There
has been much public hand-wringing over, "women's health v.
religious freedom", in the last few weeks, as pretty much everyone
except
the extreme right wing of the Republican Party has tried to wrap
their collective brains around why the GOP seems so hell-bent on
self-destructing over a seemingly settled issue like women's rights.
Instead, it's been one incongruous visual after another of Right Wing
religious men attempting to interject themselves into the most
intimate areas of women's lives. And Rush.
You can see the stunned
amazement on the faces of women under 40, wondering how professional
male politicians, whether in their state legislature or Congress,
could think for even a single moment that they could possibly have
the right to tell women whether or not they should be able to get
birth control? Or, yes, even have the right to tell them whether or
not they can get an abortion?
It's preposterous on it's
face that there is an actual, concerted effort to roll back woman's
rights, and not just to a pre-Roe v. Wade era, but all the way back
to before the 1965 Supreme Court ruling that established that it was
none of the state's business to tell women whether or not they could
use birth control, Griswold v. Connecticut. It can't be true, it's
too nuts. Why are they doing it?
98% of women use birth
control, and a solid majority of American women -- and men - support
the right of women to make their own decision regarding all of their
reproductive choices, including abortion. Why would even the most
extreme Republicans be so incredibly tone deaf as to think that
trying to roll back women's reproductive rights is any kind of good
idea?
In order to understand the answer, it is essential to
understand the vast gulf in world views that exists between the
extremists on the very far right of the GOP, and... everyone
else.
And it all comes down to Biblical literalism.
A vast majority
of Americans consider themselves as having come from a
Judea-Christian background, with most self-identifying as Christian.
But, while only around 28% of Americans identify as Evangelicals,
even fewer than that are actually true Biblical literalists, i.e.,
those who believe every word of the Bible as if it were factually
documented history.
As small as this group of Biblical
literalists actually is, they currently make up a disproportionately
large part of the extreme Right Wing of the GOP. And it is their
belief system which is the driving force behind the GOP right
now.
What the rest of us have failed to truly comprehend is
that these are people who accept as fact that there is only one
reason why we have death in this world, and that's because a Stone
Age woman had a conversation with a reptile, and then that woman ate
a piece of fruit. That's
why we all suffer death. More importantly for the issues at hand,
that is also why women having babies are supposed to "suffer in
childbirth".
And it's not just a mere suggestion that women
should suffer, either; it's an actual edict from God. Women are
supposed to suffer in childbirth and be under the dominion of men. As
punishment for that whole reptile/fruit thing. God said so. If you
accept the Bible literally, you accept the subjugation of women as
coming directly from God.
In the 19 th
century, when ether was first introduced as an anesthetic for labor
pains, the Archbishop of Canterbury spoke out against the practice,
because it, "robbed God of the deep, earnest cries of women in
labor."
Women don't get to just say, "No thanks, I'll make
my own choice.", for these folks. Eve blew that one for all of us.
This means that, for some, any
birth control is cheating God of the satisfaction of seeing women
accept the punishment He meted out.
That sin of Eve's, by the
way, has no expiration date on it. The earthly payback that God
demands from all women for that one woman's sin lasts...forever...or
until Jesus comes back.
If I ever needed proof that the Bible
was written by men, and fallible men, at that, I would look no
further than the not-so-coincidental intersection between how all
women bear full responsibility for all death and pain in this world,
and the absolute and continuing pass that men get. No sin is so big
that any man cannot be forgiven for it, but all women must forever
pay for that first woman's sin? Second woman, actually....there was
Lilith, after all -- Adam's first wife. We don't hear much about
her, but Lilith apparently had obedience issues too. See? You gotta
keep a tight lid on the ladies, they get into all kinds of trouble
when they try to think for themselves.
It's essential to
understand that this rationale for the punitive subjugation of women
really is an essential bedrock of the extreme Right's belief system,
and it necessarily infects every subsequent expression of that
mindset. For the rest of us, this is where the cognitive disconnect
kicks in.
It rarely occurs to those outside the realm of the
Biblical literalists that anyone still really believes that all women
are responsible for all death in the world, and that all women must
still pay for Eve, or, maybe more importantly, that we're all Eve at
heart - easily tempted and not to be trusted, because, like Eve,
we're weak.
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