Walking Wombs?

 
In the past week or so, there have been a number of truly scary (and maddening) news stories:

1.  The Supreme Court will hear Hobby Lobby's challenge to the Affordable Care Act mandate that employer-provided health insurance provide contraceptives, including the morning after pill.  Can a corporation claim the religious freedom and therefore control a woman's fertility?

2.  A woman lost custody of her baby because a judge agreed with her ex-boyfriend, Olympic skier Bodie Miller, that she'd left California while pregnant in order to avoid a custody battle with him.  In fact, she moved so that she could accept a graduate fellowship at Columbia University.  Their relationship had lasted one month, and he had urged her to get an abortion when she first discovered she was pregnant.  The father and his wife got custody after the baby was born and are fighting to keep him.

3.  The "personhood" movement is attempting to define a fertilized egg as a person.  Think about where this could go--not just in the definition of viability vis a vis abortion, but about controlling pregnant women, making  them conform to proscribed standards of prenatal care and behavior or be arrested or lose custody of their child.

4.  PBS and the New York Times have investigated a case in St. Augustine, Florida, in which the girlfriend of a deputy sheriff died of a supposedly self-inflicted gunshot wound.  The investigation was so tightly circumscribed that neighbors and the victim's family were never interviewed.   Despite ample evidence that the boyfriend killed her, he was never prosecuted and continues to be a deputy sheriff. 

The pro-life lobby has a hand in #1 and #3, which means there are other women who want to control a woman's fertility (and life).   Ignorant judges are part of the problem (#2).  The closed-ranks attitude toward police officers who are perpetrators of domestic violence is another (#4).

We are 50% of the population!  There are doctors, lawyers, and scholars among us, and yet these blatant attempts to control women's lives go on and on.  Where are Hillary, Nancy, DiFi, and, for that matter, Elizabeth Warren?  Women's rights, our worth, our stature are being eaten away at.   (Not so much mine personally, because post-menopausal women seem to be invisible.)

Okay, now I'll give thanks:  that I live in Berkeley, where enlightened attitudes about women prevail (but not without exception).  That I'm married to a man who respects women.  That I live in the 21st century when women--at least technically--are not property.

Or are they?