Editor:
A reminder to those who won’t give up on reproductive freedom: a new generation of smart, open-minded pro-woman activists is rising up to defend against the current resurgence of forced-birth religious zealotry. One such person is the author of the excellent must-read book, Bodies on the Line: At the Front Lines of the Fight to Protect Abortion in America. It’s a compelling reminder the struggle for reproductive freedom has been around as long as the western patriarchy has held the reigns of religious and political power.
For those of us who do not use religious dogma to close our minds and double down on false beliefs about the efficacy of science, one fundamental fact does not change: a fetus cannot survive outside a woman’s body until well after the 25th week of the 38-week gestational period. This is a biological fact period. Being pregnant is a condition specific to a woman’s gynecological health: it’s not a religious issue, it’s medical science. Just like the sun always rises in the east, facts are facts and religious beliefs are not facts.
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For legislators, like Sen. Charles Scott who has a Harvard education, and others who have degrees from legitimate colleges, to deny the science of not only reproductive health, but gender health, is an immoral choice. To presume to know what it is like to live inside another person’s body is the height of intentional-ignorance and moral arrogance.
Shame on every person who believes their religious beliefs should be privileged over any other person’s. This is the moral DNA of the belief-system slave-owners used to justify their enslavement of people with black skin and the rapidly-changing cultural myth that a woman’s highest value is her capacity to give birth.
The commodification of women’s reproductive organs no longer stands because the power to choose if and when to become a parent is what actually serves the flourishing of all life on earth. Meanwhile, those of us who value science and education over blind faith and moral arrogance must never abandon this righteous struggle for physical and moral sovereignty over our own bodies.