My body is not mine

According to the Guttmacher Institute a state is considered hostile to abortion if it has four or five restrictions. A state is considered extremely hostile if it has six or more restrictions. In 2000 there were 13 hostile states (alas, including Michigan) and none extremely hostile. In 2010 that had jumped to 17 hostile and 5 extremely hostile for a total of 22. By 2014, only 4 years later there were a total of 27, of which 18 are extremely hostile. The link has maps. Another count is the number of abortion restrictions passed by all states. That jumped by 231 restrictions in the last four years.

Pat Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition says she would like to see Roe v. Wade overturned, but her group's efforts now are to chip away at it so that it has no impact.

These laws (a Texas case was before the 5th Circuit today) only affect working class and poor women. Middle class and richer can afford to travel as far as necessary to get an abortion. I previously included a quote: "They only care that the 's!ut takes responsibility for opening her legs.'" Put those two ideas together it implies the anti-choice crowd thinks all pregnant women (and maybe all women) at the lower end of the economic scale are s!uts.

That news about growing restrictions has left Melissa McEwan of the blog Shakesville angry. She's angry the fetus is valued more highly than the woman, that she's not trusted to make decisions about her own body, that women are denied access and the only justification is religion, that she is supposed to accept this campaign of violence, that we have lost ground, and that few men are engaged in the fight.

I am angry that my body is not mine, that my mind is not mine. That legislators can claim to know what is best for my body and can claim to know my mind better than I do. That is dehumanizing, infantilizing, a theft of my dignity.