Forced pregnancy
Joining the women-haters club:
The US has today signed an anti-abortion declaration with a group of about 30 largely illiberal or authoritarian governments, after the failure of an effort to expand the conservative coalition.
The “Geneva Consensus Declaration” calls on states to promote women’s rights and health – but without access to abortion – and is part of a campaign by Trump administration, led by secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to reorient US foreign policy in a more socially conservative direction, even at the expense of alienating traditional western allies.
You can’t promote women’s rights while imposing mandatory pregnancy on them. If women can’t say no to having their bodies taken over for nine months then they have no rights.
The “core supporters” of the declaration are Brazil, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia and Uganda, and the 27 other signatories include Belarus (where security forces are currently trying to suppress a women-led protest movement), Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Sudan, South Sudan, Libya.
Lot of Islamist countries. Funny how Trump hates Muslims when they want to immigrate here but loves them when they’re stamping out women’s rights.
Most of the signatories are among the 20 worst countries to be a woman according to the Women, Peace and Security Index established by Georgetown University.
None of the top twenty countries on the Georgetown index – with the exception of the US (ranked 19th) – has signed the declaration.
The only other European signatory (apart from Belarus and Hungary) is Poland, where the constitutional court approved a near total ban on abortion on Thursday.
It’s shameful. He’s going to be shaming us as much as he can between now and the inauguration.
A virtual signature ceremony was co-hosted by Pompeo and US health and human services secretary, Alex Azar. They portrayed the declaration as a historic moment in a movement to stop abortion being supported as part of reproductive health care, and credited Donald Trump.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, the United States has defended the dignity of human life everywhere and always,” Pompeo said. “He has done it like no other president in history. We have mounted an unprecedented defense of the unborn abroad.”
That is, under pussy-grabber Donald Trump the US has done its best to make women captives of their own bodies again. What about the dignity of their lives? It’s not “dignity” to be forced to remain pregnant against your will.
I hope the frat boys get a humiliating defeat in 12 days.
Very true.
Here the ‘celibate’ clerics of the Catholic Church assert that human life begins at conception, and cannot be intentionally prevented without the contraceptive user falling into mortal sin and going to Hell. Catholics, however, who wish to prevent conception are free to use only the ‘rhythm’ method endorsed by the Church, which they accept, even though the intention of that method is to prevent a human life from beginning. However, the clerics can argue that this still leaves room for God to intervene in favour of the fertilised ovum, the implication being that God has no power to overcome rubber barriers, spermicidal creams and jellies, nor to deal in any way with coitus interruptus or what was known in Sydney when I lived there as ‘getting off at Redfern’: the train station before Sydney Central.
Moreover, to be consistent, the clergy would have to insist that the last rites and a proper Christian burial be performed on discarded sanitary napkins, which could well hold a zygote that failed to implant, and hence an immortal soul.
The last thing the clerics will cheerfully give up is their control through mystification of other peoples’ lives.
True, of course, but they’re also among the worst countries in other respects. You won’t find New Zealand or Denmark on a list like that, or even many countries with a majority of Roman Catholics, like Spain, Italy, Portugal or Ireland.
Especially female people (the category once known as women).
In Ireland, the Eighth Amendment (the one which banned abortion) was only repealed two years ago. And the government just passed some really bad legislation regarding what they will do with the records of the research into the mother-and-baby homes scandals. It’s still not a good place to be a woman; although it is a hell of a lot better than most extremist Muslim-run ones, the RCC still has way too much behind-the-scenes power and influence.
There was this nugget in The Washington Post’s article:
One might think that if your goal is to reduce the number of abortions, you should give women more control over their reproductive choices.
Oh, I need to know about this bad legislation regarding what they will do with the records of the research into the mother-and-baby homes scandals.
Oh good grief.
It’s terrible, Ophelia, isn’t it?
It is. Enraging.