To be the best mother she can be, a woman needs the ability to choose.
A woman needs to have the dignity of making decisions, to have the same right to self-determination as a man, to be the master of her own destiny.
A woman whose husband is abusive, a family which already has four children and can’t afford more, a mother who doesn’t have access to affordable daycare and can’t work (and therefore would not be eligible for food stamps or housing vouchers under the Trump Administration’s new policies), should not be forced by the state to bear a child.
Iowa just passed a law banning abortion when a fetal heartbeat can be detected – around six weeks – which is before when many women would even realize they are pregnant, and certainly would not be aware of any grave abnormalities.
Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) invited a challenge to the Supreme Court, where anti-abortion activists are pretty confident the Trump Majority with Neil Gorsuch in the commandeered Supreme Court seat, will overturn Roe v Wade altogether, despite each of the Justices’ promises during their respective Senate confirmation, to respect “settled law” like Roe.
Meanwhile, Trump and the Republicans continue to chip away at access to affordable health care – for women, for children.
The Trump administration is looking for new ways to take funds away from Planned Parenthood, proposing to cut off Title X funding to any organization that refers patients for abortion.
Consider the irony, then, of a Trump Administration pandering to the Religious Right, enabling employers to deny women access to contraceptives, and attempting to prematurely cut off grants for programs that have brought down the rate of teen pregnancy and replace them with useless abstinence education programs.
And this administration has shown zero interest in controlling for such birth-defect-inducing illnesses as Zika.
Texas now has maternal mortality rates on par with Third World countries. Yet, two bipartisan bills that would seek to eventually solve America’s maternal mortality crisis have been stuck in committee for a year.
My guess is the conclusion would have something to do with expanding and improving Obamacare, rather than sabotaging access to healthcare.
Instead, taking the anti-abortion crusade to an extreme, women are being prosecuted for miscarrying.
The National Advocates for Pregnant Women revealed cases in which pregnant women were arrested and detained for complications during pregnancy, including miscarriage, with low-income and African American women most commonly targeted. (inews.co.uk)
Utah is the first state to actually criminalize miscarriage, applying the legal standard of an “intentional, knowing or reckless act of the woman” as punishable as criminal homicide. This means that a woman who fails to wear a seatbelt and is in a car accident could be charged with reckless homicide if she miscarries.
I can’t wait to see Trump’s Mother’s Day proclamation. Will he remark praise Melania as America’s mother, how he cherishes her motherhood so much he had an affair with Stormy Daniels while she was nursing 4-month old Barron?
Or will Trump take bows for terrorizing undocumented mothers with the prospect they will be forced to abandon their American-citizen children and a policy that threatens any mother fleeing with their children the violence in Central America with having their children taken from them?
The tyranny over mothers is also through various institutionalized economic levers.
As Tammy Duckworth, the first U.S. senator to give birth while in office, noted, “Why should childcare cost more than college tuition in most states? …When we lose people in the workforce because of outlandish childcare costs or inadequate family leave policies, it negatively impacts the economy as a whole. And those Americans who drop out of the workforce have a hard time re-entering.”
In other words, women are not able to fulfill their full potential or productivity, are in less of a position to compete or challenge a man for a position or a male supervisor and are more dependent and unable to leave an abusive relationship.
Though women are the main breadwinners or joint breadwinners in two-thirds of America’s families, having a child is the single best predictor that a woman will end up in financial collapse; single mothers are more likely to file for bankruptcy; even single mothers with college degrees are 60 percent more likely to end up bankrupt than those with just a high school diploma.
“The deck has been stacked against working women and moms for years. And with the Republicans in charge, it’s getting worse — a lot worse,” noted Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
In Trump’s misogynistic, right-wing America, motherhood has come to mean a tool to control, contain, disempower women.
Here’s a radical idea for Mothers Day: Honor mothers by respecting their rights, beginning with the right to choose motherhood.
Add to that the right to access affordable health care, child care, and equal pay.
