Where is the Outrage For Women By Women?

Are American women the biggest fools on the planet?

American women courageously and proudly join the military leaving behind their children and families to risk being killed in the service of their country. Sadly, they do this without understanding it is for a nation that can’t even cough up an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to unequivocally give women equal protection under the laws.

Far more remarkable and outrageous is that American women go to war for a nation that has consistently failed to protect and uphold their right to make their own reproductive decisions. A nation that cannot honor a woman’s most important medical decisions should not expect such a sacrifice.

The ERA is unimportant to a nation that has come to rely upon massive amounts of money to buy justice instead of relying on just laws. Of course, women do not always have money or corporations to defend the issues important to them, and there is the rub, but where is the outrage? There is plenty to feel angry about these last eight years under George Bush & Co.

Least we forget, the Bush Administration arbitrarily prohibited the dissemination of information about abortions in healthcare services for women in other nations, and signed into law a ban on late term abortions in America. In Kansas, the assault against women has been a constant battle from sanctimonious state legislators determined to delay and sabotage a woman’s constitutional right to privacy. More glaring have been the religious fanatics manipulating the laws to smear the healthcare professionals devoted to providing comprehensive and compassionate medical care to women in Kansas.

The paradoxes regarding women and their position in American life is staggering: we have come to expect admission to the finest universities and to have the opportunity of pursuing any career imaginable, and yet women are still victims to an ideology that undeniably teaches biology is destiny. If a woman does possess financial independence and can overcome her little biological handicap of getting pregnant, a good many women spend their lives holding their sisters down while lecturing why it is for their own good. Since the Reagan years, one woman in particular stands out in this effort.

Phyllis Schlafly is the mistress of hypocrisy. She has made a career standing for what she did not practice in her own life. She had a career outside of motherhood and was not always obedient to male superiors. Schlafly earned her MA degree in government, ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1952 and later earned a law degree. She was not the darling of the media or the Republican Party until discovering what so many TV ministers have discovered; there is money and fame to be earned in telling people whom to hate, and how to make your own prejudices against others’ beliefs appear to be violating God’s word.

Why are women not outraged and standing up for reproductive choice? Most just don’t care because it doesn’t matter in their own private world. They are busy with raising their children, dealing with husbands and careers to think about the possibility that their own daughters might someday lose the freedoms they take for granted. A minority of women oppose choice claiming it is all about saving babies. If they truly cared about children they would protest against the priests who sexually abuse children and volunteer to help those abused and neglected. Instead, they park their butts out in front of Dr. Tiller’s clinic as if they are doing something important. Why? Because they hate to the very core of their being the idea that women would have more power than God. Choice challenges their religious dogma that demands procreation and subservience to men and God.

There is no question anti-choice supporters think GOD IS MALE but let’s face it, most other religions do, too. God wants women to wrap themselves up like mummies and squeeze out as many kids until it kills them because Eve brought sin and death into the world. What woman still believes this nonsense? What kind of woman still believes women are so insignificant and inferior that pregnancy and the use of contraceptives is an issue for the states and judges, but not the individual woman?

How free are women in America if they lose their access to contraceptives? Today there are physicians and pharmacists denying women their prescriptions because they personally object to women having sex and cheating pregnancy. Seriously! This “moral” stance by physicians and pharmacists is rampant sexism endorsed by the AMA. The American Medical Association has magnanimously given physicians a pass not to treat women they find morally repugnant for having sex. Where is the outrage by women against this Taliban behavior?

The message American women send out to men is obvious; we will fight for our men, our country and some other woman’s fetus, but not for our own well being or political rights. That would be selfish and emulate that naughty, naughty Eve. If there is one thing women do well, even in America, it’s to obey men and their male God.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the founding mother of the suffrage movement and women’s rights in America. For years, men in power promised to help support women’s efforts to obtain the right to vote but of course, they lied. Stanton finally came to the realization that it was up to women to fight for themselves if they were to ever earn a seat at the table as full persons under the laws.

It’s a lesson women must embrace to secure the right to privacy or we can rest assured there will be plenty of foolish women around more than willing to support men in their efforts to strip vulnerable women of their right to decide when or even if they will give birth.

Speaking of foolish women, if TIME Magazine gave an award each year for the group most retarding American democracy, my nomination would be for all the women in America who have failed to be outraged for women and speak out for choice, as well as all the conservative women who have shamelessly used their religion as an excuse to war against their sisters.

Vickie Sandell Stangl