Yeah, I have an axe to grind....
Last Friday night, trying to wind down from all of the crazy in our world I decided to watch Bill Maher. I know, I know, his shows typically are not the place to go when one is trying to disembark from the world of crazy and Friday night's show was no exception...at least for me.
So, we have a panel of mostly progressive thinks and Dana Rohrabacher from the great state of California. The discussion of course revolved around the defunding of Planned Parenthood and as the minutes ticked by, I found that I got angrier and angrier.
One might ask why the jump in blood pressure? Of course it's maddening enough to even contemplate why right (not conservative but people who THINK) thinking would think to defund Planned Parenthood is proper. But the onus of my anger is the unadulterated audacity of men in suits and ties, and that includes Bill Maher, cannot, will not and do not even contextualize the idea that women are quite capable of making credible decisions about the care and feeding of their Bodies and are quite capable of making decisions that concern their healthcare options.
I find it egregious that the funding of Planned Parenthood, much less the discussions surrounding whether health insurance carriers should cover birth control for women is insulting to our collective credibility and our intelligence. Exactly why is ti okay for men and far too many women on the far right, to think women and their lives have no meaning?
Who, morally, socially or politically has the right to elevate the value of an unborn child above the life of the mother of that child? It's like we are mere vessels, a suitcase as it were, with little other value than to breed and produce offspring. If the child's life is in danger, by all means, save the child and sacrifice the mother! Who is responsible for this idiocy? Who decided that all life begins at conception and that all means necessary to ensure the viability of said fetus must be exercised even at the expense of the life of the mother. Doesn't this line of thought appear to be rooted in the complete misunderstanding, nee, the complete ignorance of proven medical/scientific thought?
So, forgive me if have have offended you because I feel the need, the necessity to scream from the rooftops that without mothers children and societies crumble and fail! Men should not determine what is right for women any more than women should prescribe whether men should get vasectomies or another large dose of Viagra!
Give me a break! What we have here today is not an inability to communicate but a clear case of resurrected, dated inequality between the sexes, and I ain't lying down for it!