The Roe v. Wade decision was about more than abortion. It was about women's body autonomy.
Roe v. Wade said the woman's uterus belonged to her.
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| Hijack Holiday |
Americans adjusted their thinking about body autonomy in the 1970s. Roe v. Wade was a piece of it. Widespread use of contraception was another piece. Women doing "men's jobs" was yet another. A 1972 TV movie and 1978 stage play preceded the 1981 movie starring Richard Dreyfus. They were all titled Whose Life is it Anyway?
The potential reversal of Roe v. Wade puts a woman's sexual and reproductive autonomy back on the table of public decision-making. Something may be taken away from women. The woman being regulated potentially pays an enormous price. The people who create and enforce those regulations pay no price. The ancient Greek comedy Lysistrata, by Aristophanes (450-388 BCE) told the story of Greek women going on sexual strike, to force their men to end the Peloponnesian war). They determined that men would pay a price for defying the wishes of the women. It is the basis for this poetic Guest Post.
Christina Starobin is a college classmate. She went on to get an MA from Columbia and a PhD from NYU. Having taught college for many years in New York and New Jersey, she resides in upstate New York and her poetry performance troupe WORD SALAD delights audiences with original and satiric wit. Visit www.drstarborn.com for short bio, more poems & pix. Her most recent suspense novel HIJACK HOLIDAY is available through the internet.
Guest Post by Christina Starobin
Lysistrata déjà vu
Women of America, again arise!
Open up your spouse’s eyes!
Since you refuse our legal rights
We refuse your conjugal nights
You want to screw with our heads?
We will ban you from our beds
Think you can legislate our lives?
You will find us colder wives
Let the Supreme Court bed you down
They’ve screwed all of us around
When you want to have some nookie
You will find we are no rookies
No sex until you understand
And make Roe v. Wade law of the land
--5/3/22, Christina Starobin
12 comments:
Apparently, many in the GQP view women as livestock. These are the same folks who freak out about sharia law coming to the USA.
We will fight this battle on our feet, not on our backs. We will organize with our minds and our hearts.
Younger women who grew up under the protection of Roe v. Wade (1973) are learning about how it used to be. The sleeping giant is waking up.
Not amused by the poem. It trivializes the matter. Women should not seek to control men with sex. That is an antiquated throwback notion. Women and girls in 2022 are competent, educated and empowered.
This was a fun read. Thank you fir sharing, Peter.
Once again, we have unelected judges imposing rights on American citizens.
Women who think this is just about abortion are probably brainwashed to begin with.
Never underestimate the ignorance of the American people.
I saw on the news that (surprise) Lyin' Ted Cruz is upset about "the leak." How about those Lyin' Supreme Court Justices, who lied during the confirmation process? Seems like perjury to me, unless it depends what the definition of precedent is.
The problem with the poem’s message is that most women who support Roe v. Wade are probably married to men who do also. There are a lot of women who oppose it.
None of this should surprise anybody. It couldn’t have been more obvious that MAGA hatters believed America was great before Roe v. Wade, before integration, before the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts were passed – back in the good ol' days when white men could beat their wives, lynch Blacks and shoot Indians with impunity.
For the most part, women who believe in abortion rights are married to men who also believe in abortion rights. So if this poem’s advice were to be followed literally, the men impacted would only be the men who already supported abortion rights.
Followed to its logical conclusion, this would lead to no children for abortion rights supporting families, so in one generation the entire country might become pro-life.
I’m reminded of the joke about the guy who comes home and finds his wife in bed with someone else. He pulls out a gun and points it at his own head. His wife and this other guy start laughing at him, and he says, “What are you laughing about? You’re next!“
Or maybe the poem is just an expression of anger, and not intended to be taken literally?
President Joe Biden opposed the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize abortion one year after Roe v Wade.
“I don’t think that a woman has the sole right to say what should happen to her body,” he told the Washingtonian in 1974, one year after the court legalized abortion.
“I don’t like the Supreme Court decision on abortion. I think it went too far,” he added.
Biden doubled down years later in 1982 when he voted to approve a constitutional amendment that would have allowed abortion to become a state issue instead of a federal one.
I do agree with Anonymous. I sincerely hope she is right, and that all the powerful, educated and involved women I know rise up in righteous anger over this proposed stripping of a right long established by a SCOTUS far more qualified than the 5 Dolts on the Dais who will sign onto this travesty.
Roberts must really be sweating as he sees his socalled "balls and strikes" legacy be ripped to shreds.
I’m afraid young women to day have taken for granted the work the older generation had suffered until this case was decided…shame, humiliation, fear, loss of women’s life through butchery , arrest. They will now have to awake…too late for Democrats for med term elections the young women will say “That’s not fair.” Until they realize the viciousness is directed right at them. What will their chant be then? When they awake…
I said it before and will say it again: Republicans wish to rule in hell (they cause) rather than serve in heaven (for the people). Beware of candidates that wrap themselves in the flag and religion all the while stealing the soul of the nation and our individual rights we currently enjoy.
I believe that the question of "is it murder" must be addressed. I do not believe that objections to abortion are mostly about control. They are assuming that it is a "human being" being murdered.
I answered a letter in another forum which stated that it should be cut off when there is a heart beat. :
Animals have heart beats. Human DNA is not the determining factor, as we allow killing of humans in war, when a person is brain-flatlined, and with the death sentence. We also allow killing of animals, humanely, and do not call it murder. The fetus is not a sentient self aware being, even at birth! Only when a toddler is about two years old does it recognize itself in the mirror. I maintain that it is murder to kill a sentient self aware being (and this might not even be a human, as an ET or an AI might be intelligent and self aware, as might animals like apes, elephants, dolphins). Science needs to define murder as such, and that would not include a fetus in a womb. I am not advocating killing babies at birth, as they can be kept alive outside of the woman's body. There would be no need to access intelligence levels after birth, as many people of lower intelligence also have empathy and other fine human traits, making them valuable human beings.
And those who advocate against abortion rarely offer to pay for the physical and emotional upkeep of the child, after it is born! Unwanted children can often grow up and as mal-adjusted adults, draining society's resources.
And of course there is the argument that it is a woman's body and her choice! It is not legal to harvest organs in a live person, or otherwise invade another person's body without permission.
But until we address the "murder" issue, we will not make headway in changing minds.
You can't just ignore patriarchy and human history. Women have always had to fight for their rights and self-determination. All around the world.
I believe it was the head of the UN who recently stated that reproductive freedom is the foundation of gender equity.
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