In America, liberty has never been part of a woman’s brief, and our personal autonomy has neither been spelled out nor assumed. It took suffragettes more than 70 years to win a federal right for women to vote with the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920. Congress still won’t pass the Equal Rights Amendment.
... Now, instead, what is being spelled out in the law is what women can’t do with their bodies. In some states, they can’t terminate a pregnancy after 12 weeks of gestation, or six weeks — or ever, unless maybe they get so ill during a pregnancy that they will die without an abortion. Millions of child-bearing women live in states with no abortion rights or extremely restricted rights, putting them at risk of having to give birth against their will.
What kind of a country that believes in the pursuit of liberty and happiness does that? ...
... After the 1994 uprising in Chiapas, the Zapatistas enshrined women’s rights into the Women’s Revolutionary Law, which rules the way they live today. It reads in part: “Women have the right to decide how many children they will have and take care of.”
It shouldn’t take another American revolution for women in this country to simply have full autonomy over their bodies. We don’t need a new government. We just need the people who run this one to realize that without personal autonomy there is no liberty.
On this Independence Day, liberty still needs its ardent, determined friends.
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