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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsReproductive Rights and the Long Hand of Slave Breeding (TODAY is a good day to re-post this)
. . . If there is an upside to the rights latest, seemingly loony and certainly grotesque multi-front assault on women, it is the clarion it sounds to humanists to take the high ground and ditch the anodyne talk of a womans right to choose for the weightier, fundamental assertion of a womans right to be.
That requires that we look to history and the Constitution. I found myself doing that a few weeks back, sitting in the DC living room of Pamela Bridgewater, talking about slavery as the TV news followed the debate over whether the State of Virginia should force a woman to spread her legs and endure a plastic wand shoved into her vagina. Pamela has a lot of titles that, properly, ought to compel me to refer to her now as Professor Bridgewaterlegal scholar, teacher at American University, reproductive rights activist, sex radicalbut she is my friend and sister, and we were two women sitting around talking, so I shall alternate between the familiar and the formal.
What a spectacle, Pamela exclaimed, Virginia, the birthplace of the slave breeding industry in America, is debating state-sanctioned rape. Imagine the woman who says No to this as a prerequisite for abortion. Will she be strapped down, her ankles shackled to stir-ups?
I suspect, said I, that partisans would say, If she doesnt agree, she is free to leave.
Right, which means she is coerced into childbearing or coerced into taking other measures to terminate her pregnancy, which may or may not be safe. Or she relents and says Yes, and thats by coercion, too.
Scratch at modern life and theres a little slave era just below the surface, so were right back to your argument. . . .
That requires that we look to history and the Constitution. I found myself doing that a few weeks back, sitting in the DC living room of Pamela Bridgewater, talking about slavery as the TV news followed the debate over whether the State of Virginia should force a woman to spread her legs and endure a plastic wand shoved into her vagina. Pamela has a lot of titles that, properly, ought to compel me to refer to her now as Professor Bridgewaterlegal scholar, teacher at American University, reproductive rights activist, sex radicalbut she is my friend and sister, and we were two women sitting around talking, so I shall alternate between the familiar and the formal.
What a spectacle, Pamela exclaimed, Virginia, the birthplace of the slave breeding industry in America, is debating state-sanctioned rape. Imagine the woman who says No to this as a prerequisite for abortion. Will she be strapped down, her ankles shackled to stir-ups?
I suspect, said I, that partisans would say, If she doesnt agree, she is free to leave.
Right, which means she is coerced into childbearing or coerced into taking other measures to terminate her pregnancy, which may or may not be safe. Or she relents and says Yes, and thats by coercion, too.
Scratch at modern life and theres a little slave era just below the surface, so were right back to your argument. . . .
https://www.thenation.com/article/reproductive-rights-and-long-hand-slave-breeding/
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Reproductive Rights and the Long Hand of Slave Breeding (TODAY is a good day to re-post this) (Original Post)
CousinIT
Oct 2017
OP
katmondoo
(6,457 posts)1. And the women say NOTHING!
CousinIT
(9,247 posts)3. That's the part I do NOT understand.
How any SELF-RESPECTING woman can be silent in the face of this is beyond me.
tblue37
(65,403 posts)2. K&R and to the greatest page. nt