Anti-feminist activist Phyllis Schlafly recently sent out a questionnaire to every Republican candidate to ask them what is their position on abortion.
The disturbing results? A list of responses from this year’s candidates state that 78 House and Senate candidates indicated that they are “pro-life without discrimination.” This means, no matter what the reason, a woman does not have the right to choose to end her pregnancy.
Technically, 112 candidates of the GOP hold this view, but 78 of them have won their state’s primary and answered that they would make NO EXCEPTIONS to allow a woman the right to exercise personal choice over her own body.
Unfortunately, this list doesn’t include all US states or candidates running for the House or Senate and the total number who are “pro-life without discrimination” is expected to be higher.
Among those who deny women autonomy over their own bodies are Christine O’Donnell, a tea-party member running for Senate in Delaware who also doesn’t believe in masturbation, Roy Blunt, of Missouri Senate, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, and Rand Paul, running for Senate in Kentucky.
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow states that “The Republican Party, is without actually talking about it, this year nominating a group of candidates for the top-of-the-ticket races that are more extreme on the issue of abortion than any other slate of top-of-the-ticket candidates in any other year.”
Maddow also criticized these candidates for being hypocritical. On the one hand, they support a full abortion ban, forcing any woman to carry a pregnancy to full term, imprisoning her in her own body, and believe that “government should be big enough that it can monitor every pregnancy in the country to ensure that every single woman who becomes pregnant is forced by the government to carry that pregnancy to term” and yet they want to be “small-government conservatives.” These two ideas just don’t work together.
What frightens me is the lack of compassion these GOP candidates seem to have for women who have undergone a traumatic and life-altering event in their lives. To force them to relive those moments every day for the rest of their existence because they are made to carry, deliver and possibly raise a child they never wanted is inhumane.
Women’s bodies aren’t up for bargaining to gain votes in the election. We shouldn’t be used to divide people and to create drama that isn’t there. If a woman chooses to use birth control, have an abortion, or rely on the “rhythm method” to control when and if she has children, that is no one’s business but her own.
Those candidates who preach for small government and keeping the government out of their lives and yet demand the government set up shop in women’s bodies is absurd, hypocritical as Maddow stated, and dangerous. If a woman does not have autonomy over her own self, she is not free. If women are not free on this fundamental level, we all might as well be chained to our beds and systematically raped to produce offspring for the government, since they seem to believe we are only good for our wombs.
KristenHoughton
I shudder to think that a woman who has undergone the most horrific attack on her body will be forced to give birth if a pregnancy should result. Even in ancient Rome there was compassion for the victim of rape and she was given “cleansing medication” to remove the possibility of pregnancy.
Women like Ms. Schafly would set women’s rights back to the time when we could not own property without a man’s signature on the deed and had no recourse to an unwanted pregnancy other than back alley abortionists.
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
I completely agree. This really has more to do with female autonomy than anything else. It always makes me so sad when I see other women trying to hold us all back from being free. Very worrisome, indeed. Thanks for your insightful comment, Kristen!