Amber Davis
illustrator
Simone de Beauvoir once wrote, “Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth.”
I don’t know about you, but I think the world has had enough of the rulings of controlling white men, enabled by the insecure women who stand behind them. S.B.8 is just another one of these laws masked as moral superiority. The new law bans abortion after the six-week mark before the majority of women know that they are pregnant.
Texas’s citizens woke to a dystopian reality Sept. 1. The same day that Texas legislators ripped regulations off of weapons, they turned right around and slapped them on every uterus in Texas.
To take it all a step further, it seems that we are harkening back to a Red Scare Era by having neighbors accuse neighbors to enforce this new law. The way Texas was able to trample over every uterus in the state was interesting. Instead of making it enforceable by the government, the bill allows citizens to report others for a bounty. Release the guns and encourage neighbors to spy on neighbors, what could go wrong?
It is disturbing to me that the state that’s loudest about demanding personal freedoms when it comes to guns and mask mandates is also the one that sent us back a century by stripping away personal choice. Gov. Greg Abbott’s political stunt will not successfully change the course of anyone’s life who is willing to seek the help and resources that are being made available through a sort of feminine rights underground railroad. It’s the girls who are closest to the problem who will truly suffer. The daughters of the ultraconservative will not have the resources available to them. Abbott has made the statement that girls will not have to bear the child of their rapists, because they will have six weeks to abort. What he fails to see is the lack of comprehensive sex education in Texas will fail these girls. The lack of a true understanding of reproduction will leave minors in the dark. Wait until the first baby is forced to have a baby because she was too frightened to speak out against her rapist in a timely enough manner.
And what about the separation of church and state? I fully stand by the personal right to believe that conception equals consciousness. I do not condone force-feeding any moral rule based on a belief system down the throat of every other citizen of this state. It’s a dangerous precedent to be setting for a state so full of its own freedoms. What we have with S.B.8 is a roadmap for other states to take away citizens’ constitutional rights. Today, a person is encouraged to sue another over a personal medical decision, and tomorrow it could be a law over guns or free speech. I’m talking to you, gun-toting Yosemite Sam. The pro-lifers have set a precedent that can be used to sue you over your gun ownership in the future because if this law sticks, what is to stop California from using the same structure, but replacing abortion with gun ownership? Where does it end?
We need to make men hold the same amount of responsibility for this nonsense to subside. Men are literally the loaded gun in this scenario. I look forward to the first woman to be sued by this ridiculous law to turn right around and sue the man who impregnated her. Let’s see how long this law lasts once men realize that it will also affect their freedoms. If it is anything like the mandates on masking and vaccinations, it won’t last long. It is quite humorous the swiftness in which pro-life people hijacked the “my body, my choice” stance to defend their right to not protect the lives of others. I don’t like to generalize about groups of people, but time and time again it seems that the pro-lifer is also an antivaxxer/masker screaming about their freedoms. If that cognitive dissonance doesn’t make your eyes cross, I don’t know what will.
We live in a state that forgives rape because “he has a bright future,” while taking away women’s rights to their body parts. Rapists roam free while women hide and pray that they will not fall victim. Our country does not even see stealthing, the act of removing a condom during sex, as rape. How, then, can we punish a woman for falling prey to this sort of behavior, especially when it is the norm? If you don’t believe me, take a moment today and ask a woman if she knows a woman who has been sexually assaulted, raped or impregnated against her will. I’ll wait.
For those of you who are male and claim to be standing with women, I challenge you to take up the fight and stand. Stand up for freedom. Stand up for personal choice. We will be marching at 11:30 a.m. Oct. 2 beginning at the Tarrant County Courthouse 100 E. Weatherford St. I hope to see you all there.
Overall, it seems that this is an exposure of deep-seated jealousy that is as old as the patriarchy itself. The knowledge women are the true bearers of life is too much for some men to handle. It proves that their consistent use of the generic masculine by default to describe everything from humankind to their great creator is no longer relevant, and never really was, to begin with. Keep brandishing your egos, boys, because mandatory vasectomies are sounding better and better. Thanks for setting the precedent.
