Skip to main content

The Vagina Monologues

By



Political theater has been perversely twisted into legislative policy with men determined to govern women's reproductive rights with the harshest anti-abortion bill to date.  Amazingly, it was signed into law by the woman governor of Alabama.  This shameful act has made it into news all around the world.  In Vilnius, I was asked yesterday at lunch what I thought of this draconian law by one of my women colleagues.

With the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh last year as Supreme Court Justice, conservatives states are determined to overturn Roe v. Wade.  The startling victory by Democrats in the 2018 midterms spurred them on even more. Not that the feminine uprising had a big impact on Alabama.  Kay Ivey is a female surrogate for male conservative interests, and only four women sit in the state senate.  Two of these women spoke out against the legislation.  Their objections were shot down by the white male conservatives, who passed the bill by a vote of 25-6 with 4 abstentions.

Alabama, Georgia and Ohio have all recently passed tough new laws against abortion, and it looks like other conservative states will soon follow.  No doubt these Old Testament abortion laws will be challenged in federal court.  The process promises to be a long one, and these states feel like they have God on their side.

In the past, women had three months to decide whether to terminate a pregnancy, but with new ultrasounds a "heartbeat" can be detected as early as 6 weeks in many pregnancies, which means women are committing a felony once a heartbeat is detected, and will be subject to severe punishment.  Doctors who perform abortions face even harsher sentences.  These laws offer few if any exceptions.  In Ohio, the new "hearbeat bill" would have applied to an 11-year-old girl, who was raped by a 26-year-old man multiple times, had it not been scheduled to take effect this summer.   Why should someone so young have to literally carry this burden?

This legislation is ideologically driven, fueled by the rhetoric of Trump and other conservative politicians determined to roll back women's reproductive rights.  It is about power, not religion, which is why you see so many references to The Handmaid's Tale.  In Alabama, women literally had no say in the matter.  The last hope was that Gov. Ivey would veto the bill but she wholeheartedly endorsed it, citing Roe v. Wade as the ultimate challenge.  It makes her look like one of the blue wives in the dark television series.  Margaret Atwood didn't even need to update the novel, as we watch it play out in real time.

How this will impact the 2020 elections remains to be seen, but I would think even Alabama women would be furious at such legislation.  State senator Linda Coleman-Madison certainly is. Republicans have been running on these "moral issues" for decades and feel nothing has changed to alter their approach.  Obviously, states like Alabama and Mississippi are deep red, but Brian Kemp barely edged out Stacey Abrams in Georgia, and a decision like his is bound to have an impact on state and national races next year.  It may spur Abrams to run against David Perdue for the US Senate seat.  She is by far the most recognizable Democrat in the state.  For the moment, she plans to keep up her fight in Georgia.

This type of legislation exposes the fault lines in America.  This is a deeply divided country unable to come together on any issue.  As long as religious conservatives believe they have God on their side, they will continue to push Mosaic law.  In this sense, they are no better than the ayatollahs they demonize. Iran has less restrictive abortion laws than Alabama now has.  Welcome to the Biblical Republic of Alabama!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
230 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

The Searchers

By
You are invited to join us in a discussion of  The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl.  The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics'  Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts.  The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories.  The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...
123 comments
Read more