The most horrifying example of blaming the victim is Representative
Todd Akin’s saying, “...the female body has ways to shut the whole thing
down.” In other words, if a woman is
raped and produces a child the woman is at fault because she should have
stopped the rapist sperm! Todd Akin is
firmly in the Republican mainstream.
“...this war for the soul of America ...over such issues as
abortion... It’s not the kind of change we can abide in a nation we still call
‘God’s country.’” The most heinous men
take refuge in their protestation of God in many countries all over the world
to do murder, rape, incest and violent supremacy.
I feel that perhaps modern men are deeply frightened because
they sense the end of masculine dominance.
They take refuge in being one of the “good old boys” so they want women
to be condemned to inferiority because of their vulnerability to producing
children. Since I am now an 91 year old
woman, I can remember that I was among the first generation of American woman who
had a reliable birth control device. The
diaphragm was clumsy and a little messy but it worked reliably.
As I wrote in my book, You
and the Universe: finding your place in the Cosmos, page 166 – 167
“Freedom,
oneness/diversity:
Concerning limits, I find it electrifying that I am among the very first American women to have a
reliable method of birth control.
The significance to all humanity, that now women are in charge of
their bodies, is uncountable. American
women are deeply indebted to Margaret Sanger:
American birth control activist Margaret Sanger fled to
Europe in 1914 to escape prosecution under the Comstock Laws, which prohibited
sending contraceptive devices, or information about contraception, through the
mail.[1]”
After millennia of enslavement to women’s bodies in the long
history of humanity, the meaning of this progress in the freedom to choose wanted children or refrain from unwanted children
is so enormous that I cannot conceive what it means. The best I can do is quote Bronowski :
“In the evolution of any animal there come moments when the
species takes radically new step…from that moment on the species is committed
to some new way of life – like coming out of the water onto the land."[2]
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