Righteous Rant found on Facebook over the anti-Abortion nonsense going on.
Shoshana Edwards ( feel free to share)
May 15 at 5:58 PM
You have no idea how furious I am today. How steaming, blazing furious I am. I am 76 years old. That means I was 19 when birth control became available. 19. Prior to that incredibly liberating discovery being made available, women lived in fear of pregnancy. Their lives were circumscribed by the fear of pregnancy. Not every pregnancy is planned for or wanted. And women were not supposed to enjoy sex. Those who did were harlots. Married couples almost never admitted to both enjoying sex. So the pill was liberation. Because men balked at the loss of 10% of their pleasure caused by condoms; because condoms sometimes broke; because rape happened, a lot, and still does. And abortion was illegal and dangerous.
And then because women like myself put our freedom and our lives on the line, advocating for legalized and safe abortion, because we stood our ground while getting drenched in blood, spit on, beaten, kicked, and raped -- finally Roe v Wade hit the Supreme Court and we won. But we only won the battle; the war raged on.
And today, today, we can look at Alabama, and Georgia, and Texas where for gawd's sake they want to make a woman carry a dead fetus to term!, and realize that the war is turning against us. Turning because the Republican Party is flexing its muscles like never before. Because men, mostly White men, who want to control women and women's bodies, who want their playthings when they want them, who learned this at their fathers' knees and in church where a distorted and evil version of Xtianity was handed out every Sunday. Because these men, and the women who are cowed by them, have retained power.
It is in part because women of color, as well as men, have been systematically denied the right to vote via every trick in the book. And it is in very large part because a whole huge bunch of people decided not to vote: they decided not to vote locally, not to vote statewide, not to vote nationally. And so we have men of privilege in power, and all of mine and my sisters' sacrifices -- the beatings, the dousing in pig blood, the rapes, the jail time -- all seem for nought.
So yeah, I'm furious today.
Starting today (5/17) I will be posting daily suggestions of how to fight these people effectively. Please check those out and feel free to share also.
Second edit of the day: While I have no problem with someone calling someone's ideas fucking stupid, I will not tolerate calling that person fucking stupid. We need to change hearts and minds, not humiliate and belittle people.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Have to keep fighting the good fight.
