We Think We've Come So Far

I've been out of the loop this week. Between living in a house with about three channels that come in and starting my new job, my ability to keep abreast of every new development in the shootings in Virginia and the sinking Russian submarine in Providence is limited. However, news of the 5-4 upholding of the partial birth abortion ban crept onto my radar screen this morning, making my blood boil.

Some choice quotes from the justices' decision:

The court did not explicitly overturn any of its precedents, although Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the four dissenters, said the decision was “so at odds with our jurisprudence” that it “should not have staying power.” Justice Ginsburg called the decision “alarming” and said the majority’s “hostility” to the right to abortion was “not concealed.”...

In describing the federal law’s justifications, Justice Kennedy said that banning the procedure was in fact good for women, protecting them against terminating their pregnancies by a method they might not fully understand in advance and would come to regret later.

“Respect for human life finds an ultimate expression in the bond of love the mother has for her child,” he said, adding: “It is self-evident that a mother who comes to regret her choice to abort must struggle with grief more anguished and sorrow more profound when she learns, only after the event, what she once did not know: that she allowed a doctor to pierce the skull and vacuum the fast-developing brain of her unborn child, a child assuming the human form.”

Boiling. My blood could send you to the hospital if it touched your skin after I read that. Hey, Justice Kennedy? Dude? Let me drop some knowledge on you. You're a dude. First of all, you don't know how a mother feels, or how a woman who has had an abortion feels because you will never be a mother, nor will you ever have to decide to have an abortion. You've never been fifteen, sixteen, eighteen years old and had to debate aborting a fetus because you can't imagine what your parents will to do you if they find out you're pregnant. You'll never have to deal with going to school pregnant, having everybody talk about what a slut you are because you were the poor girl whose boyfriend's condom broke. You personally will never have to deal with the guilt that may or may not plague you for the rest of your life, even if you decide abortion is the right choice. You will never know these feelings, so shut the fuck up.

You know who does know these feelings? Women. Women who are smart enough to figure out their own moral code and decide with their doctor whether or not they're comfortable with a late-term (or any-term) abortion. As you so vividly describe in your disgusting attempt to sway the public discourse away from pro-choice groups, a late term abortion is a violent act. Personally, I wouldn't have one done. But that's my choice. I took the facts, thought about them with my equally-powerful lady-brain, and made a choice I fully understand. What year is this? How dare you tell women that they're too stupid to decide whether they want an abortion? How is that appropriate for discussion in a judicial opinion?

I'll let Justice Ginsberg take it from here:

Justice Ginsburg objected vehemently that “this way of thinking reflects ancient notions of women’s place in the family and under the Constitution — ideas that have long since been discredited.”

She cited century-old Supreme Court cases that upheld a paternalistic view of women’s place in society and contrasted those with more recent cases, including one she successfully argued to the court in 1977 and one in which she wrote the majority opinion in 1996, that rejected “archaic and overbroad generalizations” and assumptions about women’s inherent dependency.

This is why I'm not a Supreme Court justice. My objection would read "Justice Kennedy is too busy jerking off to the idea of all these loose women running around to actually do his job, so instead he elects to use one of the three branches of government as her personal bully pulpit. What a douche. History, I did my best with these assholes. Somebody please help me. Fucking Reagan."

I get so angry when I read things like this, these blatant examples of sexist thought that run so deep in our culture. This guy can come out and call women stupid in a judicial opinion in 2007? And women aren't tossing burning bras into Justice Kennedy's hydrangea bushes? Men, this is why women are still bitching about equal rights: We don't have them yet. And it's hard for you to understand why having the choice is so important to us since nobody tells you what to do with your penis. We're in dark times, ladies. If we're not careful, this is the beginning of the end of our right to abortion. You've been warned.