As some of you may be aware, the current crop of recently elected right-wing crazies in Washington D.C. have quickly unveiled their real agenda, down-grading women to 2nd class citizens, rather than the bullshit agenda they paraded around during the election of 'Jobs, jobs, jobs'. However this lunacy is not just limited to the District of Columbia, oh no, out on the plains the crazy is strong too, especially, it seems, in South Dakota.
Now let me just say right off the bat, I happen to like South Dakota. I think there is a rugged beauty to the massive sweeping plains, it is steeped in Native American history, and I like the fact that you can blast past a stationary State Trooper at 85 mph an the Interstate and he won't even stir from his slumber. It has the Badlands, which are quite simply breath-taking in their stark and desolate beauty, Mount Rushmore, which to anyone not born in this country seems a bit daft until you actually see it, and, as I can personally attest to, the best biscuits and gravy anywhere in the US. (Holiday Inn Express, Rapid City). The folks that I met there seem pleasant enough, they don't look like neanderthals, or inbred mongrels, so why is it that they seem to hate women so much? Specifically independent women. Women that want to have the same rights that men do. You know, the right to tell lawmakers and religious busy-bodies to "keep your fucking nose out of my medical business".
To whit: there is a new law being proposed in the South Dakota state legislature that appears to make murdering doctors and other healthcare professionals that provide abortions to women legal as 'justifiable homicide'. The legislation as proposed would also make it theoretically legal to murder a pregnant woman if she tried to get an abortion, completely missing the irony that if that happened, the killer could then be killed themselves if the fetus didn't survive. Despite the attempted back-pedalling and the 'who me?' bluster from the author of the legislation, this is a nasty, hateful piece of work, and a blatant attempt to intimidate both women and their health care professionals from considering a perfectly lawful medical procedure.
In the last six years South Dakota has twice tried to outlaw a woman's right to choose completely, and both times the voters of the state have voted it down, quite handily, and yet there is a cadre of South Dakotan men that apparently will not be happy until women are back in the kitchen, bare-foot and pregnant. That is a real shame for a number of reasons, not least of which is the time and resources that have to be expended to beat these troglodytes back, but mostly because it makes the entire state look like it still hasn't made it to the 21st century yet.
In the end, all of this leads me to the one question that all women should be asking, anywhere that their rights are being threatened, "If you cut off my reproductive choice, can I cut off yours?"
I think I know the answer to that one....
*Update as of 02/17/11 The proposed bill has been withdrawn. For now.
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