WAPO: We are witnessing a war on women

[lindysalsagal]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/06/13/ivf-procedure-details-religious-banned/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_opinions&utm_campaign=wp_opinions

How can the religious right, a movement that calls itself pro-life, take a stance against IVF?


By Eugene Robinson
Columnist

For the religious right, erasing the constitutional right to abortion was just the beginning. They are coming after all our reproductive rights and freedoms, every single one of them, and the only way to stop them is with our votes.


On Wednesday, the Southern Baptist Convention — the largest Protestant denomination in the country, with 13 million members — adopted a resolution denouncing in vitro fertilization (IVF). The measure calls on Southern Baptists to pressure government officials to “restrain” IVF, which often can be a couple’s last hope of conceiving a child.

For women who battle infertility at some point in their childbearing years — and who can afford the expensive procedure — IVF is nothing short of a miracle. According to a report issued in March by the Department of Health and Human Services, more than 2 percent of U.S. infants born in 2021, the most recent year for which figures are available, were conceived through IVF. That equals 86,149 toddlers who otherwise would not be here to scamper around the house and test their loving parents’ patience.

[Lovie777]

1. DUH...............................

[Scrivener7]

14. Right? When have we NOT been witnessing this war on women?

[Rebl2]

15. Exactly!!!!

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

27. THIS!! ☝️

[Mister Ed]

2. The message to women is clear:

Children that you don't seek or can't provide for, you will be required to bear.

However, if you desperately want a child and have abundant resources to provide for it, this avenue to pregnancy will be closed to you.

Oh, and did we mention that child marriage is making a comeback?

Your body and your life do not belong to you.

[wolfie001]

10. christian mullahs and christian taliban...................nt

[LastDemocratInSC]

23. You are correct.

The only real difference between them is a few thousand miles.

[Lonestarblue]

12. Also making a comeback are efforts to eliminate no-fault divorce so that women are forced to stay in marriages.

This opens the door to extended abusive marriages with little recourse for women because police and right-wing judges often side with the abuser. It hurts poor women because they cannot afford a lawyer to help them prove fault such as an extramarital affair. Certainly men can be affected by a wife’s outside affairs or even abuse, but far too often the abuser is a male who generally controls the purse strings. Just one more step in the patriarchal playbook to eliminate women’s freedom and rights.

I read an article this morning in The Guardian about the plight of girls in Afghanistan now that the Taliban rules their lives. They cannot go to school, they cannot pursue careers, they cannot meet friends because they are not allowed to leave their homes until they are forced into marriage where they are often neaten and abused and destined to have child after child. The right-wing religious zealots here would do the same if we did not have laws to provide public education and protect children. Unfortunately, Republicans are eroding those laws.

[LastDemocratInSC]

24. Well stated. Thank you.

[Quakerfriend]

3. I wish Biden/Harris would make a video of R's

recorded saying all the nasty things they’ve said:

- Women shouldn’t be able to vote, should sit back and enjoy being raped, should keep their skirts down etc, etc. 🤬

[EllieBC]

4. And shitheads who aren't "sure" if they can vote

for Biden are telling women they are more than happy to help the war effort.

[PeaceWave]

16. At least the shitheads you know are open to voting for Biden.

Mine are saying they'll "never forgive Biden for not stopping the war."

[EllieBC]

22. Let those shitheads know they aren't fooling anyone.

They hate women as much as the GOP does.

[NoMoreRepugs]

5. Shouldn't the headline read ...."the Republican Party and the religious right are ...." - words matter.

[Wounded Bear]

6. Gee, ya think?

[Joinfortmill]

7. Women are pissed and men who love women may even be more pissed and we're all gonna VOTE for Joe.

[Evolve Dammit]

8. Agreed. SCOTUS has been weaponized and GOP is heading to xtian fascism. Might be there already. Speaker

Johnson sure is. Heritage, Leo and others own "the other side."

[BoRaGard]

9. d'oh

The Post is breaking a story that was obvious more than 25 years ago.

If the Post thinks this War on Women is a new phenomenon,
then they need to get a frikken clue.

[Sky Jewels]

11. It's an opinion piece.

Eugene Robinson’s column runs in several papers, not just the WaPo.

[Martin68]

29. It is much worse right now than 25 years ago. States are passing numerous laws discriminating against

women and endangering their health.

[Marthe48]

13. When I worked the polls the other day

All of the poll workers were women. I thought if women lose the right to vote,who will work at the polls? My daughter said the idea is to have men vote, women serve. Really hating the people who are destroying America right before our eyes.
I'm tired of people dithering over whether what's happening is legal or constitutional or moral or American. No, no, no, no. We need action. We need to put a stop to the encroachment on our rights, the destruction of the United States of America as we have known it, and get it back on an even keel.
Even if we laugh at the rwnj, they laugh along with us and take rights. What about the pursuit of happiness? Who is happy?

[aurora the great]

31. Yay, your daughter!

Hit the nail right on the head. You have raised an insightful young woman. We need to spread the word and raise are voices not just to the women in this country but to the men who profess to love them. I have lived a life privileged during a time where women's rights were secured in a way that my mothers generation was not. I owe a debt of gratitude to those who came before me and I will not let the women in this country be left with less and considered then less than.

[GoCubsGo]

17. One more thing to add to the "No shit, Sherlock" file.

They're just now figuring this out? We've been screaming it for years.

[peggysue2]

18. American Taliban

Many moons ago, Daily Kos called out the Republican right as the American Taliban.

Screeches and howling ensued.

But, as it turns out, that label was astonishingly prescient.

Of course, we had a much earlier warning from Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale which I read when the novel was first published, a wild speculative ride, I thought. The rise of a totalitarian power, a movement that splits the country and has women under total subjugation, the patriarchy on steroids?

Scary, chilling but not feasible, Peggysue mused. Wrong!

Terrifyingly prescient.

We're now watching fiction turn to reality.

Women are the major objects of MAGA's ideological assault, the ambition to remove our agency and control every aspect of our lives, down to the most personal: reproductive choice and health.

We can stop this. We have the numbers. We can stop this not merely for ourselves but for the generations who follow.

The urgency of the moment is upon us.

[bucolic_frolic]

19. It's a war on everything, Survival-of-the-fittest Darwinism ... guns, laws, cheaters, exploitation

Man the barricades! Schnell! We're doomed if we don't win at the voting booth

[2naSalit]

20. Thanks for noticing, mister...

Glad you spoke up.

[Upthevibe]

21. Kick. N/T

[tornado34jh]

25. Well, no duh, Sherlock!

What, have you been living in a cave/rock? Of course, there is a war on women! It's backlash against what they perceive as a loss of traditional power/values.

[Silent3]

26. It's an ugly but entirely self-consistent stance to be against both abortion and IVF

Many anti-abortionists start from the premise "life begins at conception".

IVF involves fertilizing many, many eggs, far more than the number of pregnancies that will result, with many of the fertilized eggs being destroyed or discarded.

Being anti-abortion and pro-IVF is actually a more hypocritical position. More popular, but less self-consistent, unless you decide that "life begins at conception" isn't your premise, but that simply making as many babies as possible is your goal, regardless of how many embryos are sacrificed toward that end.

[Martin68]

28. It blows my mind that The Handmaid Tale turns out to have been right all along about the intentions

of the right. This is scary as hell.

[bigtree]

30. also...

..."we've been incommunicado on Mars for the past century."