Ain’t nobody’s business if I do
28th May 2019 · 0 Comments
The recent spate of unconstitutional anti-abortion laws passed in Republican-ruled statehouses is a slap in the face of women and smacks of plantation mentality politics.
The overriding question is how did government get the right to legislate what goes on in human beings’ bodies? Women took to the streets last week to protest elected officials’ strategy to overturn Roe v. Wade, the groundbreaking law that legalized abortion in 1973.
The current attempts to control women’s bodies through legislation is akin to the human breeding processes that plantation owners carried out, under law, as their right to make enslaved Africans in America procreate for their owners’ economic security. Slavery was legal and owners had the right to do whatever they wanted to their human chattel. Just as plantation owners legally forced enslaved African women to get pregnant by male slaves of the owners’ choice, elected officials today are trying to legally force women to bear children, regardless of the women’s health and/or capabilities to rear or afford to rear children.
Moreover, in plain sight, elected officials are injecting their religious values into women’s wombs. Clearly, this country was founded on Christian values. “In God We Trust” is on our money and the right to due process, human rights, civil rights, and “all men are created equal,” are based on Christian values. Those are good principles to follow, to be sure.
But when government overreaches and portends to regulate what a human being decides to do with her body, that is an unconstitutional encroachment on human life, dignity, freedom of choice, and the pursuit of happiness.
Surely, anyone with a heart wishes that the medical procedure to end a pregnancy would never be necessary. The belief that all human life is precious is sacrosanct. Yet, the freedom to choose what one does with his or her body is an inalienable right that no government should have the right to subvert through legislation.
On May 21, 2019, The Louisiana Senate voted 31-4 to ban abortion in the state, as outlined in HB425, the so-called “Love Life” fetal heartbeat legislation, and Louisiana’s House of Representatives voted 80-10 in April for the bill. Louisiana’s democratic Governor John Bel Edwards, a self-professed pro-lifer, says he will sign the Act into law. Voters will have to choose to support or denounce the Act/Constitutional Amendment on the October 12 gubernatorial ballot.
Despite having a democratic governor, Louisiana is considered a red state because of its Republican-majority state legislature. In Louisiana’s legislature, Democrats hold 14 of the seats to Republicans’ 25 seats. In the House, Democrats have 37 seats to Republicans’ 62 seats.
The pro-life movement has long been a major driver of the Republicans’ vote-getting strategy. Emboldened under Trump, who said he would only appoint judges to the Supreme Court that would overturn Roe v. Wade, Republican-dominated state houses are rushing to pass anti-abortion legislation that will eventually land at the feet of the Supreme Court of the United States. Pro-lifers hope the SCOTUS will eradicate Roe v. Wade.
However, this strategy appears to be more about satisfying right-wing voters, who will in a show of gratitude, return Trump and Republican officials back to office, than it is about the sanctity of life. And given the anti-minority stance the Republicans and Trump have taken, another motivating factor of the pro-life movement is to force white women to have more children and to halt the browning of America, thereby ensuring white supremacy and dominance over federal and state governments.
All the self-righteous posturing about the right to life, defending human life, and fetal rights being thrown up by pro-lifers negates the way impoverished and homeless children and their families are treated. In effect, right-to-lifers appear to only care about the right to birth, rather than the right to a quality life. Where are they when heads of households can’t find jobs that pay living wages? Where are they when families can’t afford higher education, medical care, clothing, shelter, and transportation? Where are they when rape and incest victims can’t find support for the trauma they’ve suffered?
Those who are pro-life and those who are pro-choice are entitled to their feelings and positions on the abortion issue. But no one has the right to dictate or legislate what human beings choose to do with their bodies.
Alabama State Senator Linda Coleman-Madison said it best during a debate in that state’s Senate chamber: “You’re in my womb. I want you out. Maybe we need to come up with a castration bill.”
When it comes to abortion and what a woman chooses to do, the words of Billy Holiday ring true: “If I should take a notion to jump into the ocean, ain’t nobody’s business if I do.”
This article originally published in the May 27, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
