Reading a couple of articles in Daily Kos about women’s reproductive health care issues, I had a spurt of anger, with touches of helplessness, powerless, bewilderment, followed by downright disbelief, not exactly, as that last would be an argument with reality.
Dan K wrote about how Rep. Stan McClain of the Florida legislature is putting forth a bill which will make a felony of any school discussion of human sexuality before grade 6. In other words, no discussion, no discussion at all about getting your period before age 11 or 12.
Imagine that, this Man thinks that if a child of 10, 11, 12 has a period, she cannot tell her teacher about it and have her teacher send her to the nurse for help. Often teachers are the only people that children can talk with about their bodies and their lives!
I remember my first period very well. Yes, did know I would be getting it. I was one of the last girls in my class at the Ursuline convent Secondary Modern School for Girls, to get my period. And when it did come, one weekend, I was freaked out. Suddenly there was blood in my pants, and I, then, had difficulty putting together that this was my period, with, having periods.
My stepmother was unsympathetic, yelled at me for being stupid (not that she and I had ever had the Conversation), and gave me an old sanitary belt of her own, plus some pads, and showed me how to use them, all the while being angry and irritable. As time progressed, my periods become more and more painful, with excruciating low back pain and large, large, heavy clots.
I went to the doctor. He said i would grow out of it, probably when I had children. I was not quite 15.
My stepmother, in the meantime, would accuse me of making a big thing out of nothing, of being hysterical, of making the pain up. Not so. My memories of that time are of pain, shame, mortification at the deepest level. I couldn’t even go to the chemist myself to buy the pads because I was so embarrassed. My stepmother had to buy them.
Thinking then, of the girls, young women, in Florida, age 10 or so, getting their periods and having no-one to go to, except maybe the internet. The information is now out there, to some extent, but who to talk with when your experience doesn’t correspond to TikTok, or Twitter?
McClain, when asked by a reporter, if his legislation would prevent girls in the 4th or 5th grade from discussing their periods with their teacher, said “It would” (his words)
Add that to the article by Prudentious Snork on Fetal Coverture (Forced Birth), writing an analysis from the Virginia Law Review which opined that the ban on “ … abortion erases maternal personhood in the eyes of the law ...”, essentially saying that when a women gets pregnant, she then has no legal recourse, none. Even if the birth is not going to be viable, or it threatens her life. Even if!
I end with a quote found on Twitter “Unfriendly Reminder — If you only support abortion in the instance of rape or incest, you’re reinforcing the idea that in order for a woman to have the right to her body, someone else has to violate it first.”