Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Meanwhile, in Ohio



Embryos got more rights and women less rights. Watch the justifications the lawmakers give:





The Think Progress post lists some of them but not the comments the last "gentleman" made. I think those are the most important ones, because he is willing to go into that frightening hinterland where women are Russian dolls, always with a possible other person inside them, and all fertile women must be policed to make sure that the invisible person gets rights.

This means that it is time for me to write that post, about the world we will all live in once zygotes are given full legal personhood rights, the world where any fertile woman may suddenly be raped and -- presto! -- she now has another person using her body, with rights that seem to supersede any that she might be given. That other person has rights over her body, even rights to force her not to get treatment for serious illnesses. Everything a pregnant woman does will fall under the possible heading of child endangerment. If she eats the wrong stuff, off with her head (or at least a long prison sentence). If she exercises too much or not at all, off with her head!

That all women are potentially aquaria in the eyes of the forced-birthers will mean that women can never have equality with men. Men cannot have miscarriages which might be subject to police investigations, men cannot be raped to force them to have another person inside them, men cannot be blamed for child endangerment if they take medications which help their own body or their minds.

As the last "gentleman" on the video so sweetly put it, the forced-birthers' view of the world is one where women don't have rights to control their own bodies because those bodies just might house another person.