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rinueSomething I can't get out of my head is a clip from the senate race in Texas, a debate earlier this week between Ted Cruz and challenger Colin Allred. It's a question about abortion rights. Allred says something sane. Cruz then addresses the audience very smugly, and says, approximately, "as a mother don't you think you have the right to know your daughter is pregnant?" I'm paraphrasing because I can't find a transcript and don't want to watch the clip again. It's a non-sequitor on top of everything else; it's not following any mention of underage pregnancy. Just hits out of nowhere.
I completely recoil from it (literally I cringed backward into my chair), because he's not actually talking about parental notification, he's talking about parental nullification. He's saying "I know that as a woman, protecting your own life is less important than this: you want to be able to force your underage daughter to give birth." He knows this! He knows this about me, he's sure!
He's sure that's definitely what I dream about. Definitely that's what I want for my children and also for myself. Who cares about the stuff Allred said about rape victims and lives at risk and sterility? I might have been persuaded, but ultimately the cost of not being able to force a minor in my care to remain pregnant is too high a cost to bear.
Ultimately when people are really monstrous what gets to me is their assumption that I'm also monstrous and am only pretending to have other feelings, feelings that aren't a rapacious and bottomless need for control and dominance.
I just cannot imagine ever in the world feeling I should be allowed to force a child to have a baby. It's stunning that he suspects this is a feeling most mothers have, and that he feels comfortable saying so on television.
I have no place to put the feeling of hearing this. I don't know what the feeling is called.
I completely recoil from it (literally I cringed backward into my chair), because he's not actually talking about parental notification, he's talking about parental nullification. He's saying "I know that as a woman, protecting your own life is less important than this: you want to be able to force your underage daughter to give birth." He knows this! He knows this about me, he's sure!
He's sure that's definitely what I dream about. Definitely that's what I want for my children and also for myself. Who cares about the stuff Allred said about rape victims and lives at risk and sterility? I might have been persuaded, but ultimately the cost of not being able to force a minor in my care to remain pregnant is too high a cost to bear.
Ultimately when people are really monstrous what gets to me is their assumption that I'm also monstrous and am only pretending to have other feelings, feelings that aren't a rapacious and bottomless need for control and dominance.
I just cannot imagine ever in the world feeling I should be allowed to force a child to have a baby. It's stunning that he suspects this is a feeling most mothers have, and that he feels comfortable saying so on television.
I have no place to put the feeling of hearing this. I don't know what the feeling is called.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-10-20 12:51 pm (UTC)