Congratulations to the Texas legislators who have codified their equal status in world human congress with the fresh rulers of Afghanistan. Now their country; now their way.
So it is in Texas, where only male humans have full rights over their own bodies. Now only male humans are free to copulate at will with no regard for any consequence whatsoever.
Female humans might copulate in the state of Texas just as male humans do, but, alas, if a pregnancy develops, their full humanity stops right there, little lady. Sorry; wrong state. Now we are moving into “The Handmaid’s Tale” territory.
It’s not as if Texas lawmakers value embryonic human life. They do not. Texas legislators have removed almost all medical facilities qualified to assist a female human who may discover she is with embryo.
If she is wealthy, then she can get the care she needs and desires. If she is like the majority of female humans who inhabit Texas tonight, then she is not wealthy or well insured, but fully employed with a couple of jobs that offer little or no health insurance.
She is anxious and without recourse — and may be married but have all the kids she can afford to raise with her spouse. She is still doomed if she is in Texas now.
A bumper sticker on a truck read, “Don’t like guns? Don’t buy one. Problem solved!”
I’d like to proffer my own: “Don’t like abortions? Don’t have one. Problem solved!”
Women own their bodies. Men own their bodies. Trans folks own their bodies. LGBTQ+ folks own theirs. No one owns another person. Period. Or no period.
No person or group of people should dictate what a person does with that person’s body. In the U.S., ownership is all.
None of us can tell any of the rest of us that we can’t determine what occurs in our own bodies. This seems to me as inalienable as all the rights afforded constitutionally and enshrined in our holiest American documents.
I’d suggest to men who are ready to have sex with women in Texas tonight that, if you aren’t cool with women deciding what may happen afterwards, then keep your pants zipped. That is your point of decision.
You have all the power in that moment. You rule yourself entirely! Just don’t have unprotected sex. Just don’t produce an embryo. We will all be cool. Be powerfully pro-choice.
To women in Texas tonight I would suggest: Use protection. Don’t even let it get started.
He probably doesn’t care about this like you do. You are in Texas, for goodness sakes. It’s a whole ‘nother country.
But if it does get started, the man remains a man. And the woman remains a woman — in the non-Texan United States.
A pregnant woman is equally valuable in the sight of our Constitution as a human being with full rights, valuable and sacred, just as a non-pregnant woman is. A pregnant woman isn’t suddenly disqualified from her human status just because some male human copulated with her and produced an embryo.
He surely didn’t get disqualified from his full human status with all his rights, did he? And he doesn’t have to show up in any way, personally, financially or legally, to support that embryo — which might eventually need food, clothes, shelter and medical care, and might even want to go to college.
Texas has confirmed that the female human in question will have to provide all of that support on demand.
It makes you wonder why women in Texas even still have sex with male humans. If they all just decided to stop for 72 hours, or go on a sex strike for much longer, would the world tilt on its axis? Hmm.
In Texas tonight, the woman bears all these burdens and is disqualified from the constitutional rights as a human being to preside over her body. It makes you quake for the rights of that little embryo, who has a 50-50 chance of also being female and a non-qualifier for humanity.
Therein lies the rub. No pun intended. Barefoot and pregnant: now the Texas law. Problem solved. And $10,000 goes to anyone who notices someone in Texas whose problem is not solved, and who lives in a state of no grace.
A hospice chaplain who serves on the Good Faith Media Strategic Advisory Board.
