A country is only as truly free as its women are free. A people are only truly civilized if their mothers, their sisters, their daughters and grandmothers and nieces and great grandmothers and girlbabies not-yet-born are free and equal and enabled to create their own lives, their own futures. It’s plain, in these days of creepy theocracy and corporate corruption, of a Republican regime that feeds on misogyny and fear, that this country is backsliding, reversing so many of the gains made over the years. Jane Crow is back, as budget cuts and superstition replace openness and decency. Moiv highlights a letter at Our Word, written by a Texan named Tanya confronted by the anti-woman policies enacted by the oppressive Republican legislature in Texas:

Why Tanya cried

The email quoted below already has been forwarded to Texas State Senators Tommy Williams (a banker) and Bob Deuell (a physician) — the two men primarily responsible for compromising poor women’s access to family planning and primary health screening in this state by funneling $5,000,000 previously designated for those vitally important services into a campaign to promote and expand the dubious practices of Crisis Pregnancy Centers.

The state’s Health and Human Services Commission tells us that this is a good thing, because “the active promotion of childbirth” is the official policy of the State of Texas. That the women affected by this policy might not want to bear children in the service of the state is not an official concern.

That letter:

so,
this morning i dragged myself out of bed before dawn to be at planned parenthood at 730 and wait in the freezing morning shade until 9 for my
annual exam. at 930, myself and the 25 other women(of color.of course)grumbled in solidarity and confusion, wondering why we were still waiting and shivering. finally an employee opened the doors and coralled us inside just to inform us that there would be no walk-in exams today.or tomorrow.or ever. are you kidding me? i thought. nope.no joke. turns out the good ol
boys at the texas state legislature cut pp’s funding by 40% last friday. i stood in the office stunned while 3 mothers began to cry. another women, at least 65 years old, turned to me and asked, “que dijo?” what did she say? as i tried to explain what i still didnt understand, i began to feel my anger swell. overnight one of the safest, most reliable, most critical social services vanished. all patients over 24 years old have to seek new clinics, all birth control now costs $25/month, all annuals $125, all pregnancy tests $30. i stood waiting for the chance of one more pack of birth control pills, asking questions answered with shrugs and apologies, watching faces full of exasperation. when my name was called i tried again to get more information, but the fact was clear and simple; accessible family planning and women’s reproductive rights are not a priority. i left with a pack of pills after giving all my $35, sat in my car and cried.

here’s the kicker. texas lawmakers are promoting crisis pregnancy centers instead. that’s right, slash funding for sexual health and preventive services and create crisis centers. this whole freakin country is a crisis center. i want to see those lawmakers walk into clinics all over this state and have the guts to tell a room full of women, “sorry, go home and buy condoms” or “sorry, god willed those children and you’re on your own to figure out the rest”. i want them to watch women lose the thread of hope they were gripping.

so now what? write letters and make phone calls? i dont think so. the truth is i dont know what to do. i do know nothing will be done if people dont know. so in my emotional, reactionary state, that’s what i am trying to do.

i’m fighting hard to keep my faith.

thanks for reading,
-tanya

THIS IS HAPPENING IN THE UNITED STATES.

It repeats itself over and over again, in many different ways.

Media Girl calls attention to just one of the many deliberately ignorant pharmacists seeking to deny women control over their reproductive health based on their superstions:

In that simple declaration of determined ignorance, the pharmacist on indefinite unpaid leave from Walgreens in Madison County, IL, reveals that his attachment to myths and lies about emergency contraception is not likely to weaken. Don’t confuse him with facts. His mind is made up.

What we’re seeing are pharmacists who’ve gone and made fools of themselves in refusing to dispense emergency contraception on the basis that it causes abortion of pregnancy.

But wait. Emergency contraception — also known as Plan B — prevents conception.

If life begins at conception, and conception is prevented, then where’s the abortion, Mr. Quayle?

Ah, but these are heady times for zealots and fanatics, and they don’t want to admit any mistakes — including the big mistake they made in assuming Plan B aborted pregnancy, rather than prevents pregnancy.

Here we are, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, and we live in a feudal state where idiots like Dalton Conley are promoted by the so-called “paper of record” to spread intellectual manure about how MEN are somehow oppressed by women having reproductive freedom, while learned women like Carole Joffe, Ph.D. aren’t offered equal time to counter this simple minded claptrap. Luckily, we can find her words passed along at Our Word.

How can this be happening? We are only a few generations removed from the suffragists, fewer still from Griswold v. CT, yet we’re backsliding so quickly into a patriarchical nightmare where there is little access to abortion providers or other sources of women’s healthcare.

Summit’s closing “underscores [the] limited access women have in this state to abortion services,” said Boyce. “It’s not a stable service in the state. There is a tremendous shortage of providers.”

Fewer doctors are being trained in abortion techniques, perhaps because state statutes prevent the University of Wisconsin Medical School from teaching them. Experienced doctors are getting harder to find, Boyce said. For example, the doctor at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Appleton flies in weekly from Oregon. Opening new clinics is difficult as well, because property owners don’t want to lease to clinics, so providers are forced to buy their own buildings.


There are millions of Tanya’s out there, repeating that same hopeless disappointment day after day after week after month after year after ….

THIS IS HAPPENING IN THE UNITED STATES.

How can this be? We, a “free people”, a people who claim to respect life and women and freedom, how can this be?

WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO US?

Stand up. Ask questions. FIGHT. Your mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers and so on back to Abigail Adams reminding her husband to “remember the ladies” FOUGHT. Do their efforts mean so little that they can be abandoned so easily? Talk back when some fundamentalist fool is spouting nonsense. DARE TO STAND UP. They spew hatred and misinformation and superstition and LIES. We are in this state because, in the name of tolerance and our unwillingness to engage in conflict, we have let years of misleading propaganda go by unanswered. Don’t expect a politician or celebrity or some other “leader” to save you. WE THE PEOPLE <h>ARE</h&gt THE “LEADERS”.

Speak up. Speak up like Estelle Griswold spoke up. Hell, you don’t even have to go so far as to go to court. When someone at a holiday meal repeats some lie they heard on some evangelical station, call them on it. Politics starts at the dinner table, at the community center, in the pews at your church and in the lines at you supermarket. Remember, there are MILLIONS of Tanyas out there, and soon YOU will BE Tanya. Or your daughter. Or your girlfriend. Or your wife.  

i stood waiting for the chance of one more pack of birth control pills, asking questions answered with shrugs and apologies, watching faces full of exasperation. when my name was called i tried again to get more information, but the fact was clear and simple; accessible family planning and women’s reproductive rights are not a priority. i left with a pack of pills after giving all my $35, sat in my car and cried.

That is the future of ALL of the women in this country. Alone, abandoned, lacking in options. We are LOSING the future.

Please, speak up for Tanya. Please, speak up for yourself, for your sisters.

Please, speak up.

I think this letter and these issues are vitally important, and the right will ramp up the oppression over the next year to energize their base going into the ’06 and ’08 elections. In that spirit, I’ve crossposted this from Liberal Street Fighter, even though I’m not crossposting here as much anymore.

If anyone sees Parker, tell her I miss her voice, her passion and her insights.