twice about visiting her kin because the political strongman where her grandma lives might pounce on her.
It is mostly male politicians in this country who are legislating punishing laws that invade a women’s body. It is sickening. This is our country, our day and age, not medieval Europe, current Iran/Iraq, the Arab Emirates, where flogging and stoning women remain normal court punishment.
Going backward with legislation is not good for the longevity of any species, nor is it in any way involved with the progress of Earth’s evolution (evolution defined as a process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex or better form), especially for the species that has a developed frontal lobe of high ideals. Have we not moved beyond a horrific other sex intent on burning women alive, now legislating that we must have babies or go directly to jail?
My reasonable brain dims at the preposterousness of what’s going on and how women can escape and prohibit such barbarity.
First and now, since the Supreme Court decision under Dobbs vs Jackson (2022) ruled women have no “right” to decide for themselves about what’s going on in their uterus, women are watching closely to see what other freedoms our Supremes think we don’t deserve. Roe v Wade has poofed into the air after 50 years of being the law of the land; women could but now can’t have an abortion without some man’s permission.
It is too bad that Supreme Court Justice Alito does not include all women in the benign perspective he reveals of his own wife: “She makes her own decisions and I have always respected her right to do so.”
Gosh, what a guy.
He was speaking of his wife, Martha-Ann, when she was taken to task because she flew an upside-down US flag outside the Alito home in support of the incarcerated insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, on the phony basis of “Stop the Steal” (of the Biden/Trump election of 2020). Alito said it was her idea, not his, to fly a flag; he doesn’t even like flags. (“My wife is fond of flags. I am not.”)
Historically, the upside-down flag is a distress signal for someone in dire straits. The United States Code says the flag should only be flown upside down to signal “dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.”
However, in a Trump era, many Americans fly it upside as a form of political protest to protect and honor him.
As a symbol of the impending jeopardy this democracy is in, perhaps we all should be flying it thus, not for his peril but our own.
Anti-abortion laws are picking up harshness and stupidity as they gather unto themselves and slither down slimy back alleys that soon shall prohibit a woman from making a decision that she wants to or needs to use contraception or the abortifacient (day-after) pill.
What is it to men that they are so interested in our uteruses, pretending it has something to with murder? That they are protecting their god from us godless, irreverent females who would commit murder at will? Insult their god? Kill cells that may or may not become fetuses to be born into the human race?
But, uh, isn’t it statistically true that men have less interest in caring for and rearing babies once hatched? So what’s their interest? Pure cruelty? Simple power over? Complete disregard and ignorance for what it means to carry and deliver a baby?
It’s not my god saying so, why should I have to be of accord to some stranger’s hateful idea of a revengeful god that wants to persecute women?
Can we be so sick of this behavior, so over-ruled, over-powered by our necessary other gender that we have to throw up our hands, lie down and have a baby?
Besides the sexist realism of these truly punitive laws, aren’t there other things in this new and strange world of ours that need to be taken care of that do not impinge on our private biology?
Is it going to have to be one more bit of tit for tat in the grueling history of males treating females badly, male against female – that we take on men’s scrotums and see just how to legislate them?
