Perspectives

Republicans keep me in stitches. They’ll predictably trot out familiar old bromides like “Live free or die” or “It’s every man for himself.” Even I, on occasion, can be susceptible to such infantile gibberish. Yes, sometimes my latent libertarian nature reflexively embraces simplistic nonsense. “Don’t expect the government to do for you what you should do for yourself!” Republicans regularly run that one up the flagpole for real Americans to salute.

Republicans love all humanity until it is born. Un-huh, life is sacred! They get all warm and fuzzy inside at the thought of a zygote attaching to a woman’s uterine wall. It makes them weak in their knees and teary-eyed, however, imagining that process interrupted, aborted, if you will.

Oh, and then the wailing begins just like in Maurice Sendak’s “Where The Wild Things Are”:

They roared their terrible roars! And gnashed their terrible teeth! And rolled their terrible eyes! And showed their terrible claws!

Republicans do exactly that at the thought of coitus interruptus, or, rather, zygotus abortus.

What is it about women and their uteruses that gets Republican men all atwitter and flummoxed? They cannot keep their minds (or laws) off of a woman’s body. Ironically, they applaud corporations as having the same rights as people but think little of eviscerating a woman’s right to reproductive choice. What is it about women? Are women too stupid to manage their own affairs (their own bodies)? Why is it that Republicans are for the government getting the hell out of regulating business yet they are perfectly OK regulating a woman’s fertility, her sexuality? What’s up with that?

Guys, this might be tough for you. Imagine a scenario where it is you who actually becomes pregnant. You’re still the independent operating, functioning individual you’ve always been but you find yourself pregnant. As a man, how well would you cotton to the government telling you what to do with your body?

According to Republicans, you don’t even own your body; it’s the government’s to regulate. Does that scenario sit well with you as a man? Then why should our sisters, daughters, wives or lovers put up with such intrusions in their personal lives? No self-respecting man would ever countenance such invasive, intrusive oversight. So, why should America’s women?

Oh, it is argued because Republicans “wuv” all life, particularly the unborn. That’s an interesting time in which to be all for life, yet, once born, that life is virtually on its own. Irony, hypocrisy, anyone?

Crack whores. Impoverished, destitute homeless women. Raped sisters. Poor women. Third-year medical students. Graduate students. Mothers already nurturing five children. Older women. Unhealthy women. The mentally disturbed. Sixteen-year-olds. Any woman, no matter her circumstances, no matter her wishes or desires, no matter her rights as a free individual — all pregnant, all menstruating women will be regulated by the federal or state government. A woman will give up her independence, she will forfeit her freedom, she will willingly subject herself to the authority of the state.

I once served on the Orlando Planned Parenthood Board of Directors. At that time there was an alternative facility next door purporting to assist pregnant women. They’d persuade “some” to take the fetus to term with the assurance of long-term help. The long-term help consisted of two-dozen Pampers. Oh, and a “Good luck, gal!”

Real Republican values, folks. Found in two dozen diapers.