Guardian UK: Why Republicans want to lock up your 'baby garage'

[marmar]

Why Republicans want to lock up your 'baby garage'
Scores of US state legislators are pushing new anti-abortion laws to roll back Roe v Wade. But the uterati are fighting back

Diane Roberts
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 April 2011


In Florida, "uterus" is a dirty word. A member of the state house of representatives drew a reprimand when he complained that while Republicans want to repeal rules and regulations on corporations, they are all hot to impose rules and regulations on individuals. Women, for example. The rightwingers who control both the house and the senate in Florida have introduced 18 bills to restrict abortion.

Representative Scott Randolph, a Democrat from Orlando, said that his wife had decided the only way to protect her rights was to, as he put it, "incorporate her uterus". Maybe then the business sycophants of the Republican party would stop trying to micromanage it with laws circumscribing reproductive freedom. Speaker Dean Cannon said he was shocked – shocked! – at such language on the house floor, deeming it a breach of "decorum". Stephanie Kunkel, Planned Parenthood's Florida director, rolled her eyes: "If the speaker can't bear to hear or say the word 'uterus', he shouldn't be legislating it." Newspaper columnists amused themselves concocting acceptable euphemisms: Frank Cerabino of the Palm Beach Post suggests "baby garage".

And that's pretty much how Republicans see women – as a place to park a kid till he's ready to pop out and go to Sunday School and learn that sex is filthy. Republican-controlled legislatures across the US are hell-bent on stopping women from exercising control over their own bodies. Florida is one of 13 states that would require women to have an ultrasound – which they would have to pay for – before terminating a pregnancy. In Indiana, Texas, Kentucky and four other states, a woman would be forced to look at the foetus. Doctors would have to describe to her, in great detail, the foetus and its physical functions. After all this, she would still have to cool her heels for several days before being permitted to actually have the abortion.

.....(snip).....

And you thought the Republicans were only interested in the economy. Outlawing abortion is the long-cherished dream of every evangelical in the US, especially the ones born without ovaries. Back in Florida, the resistance is mobilising: the uterus has its own Facebook page. Susannah Randolph, now famous as the woman who threatened to incorporate her uterus, has suggested starting a political action committee called U-Pac. "Who's in?" she blogged. "It's time to bring power back to the uterus." .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/apr/28/abortion-women

[hifiguy]

1. This country is becoming the laughingstock of the

civilized world. And deservedly so.

[ensho]

2. true

nt

[nichomachus]

3. I disagree

It was already the laughingstock -- For the last year now, people are just looking on in horror

[Ship of Fools]

4. precisely

[seabeyond]

5. i really think, with abortion illegal, womens sexual independence repressed, dominance and control

of female again.

that is what they are looking for