Jessica Valenti writes the essential newsletter Abortion Every Day. And she does mean every day. Each day she collects the catalogue of horrors that the Republican push to seize complete control of women -- our bodies, our healthcare, our family choices, our lives -- is inflicting on ordinary people.
This week she answered a call to come to Washington to explain it all to a group of Senate Democrats. (Good idea; even friends and lovers of women can't be trusted to understand the realities and implications of women's plumbing.) From her prepared testimony:
Right now, there is a quiet but well-funded campaign led by the most powerful anti-abortion groups in the country that is focused entirely on pressuring and forcing women to carry doomed pregnancies to term.
They’re not only trying to do away with exceptions for nonviable pregnancies—they’re trying to eradicate prenatal testing altogether. It’s a lot easier to force women to carry a dying fetus to term if they never get diagnosed to begin with.
When I tell people about this, the question I get asked most often is why? Why would anyone want to deliberately create a world where women are forced to be “walking coffins”?
It is inexplicable, until you understand that this has nothing to do with families or babies, but enforcing a worldview that says it’s women’s job to be pregnant and to stay pregnant, no matter what the cost or consequence.
... In a moment when we’re hearing so many extreme horror stories, it can be difficult to get back to that foundational cruelty: that to force someone to be pregnant against their will, for any reason, at any point, causes profound existential harm.
Abortion is healthcare, but it is also freedom. That’s why every abortion denied is a tragedy. And, increasingly, Americans understand that. They don’t want the government involved in their decisions about pregnancy at any point.
You can view her entire (7 minute) testimony here:
No comments:
Post a Comment