Women Celebrate as Judge Smacks Down Republicans for Not Protecting Maternal Health

Last updated on July 14th, 2013 at 05:35 pm

women protest reproductive rights

It’s a strange thing to have elected officials passing laws to take away your rights, under the guise of “helping” you.

Over the last two and a half years, since the incoming Tea Party really took over the GOP, women have been battered and beaten down with an unprecedented spate of laws designed to make us less than. Designed for the sole purpose of humiliating, shaming, and controlling us. Designed to make a fetus more important than our own health, our own lives, even though we are already born and we are full citizens.

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But a male Judge saw through a Republican Wisconsin law designed to make it harder for women to exercise their constitutional freedoms. U.S. District Judge William Conley saw what women have been seeing. Hrafnkell Haraldsson writing for PoliticusUSA detailed the Judge’s findings for us Tuesday morning, and it was a delicious read. The Judge pointed out that the law and regulations contained therein aren’t designed to protect maternal health, and this was reason enough to issue a restraining order against the Republican law. Republicans in chains. I like it.

Maternal health. As if we mattered. As if the body carrying the fetus counted.

After years of trying to be heard, this was a collective FU GOP moment for women. WE MATTER.

Republican lawmakers treat us as if we are scum who can’t be trusted with our own healthcare decisions, and presume that we are all “bad girls” who want “dead babies” in our “vags”, as a less than family values Republican accused this writer of yesterday. (Note to Republicans: When trying to pretend your concern trolling comes from family values, it’s best not to exhibit hatred of women and humanity at large while introducing yourself to complete strangers by discussing their genitals.)

We spend every day outraged or saddened by a new assault on our rights. We sit on the sidelines as male lawmakers pass laws about our bodies while telling us to shut up, while not letting any women speak, with no women on the committees. This is an unfamiliar feeling, because we were raised to take control of our destiny. Our parents told us we could be anything, do anything. No one told us that we were limited by our sex.

It wasn’t until we got out in the world that we realized all was not shattered glass ceilings. But even that didn’t prepare us for the last two and a half years of angry male revenge from the Republican Party, the party of men whose control, authority, masculinity, efficacy and yes, potency, has passed them by. They want the Republicans to kick women every day, to remind us of our place. And so the Republican Party, which can’t afford to alienate the angry older white man as that is their only base, kicks us. Only they don’t just kick us.

They use religion and piety to excuse kicking us. They tell us smugly that we can’t be trusted with important decisions like having babies, as if we know nothing of babies. They dangle their self-righteousness in our faces as they take away our rights.

We are hardly silent victims; we mobilize, we communicate, we protest, we organize, we speak out, we are heard by many. But there is still a burning betrayal deep in our souls. We have been betrayed by our elected lawmakers. We have been relegated less than a fetus. Not a full human. Less than a male. Not in charge of our own medical decisions. Not in charge of our own family decisions. We will have to submit to an unnecessary and painful transvaginal ultrasound in order to pay for wanting control of our bodies.

We know how to fight. We’ve been doing it forever. But we never thought we’d be back fighting the fights of our grandmothers. We never thought the day would come when Republicans would get away with legislating humiliation for no other reason than to exert power-over.

So it felt great to read the Judge’s scathing opinions on the Republican law. Their law does not “reveal any medical expert speaking in favor of the Act or otherwise articulating a legitimate medical reason” for their law. The Judge reminded them that they bear the burden of proving that their laws and regulations serve the purpose of maternal health, “bears the burden of proving that a medical requirement is ‘reasonably directed to the preservation of maternal health.’ and “the record to date strongly supports a finding that no medical purpose is served by this requirement.”

It’s as if we matter. This is a moment to celebrate and savor, because while there will be plenty more like it as the federal courts catch up with Republicans’ state level jihad against women, there will also be plenty more Republican attempts to steal our liberty. They are relentless in their vicious need to kick the metaphorical dog. It’s one of the few joys they have left, apparently – the joy of a sadist. It’s not surprising to find sadism running rampant in the party of authoritarians. But that doesn’t make dealing with the results any less repugnant, as they try to use their authority over our laws in order to inflict pain on others.

The Republicans “must demonstrate that the regulation is reasonably related to ‘the preservation and protection of maternal health’ but it failed to do so.”

Yes, gentlemen, that’s a big FU from all of us. You can take that law and shove it. We’ll see you in federal court and at the voting booth. We will not forget or forgive. You bring your unjustifiable, big government regulations over our bodies and we’ll bring the justice.


Image: CNN (Note, this is the kind of cultural appeasement of the angry old white men that ticks us off: The CNN description of the photo is “Protesters have taken to the streets in reaction to what they see as an assault on their reproductive rights” as if it’s not really an assault on our rights. It’s not a matter of opinion. It is a factual, evident, proven assault on our rights, freedoms, liberty, and persons. It’s very real, and if you are awake, it should be disturbing to you.


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