I have done all the usual interventions. I've written emails and signed petitions and called the white house gripe line and my senator's gripe line and carefully controlled my breathing and my tone so that I was expressing a thought rather than abusing an intern. But, see, there's all this extra rage that has to go somewhere, and I have a blog.
The White House, the Democratic one, has released it's rules for the high-risk pools that will exist to cover people who have been unable to get coverage for the next three years, and in those rules coverage for abortion care has been proscribed. A woman of child-bearing age, with serious medical conditions, who knows that accidental pregnancy would be a medical disaster for her and likely her fetus too, can't even access that coverage with her own, extra money. Basically, this is the Stupak amendment again, but this time where it is poised to do maximum damage to the women it constrains and their families.
Women like me. I was lucky enough to avoid developing/being diagnosed with my health issues until I had good health insurance. And I do have good health insurance, so we're not talking about me particularly. Yet, I now know in a way that I did not before (yes, I'm that short-sighted) how absolutely terrifying the threat of being compelled to carry on with an unplanned pregnancy can be. Because, though pregnancy is technically possible for me, it would require six months of very careful prescription alterations and testing and the assembly of a medical dream team to give me a snowball's chance in hell of having a healthy child AND living to raise it. An unplanned pregnancy would likely kill me, the fetus, or both. And now, women who have my health issues but not my lucky timing will have to, what? I mean, what do you do when you have no room for error, because somebody else's 'moral objections' are more important to your government than your right to bodily autonomy? More important even than your life?
These women, the most medically vulnerable, the most likely to NEED qualified people to perform life-saving abortions on them, are now the ones least likely to get that care. Under a democratic government.
The relationship women are in with the democratic party is toxic. Women come together every two to four years, and we work hard, and we vote, and we get them power so that they can serve the people. 'The people' being understood to include women people. They would have no power without us, none. Women owe the government NOTHING. Not faith, not hope, not charity, not trust, not patience, NOTHING. The debt all goes the other way, and I am goddamned tired of having to jump up and shout and scream to remind the people who are supposed to be on my damned side that WOMEN ARE PEOPLE AND CITIZENS WHOSE FULL CUSTODY RIGHTS TO THEIR OWN BODIES SHOULD NOT BE MADE SUBJECT TO THE THEOLOGICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL RAMBLINGS OF PEOPLE WHO HATE US OR "LOVE US ENOUGH TO CONTROL US" OR THINK WE'RE SOCIALLY PROBLEMATIC WHEN WE GET ALL AUTONOMOUS BECAUSE OUR SILENCE AND PATIENCE WOULD REALLY HELP THE PARTY OUT OF A TIGHT SPOT.
1989 NOW convention was right, folks, we need a human rights party. The Democrats want to chase the middle all the way to the right, let them. We need a new party with a new vision. The sooner the better.
