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Target: Freedom
by
Alan David Doane
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http://www.comicbookgalaxy.com
http://www.alandaviddoane.com
President-Select George Bush Junior has come out swinging at
women's rights, and anyone who is interested in equality and freedom in
this country should take this as a wake up call: Bush has targeted
reproductive freedom for extinction.
On the first workday of his fraudulent Presidency, George
Junior signed an executive order banning federal funds to international
family planning groups offering abortion or abortion counseling. It was
one of George W. Bush's first actions as President, ironically and
insultingly falling on the anniversary of the Supreme Court Roe vs. Wade
decision that helped legalize abortion in America and gave women control
over their own reproduction, and their own futures.
Conservatives speciously argue that women who want to control
their own reproductive processes should use birth control (while
feverishly working to limit access to contraceptives by banning them
from high schools and blocking the entrance to women's health clinics),
or even better, wink wink, don't have sex! Perhaps they missed the only
true passage in the Bible, the idea that "Be fruitful and
multiply," is hardwired into humanity. Into all living things.
Survival and reproduction are our only real priorities, and
everything we do can be boiled down to one or the other. To deny these
basic drives is supremely ignorant. Conservatives and ignorance go
together like guns and the NRA.
The United States, of course, was founded by white men who
poured the very foundation of "freedom" on the principles that
blacks and women were not quite human, and certainly didn't deserve the
right to vote. "All men are created equal," they said, while
making sure that blacks were legally considered less than human. They
back this all up, of course, by citing these principles as being
"self-evident" and sent down by a "creator." It's
pretty difficult to argue with a
It is only by a confluence of good fortune and fear of
outright revolution by the diminishing white male power base that women
and minorities have been granted the rights they have; the fact of the
matter is that, in large part, they have been granted equality more in
name than in actual fact. Women continue to be victimized through lower
pay and the threat and reality of domestic violence, as well as
extremist activists working to make sure that "every sperm is
sacred," by harassing women seeking legal health care and through
the terrorist bombing of women's health
Pro-choice activists are calling Bush's actions in his first
few days in office a major setback for women's reproductive rights, but
that's a lot like calling having your arm amputated a major setback for
your ability to juggle. Bush claims his priorities are tax cuts and
education, but the symbolism of his assault on abortion rights cannot be
overstated. He wants to send a signal to the extremist Christian zealots
that got him into office (despite, you know, losing the election by
hundreds of thousands of votes) that he is their bitch, and will do
whatever kinky shit they want
him to. And there's nothing, nothing, that extremist
conservatives want to do more than erase Roe vs. Wade from the books.
History teaches us abortions will happen whether they are
legal or not. Bush's "compassionate conservatism," we now
know, includes women being forced to seek out back-alley abortions that
will lead to botched procedures, permanent maiming, and death. That this
former Texas governor would embrace such horror should come as no
surprise; he is on record as mocking at least one person he had executed
during his administration. I'm in favor of the death penalty for violent
criminals, but I don't believe in taking joy in it. Bush clearly thinks
it's funny to send people to their deaths, and wants to find new and
innovative ways to spread his joy.
The mind-boggling contradiction in all this, of course, is
that the end result of limiting or eliminating reproductive freedom will
result in that which these zealots fear most: more of The Other. The
philosophies of extremist conservatives are based almost solely in hate
and fear of The Other. This hatred and fear is a genetic trait that
worked to insure survival in the early days of humanity ("That
thing with fangs and claws doesn't look like me, I better run...or
better yet, kill it!"), but is now nothing but a persistent
leftover that people who actually take the time to think for themselves
work to overcome. It's impossible not to notice our differences, but
that doesn't mean we have to, say, beat someone unlike us and leave him
hanging on a fence to die, or tie him to the back of our pickup truck
and drag him to his death. Think those are extreme examples? They are
the real world end result of preaching fear and hate to the ignorant. I
got your Moral Majority right here, buddy.
Conservative extremists find this fear of The Other extremely
handy, though, when they need to go to war to ensure their own power and
reproductive access. "Look at that guy with the towel on his head,
praying to a False God! Go kill him, while I stay here and, heh heh,
'guard the women.'" This is the very reason why there will always
be war. The rich power elite will always send the healthy young men to
die because as old men, they can't equally compete for sex and resources
otherwise.
But they're as much the victims of fear of The Other as they
are users of it. Extremist Christians like Pat Buchanan and Ralph Reed
are great examples of white men who have made entire careers of whipping
up support by whipping up fear. And at least in the case of Buchanan,
it's clear he is terrified of The Other. You can see it in his eyes when
he talks about building fences around this country to keep out The
Other. I'm all for controlling immigration, but Buchanan is clearly
haunted by images of The Other coming over the wall and fucking his
women. Then they
So, once we take away women's right to control their
reproduction, much like Doritos, they'll go out and make more. More
babies. More Other. And as I've pointed out above, speciously saying
"use birth control" (there is no perfect method of birth
control, so abortion must remain a viable, legal option for even women
who are, pardon the phrase, religious about it), or "don't have
sex," (just slightly less ludicrous than saying "don't
breathe"), does nothing to address the real issue.
Those who want to limit abortion want to limit freedom. Those
who want to eliminate abortion want to eliminate freedom.
President-Select George Bush Junior, the guy who lost the
election by hundreds of thousands of votes and then was handed the
Presidency by his dad's cronies, has fired the first shot. Education and
tax cuts are not his top priorities. On Day One, he took solid,
undeniable action to interfere with the rights of women to control their
freedom, their reproduction, and their lives. Bush may not be an
extremist zealot himself (although we'll soon find out for sure), but he
is in their debt, and in their control. They mean to ass-rape our
freedom for the next four years, and
they got started before spit had even dried up on the
microphone Bush used in his "Inauguration" speech.
-- Alan David Doane
Copyright©2000 Alan David Doane