Ten Better Things for South Dakotans to Spend Their Tax Dollars on Besides a Supreme Court Challenge of Roe v. Wade

This, of course, relies on the fantasy that we actually have that money just sitting there in some vault in the state treasury marked “Supreme Court Abortion Fight Funding.”  A big pile o’ dough waiting to be used in a court case that will likely cost our state several million dollars, and will divide not just our state, but the whole country. Oh, and is fairly unlikely to succeed anyhow.

Of course, we don’t have that money sitting around.  That money will be coming out of our South Dakota pockets should Initiated Measure 11 pass.  Where will Roger Hunt’s anonymous donor be then?

Without further ado, the list:

1. Comprehensive Sex Education in our schools to lower the numbers of teenage parents, not to mention the numbers of teens contracting STIs.

2. After school programs to keep kids off the streets and out of trouble, including the trouble that might come from sexual activity.

3. Increased funding for music, art, and P.E. programs in schools to keep our kids healthy in their bodies, minds, and spirits.

4. Boosting funding for Social Services that help parents collect child support and help stop child abuse and neglect.

5. Helping farmers markets get EBT card readers, so families on food stamps can get fresh local foods and benefit their local economy in the process.

6. TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) and emergency food shelf assistance.

7. Providing PAID maternity leave for working women.

8. Providing PAID paternity/partner leave to allow those spouses and partners to offer support.

9. Funding parenting and basic home-keeping skills classes to young parents.

10. Funding a living wage in South Dakota that will allow our young people and families to stay in the state.

Sigh.  But it’s only a fantasy, of course.  The reality is that this measure, if it passes, will be illegal and will spark a Supreme Court challenge, just as its makers intended.

Paying lawyers is soooo much more important than actually helping young people in our state, don’t you think?

Trying to Find Words

I am trying to find words for what will likely be the last thing I write about Initiated Measure 11 before the election.  I am trying to find a way to express how it is to be a working woman, a working mother, and feel as though a bunch of complete strangers want to take control of my body and may actually have a chance of doing so.

The body I work for, and in, every day.  The body I use to create a home and earn an income that supports me and my child.  My body.

Thinking about this measure becoming law makes me feel insignificant: like if it passed, it really wouldn’t matter what I achieved any more: who I teach or what I publish or how much I grow.  It wouldn’t matter because the people of the state in which I live and work would have decided that as a woman, my right to self-determination and self-possession is limited by the fact that I have a uterus.

How can I, as a woman under this law, create and work and live and consider myself the equal of the men in my field when I walk in a room?  Can men even know what it is like to have your fertility used as a threat against your personhood, your self-determination, your ability to make a living?

Of course, if it does pass, the world will go on.  I will continue to teach and farm and walk in that room with the guys and ask what price they’re getting for their potatoes and whether they managed to unload those 250 lbs. of tomatoes.

The wider question of Initiated Measure 11 is not just about babies.  The question is whether women are persons in their own right, with their own lives and motivations and needs, and with their own bodies that they are in full possession of.

The question is whether or not we should “allow” women life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness–or whether we should circumscribe what should constitute their lives, the extent of their liberties, and what ought to make them happy.

Somehow, it is still hard for me to believe that this question is being asked.  I want to ignore it–not even to dignify it with a response.

But this is an election, and my response as well as yours will shape women’s lives and the level of respect and consideration they receive in this state regardless of how very much they’ve earned.

Please demonstrate your respect by voting “No” on Initiated Measure 11.

Big-Brother-Blinks-Alot and the "Health" of the Mother

Gotta love those air quotes.

Hat tip Dakota Women.

"If women's bellies were transparent…

…would abortion still be legal?”

This is the kind of question being entertained on the anti-choice websites in the last few days.

At first, reading the comments on the Voices Carry (not-so-affectionately, but accurately referred to as “Voices Crazy” over at my fellow feminists’ site, Dakota Women), I had to laugh.  Can they be serious?  I couldn’t help but recall one of my favorite novels to teach in my Intro. to Lit. classes: H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man:

The Invisible Man

“BUT you begin to realise now,” said the Invisible Man, “the full disadvantage of my condition. I had no shelter, no covering. To get clothing was to forego all my advantage, to make of myself a strange and terrible thing. I was fasting; for to eat, to fill myself with unassimilated matter, would be to become grotesquely visible again.”[Wells, H.G. The Invisible Man, 1898]

Of course, after a brief laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of the “transparent belly” (apparently they also skipped that part of science class where they learned babies don’t grow in women’s bellies), I considered the implications of such a comment.

This is the “Big Brother” society these anti-choice folks yearn for. It’s not enough for them, apparently, to believe that their God can see into every aspect of our lives and thoughts; they want to see into it, too. They want control over our lives and our bodies from cradle to grave.

Correction: They want control over women’s lives and bodies from cradle to grave.

Even more disturbing was the discussion about all the “cannibalistic fetus soup-eaters” in China.  Do they honestly believe this stuff?  I suggest that if the anti-choicers really believe there is a cult of fetus soup-eaters in China, they ought to use their Initiatated Measure 11 funds to fly the lot of them over there to seek out and expose this horrific tragedy.

Maybe, if they have enough money from all those out-of-state donors, they can install transparent windows into the cannibals’ bellies to monitor their dietary intake.

That, my friends, is a joke.  But maybe this new “crusade” of theirs would stop them from beating the same dead horse here in SD for awhile.

Women as Terrorists?

Hold onto your tinfoil hats, folks.  There’s a new bumper sticker out about town: ABORTION: THE ULTIMATE TERRORISM.

First we have women as victims, now it’s women as terrorists?  Or is it just the doctors?  Because if women ask for it, then they’re conspiring to commit a terrorist act, aren’t they?

I wanted to ask the guy sitting in that car where to turn myself in.  Maybe get a lighter sentence, you know?

But I had a feeling he’d tell me to turn myself in to God, and I’m not sure whether or not his particular God follows the Geneva Conventions.

Sheesh.