Let’s listen to women
I have been in a discussion group for about 15 years. Membership has an average of eight to 15 people each week, and most people like the simple rules enforced by the facilitator: Do not interrupt the person speaking, and whatever is said in the group is confidential, not shared anywhere else. Each person is guaranteed five minutes to say what they want on the topic, chosen weekly ahead of time. And over the years, I have found the group to be refreshing and rewarding.
Membership has varied over the years from mostly men in the early years to mostly women, and now it is about equal. So, recently, the group discussed the Alabama State Supreme Court decision that concluded frozen embryos were actually babies.
I thought this topic stirred up discussion especially when one member said a news broadcast reported, “Here’s another bunch of old white men telling women what to do.” The women in the group eventually agreed they wanted preachers, judges and politicians to stay out of their bedrooms. Back to the court, in hindsight, I felt the court was “legislating” public policy, a function that belonged in the legislative branch. The Alabama court’s action flew in the face of acceptable judicial practice, especially practice approved by conservatives and the Republican Party.
Conservatives have lambasted the Supreme Court for legislating since FDR’S “New Deal” of the 1930s. Such legislating by the courts has recently been renewed by the so-called Trump Supreme Court, only in reverse. What had been accepted as settled law in Roe v. Wade was overturned and rewritten/legislated by the Supreme Court and thrown open to state jurisdiction. I can hear a host of poli-sci professors groaning in agony, because most of them considered the state level of government the most inept, the worst. I was taught this by Professor W. Brooke Graves, who was considered “Mr. State Government” when he taught at American University in Washington, D.C.
No one knew more of the wiles and willy-nillyness of state government than Dr. Graves. And now, citizens of Alabama are forced to deal with the extreme personal conundrum between the desire to create a baby via IVF, in vitro fertilization, which may destroy embryos, and allowing parents to be subjected to newly created/legislated, law under which they might be accused of murder. The one word that comes to mind is ridiculous.
But let’s get back to what women are saying. I can boil it down to one simple sentence: “Get out of our bedrooms! And especially stop telling us what to do.” In case you missed this breaking news, when President Obama proposed his health care legislation, conservatives and the Republican Party went hyper-hypercritical. They warned that medical professionals would be chosen by government bureaucrats to interfere in their health care. They said their healthcare was nobody’s business. It turns out, unless you were a woman.
And look what we have. Evangelical preachers castigate women seeking abortions without knowledge of the woman’s situation. Politicians suddenly become experts on how women feel, the one ingredient left out of calculations on pregnancy and its impact on a woman’s health. Did those “old white men” on the Alabama court ask any women when they concocted new law and public policy affecting women? Fact is, has anyone thought about a woman’s health before, during and after a pregnancy? I will not be listening to preachers and politicians, candidates for office.
Reproductive health care is an important and necessary practice. But after the Trump Court and the ill-thinking behind red state legislation, women are now fleeing to find it and not get arrested. And who decides the rules about the health of a woman? You can’t stop an unwanted pregnancy if you were raped in a red state, but you can in a blue state. Come on.