Pecking Away Like Jim Crow
Apr. 16th, 2011 09:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rinueFeeling very depressed today, which is probably down to overcast cold weather and a headache. But it's also because of how many attacks there have been recently on abortion rights, which I view as an existential threat not many steps away from not being allowed to own property. The Supreme Court has found over and over again that there is a constitutional right to abortion, and if you think about it there's no other interpretation of the law that makes sense - if as a human being you don't have a right to bodily integrity, then it's not assault if I take one of your kidneys without your consent, because it could save someone's life, and I should really throw you in jail for not donating blood every month, you murderer.
As a matter of fact, it would be great if I could assign you a dementia patient to sleep with every night, because having that contact and heat from your body would really make a difference to their survival rate, and then if they stopped breathing or tried to wander off, you could call someone, which, let's face it, they need, because they're totally helpless. And, I mean, they didn't decide to get dementia. It just happened to them. Those poor innocents don't have a choice in the matter; why should you?
And, honestly, I should be able to conscript you to do unpaid labor like roadwork that would save lives that would otherwise be lost in traffic accidents, or to spend long hours picking a lot of cotton as cheaply as possible so that people can have warm coats and blankets in the winter. After all, I'd just be using your body to give someone else life. Why don't we do that again?*
* Super, super offensively, I heard a speech by Rand Paul in which he said we should outlaw abortion for the same reason we outlawed slavery - because it is wrong. I can see why he as a free white man might think that was a reasonable parallel, but it's terribly tone deaf when you consider that one of the most humiliating aspects of slavery in the American South was the total lack of control black slaves had over whether or not to have children or what happened to those children after they were born. You had the children whether you wanted to or not, sometimes because your owner raped you and sometimes because your owner "bred" you, and sometimes just randomly.
And they were sold whenever, because you and they were commodities and you didn't have control over your body or theirs. (Most black slaves never knew their mothers; it's why most spirituals that talk about heaven say something to the effect that "First I'm going to meet Jesus, and then I'm going to meet my mother.") So to say in a country where abortions happen at higher rates among women of color that a campaign by old white men to eliminate your right to choose whether you have a family, a campaign which says that in the case of unwanted pregnancy you should be required to bring it to term and give it up for adoption - saying this political position is like being an abolitionist strains logic.
And it seems like the Republicans always say this stuff in campaign speeches right after an opening about the need to make the Republican party attractive to women and minorities.
As a matter of fact, it would be great if I could assign you a dementia patient to sleep with every night, because having that contact and heat from your body would really make a difference to their survival rate, and then if they stopped breathing or tried to wander off, you could call someone, which, let's face it, they need, because they're totally helpless. And, I mean, they didn't decide to get dementia. It just happened to them. Those poor innocents don't have a choice in the matter; why should you?
And, honestly, I should be able to conscript you to do unpaid labor like roadwork that would save lives that would otherwise be lost in traffic accidents, or to spend long hours picking a lot of cotton as cheaply as possible so that people can have warm coats and blankets in the winter. After all, I'd just be using your body to give someone else life. Why don't we do that again?*
* Super, super offensively, I heard a speech by Rand Paul in which he said we should outlaw abortion for the same reason we outlawed slavery - because it is wrong. I can see why he as a free white man might think that was a reasonable parallel, but it's terribly tone deaf when you consider that one of the most humiliating aspects of slavery in the American South was the total lack of control black slaves had over whether or not to have children or what happened to those children after they were born. You had the children whether you wanted to or not, sometimes because your owner raped you and sometimes because your owner "bred" you, and sometimes just randomly.
And they were sold whenever, because you and they were commodities and you didn't have control over your body or theirs. (Most black slaves never knew their mothers; it's why most spirituals that talk about heaven say something to the effect that "First I'm going to meet Jesus, and then I'm going to meet my mother.") So to say in a country where abortions happen at higher rates among women of color that a campaign by old white men to eliminate your right to choose whether you have a family, a campaign which says that in the case of unwanted pregnancy you should be required to bring it to term and give it up for adoption - saying this political position is like being an abolitionist strains logic.
And it seems like the Republicans always say this stuff in campaign speeches right after an opening about the need to make the Republican party attractive to women and minorities.
