Dear, Editor:
I was born in 1942. My childhood and teenage years were lived in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Those were the days of the Dick and Jane Reader, when Mom never got past the kitchen door or took her apron off – except to go to church. It was “Father Knows Best” and “Ozzie and Harriet” on television, where most women were married and their dialogue was mainly limited to “yes, Dear.”
It was not a good time for an intelligent girl with a different view of her world and a fiercely independent spirit. I was schooled by the good nuns of two traditional orders. It didn’t work. There was no way I was going to fit in the nasty little box they had designed for me. I kept breaking out of it. And I still have abhorrence for little boxes.
At age 23, I found myself single (my choice) and pregnant (not my choice).
Abortion was illegal, but I found someone who would do it. He was not a medical professional and there was no follow up. I bled for days but was afraid of being arrested so did not seek medical attention. I survived, barely. I was one of the lucky ones. Many died.
I rejoiced for my gender when the Supreme Court, in Roe v. Wade, made abortion a woman’s right. It wasn’t a gift. It was hard fought for by hundreds of thousands of us. But generations after us took it for granted and didn’t pay enough attention to the gradual erosion of that right by state laws that placed increasing restrictions on it. Until, sadly, a new Supreme Court ignored the decades old policies of precedence and established law. They weaseled out by leaving the decision to regulate abortion up to individual states. Many states had legislation virtually outlawing all abortions ready to roll. And roll they did, right over every female in America.
It’s been a nightmare of restrictions so narrow that women in most states no longer own their bodies. Their states have made them virtual slaves. Some even make it a crime to go to a more liberal state to end a pregnancy. And there are legal penalties for a woman who has an abortion and for anyone who performs one or even facilitates it in any way. They took their little boxes out of their attics, dusted them off, and pushed every woman in their state into them. Our only recourse is a return to illegal – and deadly – procedures.
Anyone who thinks it ends there is living in La La Land. Little by little, womens’ ability to reproduce is being used to erode their right to “equal treatment under law.” One candidate for Congress even said that women should not be allowed to vote.
The latest is the push to outlaw Mefepristone, a medication that has safely ended early pregnancies for more than two decades. It went through the same rigorous Federal Drug Administration testing process as every drug on the market. Deaths per million users are 5. Deaths for Viagra are 49. And deaths per million live births in the United States are 24, the worst record for any developed nation.
But these statistics mean nothing to “conservative” lawmakers, who would rather see American women dead than in control of their own lives.
There is one very simple way to fight the unconstitutional program to deny women control over their own reproductive health. I call it “The Lysistrata Option.” In an ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes, the women of cities involved in the Peloponnesian Wars withheld sex from their husbands and lovers until they agreed to negotiate peace. I call on all American women to emulate Lysistrata. The tactic should be especially effective on a man who just swallowed Viagra.
Our slogan, until our constitutional and human rights are affirmed by federal law, must be “No Abortion, No Sex.”
Adele E. Zimmermann,
Embudo