I’ve been reading quotes from Audre Lordes. writer, poet, and activist.  She says:

“Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.”
― Audre Lorde

I spend time escorting at the abortion clinic.  I see new laws introduced daily seeking to control and limit women’s reproductive health options  The anti-abortion and anti-contraception movement makes me acutely aware of the dehumanizing of women that is happening.

I feel overwhelmed with it.

~ One politician suggests that for married couples, abstinence is the best form of contraception.

~  Another one quotes the old, and always stupid, joke about contraception being “an aspirin she puts between her knees.

~ Someone I know, who I would have expected to be open-minded and sensitive to women’s need for choice, commented in an on-line discussion that he “didn’t care if women got abortions, but they should pay for their own ‘abortifacients.’ After all,” he said, “I have to pay for my own liquor and nicotine.”

So sex is for procreation, women are the gatekeepers, and if we get knocked up, we need to pay the price.  Got it.

It amazes me to know there are people who would read that and say “Yes.  That’s exactly how it is.”

I’m just waiting for someone to add the old cliche against pre-marital sex:  “And you know, why would  they buy a cow when they can get the milk free!”

All that is painful.  Worries me.  Makes me angry.  But the “transvaginal ultrasound bill” breaks my heart.

The bill requires a woman seeking abortion to have an ultrasound.  No news there.  But if the embryo is too small to be clearly seen on a regular ultrasound, {which is the case with most women seeking abortion} it would require a transvaginal ultrasound.

That means the doctor will stick a rod up the women’s vagina and shove it around to get the clearest possible image of the fetus.

Not because of any medical necessity.

Not even because research shows that it convinces women to change their minds ~ it doesn’t.

The Christian Taliban thinks it is a way to discourage women from seeking abortions.

Let’s be clear.  Back in the day when abortion was illegal, women who could afford it went to other countries for their abortion.  Women got abortions from back-alley doctors.  Women stuck coat hangers up their own vaginas trying to end a pregnancy.  A transvaginal ultrasound will increase her misery, but it won’t deter women who need an abortion.

As a medical procedure, tranvaginal rape is unpleasant and uncomfortable.  I had one a few years ago, checking for ovarian cancer.  I didn’t like it, but I agreed to it for the sake of my health.

As a mandated experience for no medical reason, it is a form of rape.   A foreign object inserted into your vagina and moved around without your full consent to it IS rape.

Yes, the women will have “consented”  because they want an abortion and the law requires it.  But “consent” mean agreeing of your own free will, not under coercion.

Rape.  Legal rape, mandated to medical professionals.

Have we lost our minds?    I don’t understand.  Where is the AMA??  Where are the doctors against politicians mandating medical procedures?  Where are the nurses, the technicians who will have to assist at these procedures?

If you have links to those articles ~ the ones where those folks speak out, please let me know.  ‘Cause I haven’t seen them.

I am beginning to see articles by women who are realizing that this is a war against us.  And that gives me hope.

Audre Lorde reminds us:

“I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.”
― Audre Lorde

She testifies:

“My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences.”
― Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals

And she calls us:

“Tell them about how you’re never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there’s always that one little piece inside you that wants to be spoken out, and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you don’t speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth from the inside.”
― Audre Lorde