Anti-Abortion Choice Advocates’ Origins? Very Simple. Males Wanting To Keep Slavery Power.

By Donald A. Collins | 6 December 2022
Church and State

(Photo: Victoria Pickering / Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Cries of murder, actual murders of abortion providers, highly motivated, funded and publicized efforts finally found a political path through Trump to pack the Supreme Court with religious zealots which killed the nearly 50-year tenure of Roe on June 24th.

Years of religious and secular selling of the anti-abortion and anti-contraception messages were based on the fear by men of women gaining power in the world outside their homes!

Historically women using birth control were excoriated or simply had their subservient roles enforced by lack of birth control.

One point of origin proving this obvious historical thesis is perfectly illustrated by the idiom “barefoot and pregnant” about which Wikipedia tells us

“Barefoot and pregnant” is a figure of speech most commonly associated with the idea that women should not work outside the home and should have many children during their reproductive years.

The phrase “barefoot and pregnant” seems to have been introduced in the early twentieth century by the American doctor Arthur E. Hertzler from Kansas, who said: “Some vulgar person has said that when the wife is kept barefooted and pregnant there are no divorces.” By the mid-1900s, the phrase had passed into common parlance, so much so that an article from 1949 states: “By early 1949, TWA was—in the words of its new president, Ralph S. Damon—both ‘barefoot and pregnant.'”

The variation “barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen” has been associated with the phrase “Kinder, Küche, Kirche” (translated “children, kitchen, church”), used under the German Empire to describe a woman’s role in society. A comparable phrase, “Good Wife, Wise Mother”, emerged in Meiji-period Japan (1868–1912).

Read the whole article here.

People who don’t understand history and how it doesn’t exactly repeat but as pundits tell us “it echoes”, they Get Snookered!

When the male dominated US Congress lead by zealots like Anthony Comstock passed in 1873 a totally undemocratic anti-contraception law, it took some years before in about 1910 Margaret Sanger lobbied and acted for women’s reproductive rights spawning the Planned Parenthood movement with other brave women heroes and with many male converts such as Bill Baird, John Rock, Clarence Gamble and Gregory Pincus who collectively broke through many of the barriers which in 1973 lead to the Supreme Court’s Roe decision, which now is facing yet another challenge.

Now, to paraphrase Lincoln, we face the continuation of this great civil war testing whether we will be governed by following the secular basis of our Constitution created by our deist founding fathers in 1791 and of course as with its needed amendments or plunged into the chaos of following the dogmas of religious governance represented by such dangerous political movements as offered by Christian nationalists. Or straight jacked by the Constitutional originalists who think no changes in our founding documents are to be allowed.

The freedom to embrace any religious belief one chooses certainly has my vote, even though I am a great fan of the views on religion and abortion so humorously expressed by the late comedian George Carlin.

Helped unfortunately by dark money, blatant immoral ideology, this current unfortunate situation allowed particular religious views to take unwarranted political power in the Supreme Court.

A substantial majority of Americans are prochoice, and this fact will at some point, sooner we hope, manifest itself into a new Roe, hopefully with no restrictions on when women can safely terminate their pregnancies.

The US Houses this year twice passed a bill which would have revived Roe, but the Senate twice tried to pass a bill which would have done that but failed on November 5th to get the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster. The incoming House with a thin Republican majority will of course not repass a Roe revival bill.

The Guttmacher Institute reports 88% of abortions occur in the first twelve weeks of pregnancy. Forcing women particularly the young and vulnerable to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term is simply more dangerous than an abortion and sadly an immoral tyranny in a humanitarian democracy.

Read the facts here.

Restrictions in the states against abortion availability are now in place or looming. Absent Roe, these blocs to safe, early, inexpensive abortions should be overturned as basic human rights should in a working democracy be guaranteed. How about affordable health care for all and affordable higher education opportunities for all who seek them as I have recently suggested.

So, the battle continues but I’m betting our citizens will be more and more focused on winning back fertility control as the Republicans Party continues to wallow in the hypocrisy of the Trump party’s anti-abortion policies as its members realize their numbers declining and their electability is challenged. Why not, as the increasing number of GOP non Trump supporters grow aware of being ideologically snookered and change course on choice!

Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Washington, DC, has spent over 50 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas. Yale under graduate, NYU MBA. He is the author of “From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013”, “Trump Becoming Macbeth: Will our democracy survive?”, “We Humans Overwhelm Our Earth: 11 or 2 Billion by 2100?”, “What Can Be Done Now to Save Habitable Life on Planet Earth?”, “Vote”, “Can Homo Sapiens Survive?” and “Will Choice and Democracy Win?”.

What to know about the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision

Leonard Leo, The Most Powerful Person In America You’ve Never Heard Of

Exploring the complicated history of abortion in the United States

The History Of Birth Control | TIME

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