The recent uprising on abortion bans and what it means for women have allowed many of us to bask in our glory of righteousness and sanctimony some more. After all, how many days in a year righteous men and women who walk the straight and narrow get recognized? Just 365.
But anytime there’s dissent, there’s the filtering of people who endorse the status quo from the general population. Conformists are okay. Centrists are okay too. Being a conformist or a pacifist isn’t an inherent poor trait. It’s just a way of being. No one is a consummate believer of all things left, right or center .
However, mindlessly endorsing what’s considered good or normal is probably the type of movement that’s not real movement. It’s actually the antithesis of movement. It stifles growth and progress.
Many women would like to keep all their babies. They’d like to be married. They’d like to know the fathers of their babies as their husbands. There isn’t anything wrong with it. What’s wrong is how this type of sanctimonious and essentially conformist thinking somehow makes for a lot of oppression for women who don’t believe in the same things. You ask how! Maybe you would get it if your identity was steeped in your womanhood and not in patriarchy.
Patriarchy expects women to conform. Many of us need to conform to it for our survival. Many of us need patriarchs for everyday life functions. There’s no shame in my book for accepting the leveraged station I enjoy by virtue of having many patriarchs on my side. There is however some resentment for myself endorsing the status quo by having access through my closeness with the patriarchy.
If you have never been in a situation where you had to have an abortion, you aren’t proving a point. Your unique and individual life is just that….. unique and individual. There’s a bubble around you that suffocates you too. Just that you probably find a little more life in the bubble than outside it. Don’t think other women don’t get it. We do and we don’t resent you for being in a protective patriarchal bubble. Not all of us have to suffer if we can help it.
If you think that abortion is because of the free will that women practice on their bodies, think again! The number of pregnancies that end in an abortion isn’t just because of the woman. It’s also because of a man who impregnates her. Now that you have recognized that, think of all the single mothers out there. Do you see how women have been shortchanged in the name of motherhood since almost eternity?
For those of you who still have trouble grasping the need for the recognition of abortion as healthcare, imagine how we will need it more since birth control is being defunded. Think of how sex is closely controlled by giant social patriarchal institutions like religion, marriage, gender.
And if this doesn’t make sense then imagine what we are bringing this world to. We advocate for freedom, yet control women. We advocate for unborn babies but there aren’t any programs to support these babies and their mothers after their births (or during). If you think that the evils of the abortion ban won’t reach us, married women in married relationships, imagine how an ectopic pregnancy can change your take on all of this. Or a child who is incompatible with life.
We need to save women. Women and men, partners in sex, need to save women. We can demonize the slogan “my body, my choice” and think that we are fulfilling some religious or moral duty by doing it but what we actually are doing is participating in a system of oppression that is built on the uteruses of many women.
My mind as a woman 