This morning I watched an excerpt on CBS Morning News about Kansas' new abortion laws. I was unaware. Three new laws were signed by the new conservative anti-choice governor that I backed in the last election. While I knew he was anti-choice, I wanted to be sure that we had a governor that would back our veterans and military in a state coat up with Army and Air Force bases and a strong representation of Navy and Marine Corps veterans. I didn't imagine that little after a year of placing that vote I would be blindsided by what my morning Kansas news didn't bother to tell me about.
We are all familiar with Roe versus Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in 1973. Most of us have an opinion, although most of us rarely feel the need to bother with it. Truth is in most polls and studies show that most--53%--believe abortions should be acceptable in some circumstances. Now where we draw that line seems to be a line in the sand. Only 22% say it should be illegal in all circumstances and 23% say it should be legal in all circumstances. Of course, the last Gallup poll in 2009 might not be the most accurate measurement for 2 reasons: one is it forced one to define themselves as one or the other. How many of us will define ourselves as not for life? Really? Next, it really wasn't completely without skewing type questions...toward pro-life/anti-choice. Regardless of the skewing, 76% believe abortion should be legal although this allows for no line in the sand to be determined. That should be it, sort of, right? We live in a nation of majority rules, and 76% seems pretty cut and dry. Or is it?
Of the 76%, we don't agree where to define the line. We choose to believe since we are the majority there is little to discuss. Most agree that stem cell research of aborted fetus--another words intentionally aborting a pregnancy to do testing and/or to save another human being's life is morbid and/or immoral. But, we stop there. We don't want to discuss it; we would like conversations like that to take place in the privacy of ours, or others, homes. Not on public display. These are still to the mass majority of us--private matters. However, that 22% is never going to let it go. Ever.
The 22% have successfully gotten the Supreme Court to agree that states have the right to legislate what is or isn't the legal definition of abortion. Kansas is the next state to take advantage of this. A couple of years ago an abortion doctor was murdered in cold blood in Kansas--to supposedly save babies. Murdering a human being to the 22% may be a shame, but a price to pay. (I'm so confused by this logic this is where I'll leave that statement.)
Now, Kansas has enacted a law to prevent federal money from going to Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood doesn't encourage abortion; it does openly discuss all options with young women and men including abortion. Education is not a bad thing. Telling teenagers to abstain from sex has been extremely effective (feel the sarcasm) for South Carolina--still number one in high school drop-out rates, still number one in single unwed mothers under the age of 21, still number one for those same girls to have multiple children before 21, still number one in domestic violence...Yes, Dorothy and Virginia, go have a baby and the state will help you pay for it. Nice. Planned Parenthood is about information and learning before the mistake happens, but if the mistake happens, trying to rectify and learn from it rather than pay a huge penalty for the mistake. So cut off funding, great idea.
One of the other 2 new laws requires a minor to have notorized signatures from both parents. Really? This is a blatant attempt to keep teenagers from getting abortions. It's hard enough for them to ask one parent (and ironically, I agree that they should ask one parent), but I've been a teenage girl. I wouldn't have wanted to tell my daddy. Not just no, Hell No. So what will these teenage girls options be? Pills over the internet from Uganda? At least Daddy won't know, and heck, she won't have to ask Mommy either. Best of all, if those pills aren't legitimate and since they are supposed to be used only under a doctor's care, well, complications that arise--no big deal, right?
Ok, so now, my reader is probably thinking of where they stand. Good, because now I really want to give you something to think about. Abortions have been around since the 1700s. Yes, really. They were illegalized, so to speak, in the late 1800s. (Sometimes it's debated if they were ever really legal. We'll not go there.) In the 1920s, the raging 1920s, none of us remember: flapper dresses that were shorter than micro-mini skirts, no real drinking age limit, no real limit on how old you had to be to marry or have sex, and teenagers were still teenagers with more access to vices (perceived or real, all for another blog). Estimates are that an average of 15,000 women died every year in the 1920s from illegal abortion complications. Men with coat hangers in back alleys tearing the insides of women, young and some even older, desperate not to be found out as a harlet. Consider the population then was 1/3rd of what it is now. Can we imagine only 30K illegal abortions a year? No, we all know that it will be way more than that. Let's not be naive. Can we imagine some 22 year old jerk off looking for a quick buck sticking a coat hanger up some 17 year old girl for $1000 for an illegal abortion? Yes, of course we can. Let's not stick our heads in the sand. Just because the silent generation is long gone, for the most part, doesn't mean that we shouldn't acknowledge what they knew and what they didn't like to discuss--just like we don't like to discuss it--pregnancy does happen. Unwanted pregnancy does happen. And desperate people will go to desperate measures.
Think about it. Why did Roe versus Wade pass in 1973? The silent generation had complete control of our government at the time. They were still voting, and the women of that generation knew unlike any other. My grandmother once told me that Roe versus Wade should never be overturned. She told me how women of wealth (women of wealth, yes, that was exactly how she said it) could get abortions, quietly, discreetly, in the safety of a hospital. While she never acknowledged that she might have been one of those women of wealth, she had been just like every other teen to 20-somethinger in the 1920s, hanging in clubs, wearing little flapper dresses, whether they were at the University or hobokans just hoping to find a husband. My grandmother said plenty of good women died because of the rights that men would take away from women. The right to privacy. The right to choose. Because men would or had taken away those rights.
Now we have holier than thou bible thumpers that want to take it away too, and more often than not, now they are women. This is a choice. Depending on our own personal religions, our own personal beliefs, and our own relationship with God or Gods or whatever we believe in. There are 76% of us that do believe that much. Are we willing to stand idly by as these people, who have their religious beliefs, their own personal ideals and idiology, drive what the rest of us assume is a private matter?
Consider that the state of Kansas is cutting back on funding to schools, funding for busing, funding for police, firemen, and other services. But they can afford to spend $785,040 to 5 December 2011 since May. Yes, they can afford to spend 3/4 of a million dollars in an economy in the sh*thole on lawyers rather than helping those in need. I'm mortified. Priorities a little f*cked up Governor Brownback? Ms. Mary Kay Culp? I don't give a sh*t about your idiotology. I don't agree with you, and I'm not happy that you're using my money to fund something that is intentionally trying to force a concept to as far as you can (since you can't overturn Roe v Wade) that 76% of don't agree with. You don't agree with abortions; good, don't have one!!! Give me back my taxes *ssholes, and I'll give it to someone interested in helping others like the Salvation Army, the Kansas Food Bank, or hell, even Planned Parenthood. I'm pretty sure that they can figure a better way to spend my money than you idiots.
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