Today’s Naral Pro-Choice America Report
The Senate may have reached a compromise to disarm the nuclear option, but don't think that means this anti-choice Congress is willing to compromise its far-right agenda.
This time, not only did our opponents take aim at our courts, they even turned their backs on women in the military.
· House Republican leaders refused to allow debate or votes on two amendments that would have provided compassionate health care to military women who’ve been raped. The first would have ensured that the morning-after pill, ordinary birth control pills that can prevent pregnancy after sex or assault, is made available to servicewomen at every military base. The second amendment would have allowed women to use their military health insurance for abortion care in cases of rape or incest. Given that sexual assaults against servicewomen rose 25 percent in 2004, it's appalling that anti-choice lawmakers refused to allow these amendments to even come to a vote.
· Military women were also yet again denied the right to access abortion care at military facilities overseas when the House defeated an amendment to repeal a ban that forbids servicewomen and female military dependents from using their own money to pay for an abortion at overseas military hospitals.
So, you're a soldier - you just happen to be female - and you're serving your country in Iraq. (You're there because you were lied to but that's a whole other ball o' wax.) You're captured or perhaps just in the wrong place at the wrong time and you're tortured - raped, sodomized, beaten, left for dead. The usual fun & games that go along with war. First, you aren't allowed to take a pill that will prevent a pregnancy from this horrific attack. Okay, so a few months down the pike when you discover you ARE pregnant, you are forced to carry the pregnancy to full term because (a) you aren’t earning a living wage in the military and your military medical insurance will not cover an abortion OR (b) even if you could scrape together the necessary funds you aren't allowed to use your own funds to get an abortion. I believe that just about covers it, eh? Life as you know it is over. The horror of war, the horror of rape, have now altered your life irrevocably. And now you have a child that you did not plan, that you did not want, that you cannot support on the salary you earn in "this man's army." Any plans for your future have been crushed. The days of making your own decisions about what contribution you can make in our society are over. Such lofty goals for a young woman, anyway, right? What could YOU possibly have to contribute?
'Tis a pity you weren't born with descending genitals. Too bad, so sad. It sucks to be you.
The right-wing-bible-thumping-fundamentalist-republican-douchebags believe the “right to life” begins at conception. They apparently also believe that it ends at birth. Especially if you have a vagina.
Posted by lulu at May 27, 2005 08:52 AM | TrackBack