In a world where children still go hungry at night, people are out of jobs, American soldiers are still dying on foreign soil, and corporations are still running the show, I find it sombering that in the Spring of the year 2012 we are talking about restricting women’s birth control. Its worrisome to me. Maybe we should go back to when women were considered chattel, a piece of property. Something to be seen and not heard.
August 26, 1920, less than a hundred years ago women were “given” the right to vote. During World War I, women began working in factories and supporting the war in others ways. It was after World War I that a group of women took the time to work towards political equality. Men still “controlled” their women at that time. I remember my grandmother saying regarding my grandfather “He may tell me who to vote for, but he doesn’t go with me into the voting booth.”
But it seems like every day I hear about another assault on women’s right to contraception. First they want to do away with Planned Parenthood, one of the easiest places for low income women to get birth control. I know, because at one time I was one of those low income women. Now in Arizona they want to pass a law that will allow an employer who offers health insurance to come into my private life and to decide, using their own religious beliefs, whether I should have them or not. In other words, if I am using them for contraception and not for “medical reasons”, and their own religious beliefs don’t allow for contraception use I should not be allowed to use them for that purpose through my health insurance provided by that employer.
My health insurance is a business expense to my employer. He doesn’t pay 100% of my monthly coverage and pays 0% of the family, he doesn’t pay my co-pays. What about the HIPAA laws? What right does my employer have sticking his nose into my medical care? The EEOC ruled in the year 2000 that if an employer’s insurance offers preventative care for men that they have to provide preventative care for women as well. Why is that controversal and even up for debate? It seems simple enough to me.
I have known for some time that the government wants to be in the bedrooms of my gay friends to dictate what goes on there and now they are wanting into my own bedroom. Its like the poem from Martin Niemöller, “First they came for the Socialists…” Yes they are here, they have arrived.
SPEAK UP!! Take an active part. This is a morality issue and my belief is that morality can not be legislated. What is moral to one person is not the same to another. Alcohol consumption, dancing, women cutting their hair, women wearing pants, women aren’t allowed to speak from the pulpit, consumption of meat, consumption of pork, musical instruments in the church, musical instruments not in the church, the sabbath on Saturday, working on Sunday, and the list goes on and on. If your religious belief is that sex is only about procreation and is not about a way to express your sexuality and love for another human being, that’s certainly well within your rights. But your religious beliefs and morality have nothing to do with what goes on in my bedroom. I believe this to be an attack on women’s right in the most basic way.
“Freedom lies in being bold.” – Robert Frost
I leave you with a couple of links Whose freedom on contraception? and Proposed AZ Law
and a song that was banned from radio when it was released: