U.S. military women aren’t dying in combat to surrender equal rights to you, Republicans
In North Florida, home to several military outposts, I come across them every so often — the brave women who serve this country.
There they are, an affecting vision in military uniform, shopping at the grocery store, stopping for a coffee or flying in the same airplane with me.
The Republicans of Florida, however, must look right past them.
Or they would have taken into consideration the reproductive healthcare needs of female soldiers when they aimed their legislative guns at women and curtailed abortion rights in the state.
The same goes for the nation and for the conservative majority in the U.S. Supreme Court attempting to reverse 50 years of the constitutional right to legal, safe and accessible abortions.
They don’t think at all about the women keeping us free as entitled to equality.
American military women, already facing more restrictions and lack of access to safe and legal abortions than their civilian counterparts, need the equality embedded in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg aptly categorized the right as “essential to woman’s equality with man” during her Senate confirmation hearing 20 years later.
“If you impose restraints that impede her choice,” she said, “you are disadvantaging her because of her sex.”
The Clinton appointee was confirmed on a bipartisan vote of 96-3.
The two Trump appointees now conspiring to undo Roe — Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — both were confirmed on tight partisan votes. Both lied to the American people during their confirmation hearings when asked about
Roe v. Wade, saying it wasn’t their intention to take away this life-defining right for women.
If SCOTUS overturns the landmark decision, GOP-led states like Florida — where some 56,000 soldiers serve in active duty plus their families live — could ban abortions.
ONE IN FOUR SERVICEWOMEN RAPED
Perhaps servicewomen need the right and the access to abortion more than most since they can end up raped and pregnant in a war zone, or right here at home, at the hands of men unworthy of the uniform.
If you don’t think women in the military, slowly rising and still a minority, endure great risk and attacks from their own, read The New York Times magazine investigation “A Poison in the System: The Epidemic of Military Sexual Assault.”
“Nearly one in four U.S. servicewomen reports being sexually assaulted in the military,” the Times reports. “Why has it been so difficult to change the culture?”
The answer to the question dwells in the same political territory as the abortion debate: Because the needs of women take a backseat to the agenda of males who run this country.
It is, indeed, still a man’s world — and, astonishingly so, with the cooperation of conservative women.
LIP SERVICE FOR WOMEN IN MILITARY
Like the rest of us, servicewomen in Florida — thanks to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and his subservient GOP lawmakers, including the woman who sponsored the anti-abortion bill — will be subject to abortion restrictions that do not make exceptions for women who have been raped.
They, too, cannot get an abortion after 15 weeks.
When conservatives talk about the honor of serving, apparently, it’s just lip service exclusively for the boys. For the patriotic women of this country, the GOP launches a cultural war to strip them of basic rights and keep them pregnant, stymied and subservient.
The “thank you for your service” is for the boys.
The violated and pregnant military woman may have to go rogue to get an abortion if the conservatives in the Supreme Court have their way.
I hear that Canada has opened its doors to American women who want safe abortions. Perhaps there will be a Vietnam War-like redo, but instead of young men being forced into military service fleeing there, we’ll see a medical-needs exodus of military women across the northern border.
Just like the people in fictional Gilead, who found refuge, too, in the free country of Canada.
Before the SCOTUS draft decision was leaked and circulated, I was already thinking Florida was becoming a subtropical version of Gilead, the setting for the novel and television series “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
Such things as women’s rights being quashed — forced into pregnancy with the help of collaborators like Aunt Lydia, the maiden’s groomer, and Serena, the general’s wife whose conservative writings inspired the harsh, ultra-conservative governance — were only possible in the dystopian world of Margaret Atwood.
Reality is stark.
The debate on abortion is only the beginning of all that this highly partisan, highly politicized SCOTUS also could be poised to do other issues like gay rights and same-sex marriage as a constitutional right.
Conservatives fail to see the obvious.
Since the horrific Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, 152 women deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait and Syria have lost their lives fighting in a “war on terrorism” that includes saving women from institutionalized repression.
U.S. military women aren’t dying in combat — they didn’t fight wars in other lands — to surrender their rights at home to you, Republicans.
Fabiola Santiago: 305-376-3469, @fabiolasantiago