Not only are abortions now illegal after six weeks (which would outlaw at least eighty-five percent of abortions since people can be unaware they’re pregnant at that stage), but any private citizen can sue people who violate this law for ten thousand dollars. People who can be sued includes anyone who “aided and abetted” the abortion—including not only doctors and healthcare providers, but the people like the fucking uber driver who drove you to the clinic.
And the Supreme Court has done nothing about it.
I am afraid.
I am angry.
I am in disbelief that a group of people, with full knowledge of the terrifying consequences of their actions, pooled their resources, wealth, and knowledge to launch this assault on abortion rights. Displaying a dearth of empathy, they plotted around Roe v. Wade by employing private citizens as bounty hunters,people they will pay thousands of dollars to report abortions.
They launched a modern-day witch hunt.
It’s hard to sort out my emotions. I feel like a pile of autumn leaves, whipped into a tornado of glacial reds and frothing golds and everything in between, unable to separate the colors, the movement, the chaos.But there are three things I do know.
you can be pro-life and have had an abortion in the past.
no, it doesn’t make you a hypocrite, you just grew and learned to value the life of the unborn after your own experience. I know many women who became pro-life after undergoing an abortion when they were younger and while pro-choice people will want to completely overlook these women because it messes up their “abortion saves lives” and “women are relieved to have abortions” image, these women still exist.
I started (binge)watching The Handmaid’s Tale yesterday, and I was prepared to hate it. Everything I had heard and read about the show prepared me for thinly disguised liberal propaganda constantly bashing Christians, Conservatives, and Pro-Lifers. The premise, as I understood it, would be “this is what happens if the Christians/Conservatives/Pro-Lifers get their way.” This came especially from everyone who jumped straight to “Trump is going to make this come true.”
I was wrong, and so are a lot of the liberals who think that The Handmaid’s Tale supports their ideology.
Warning
If you haven’t watched the show, my warning to you is that rape is a constant theme in the show, and you will see multiple rapes per episode. Generally they are not physically violent, more on the side of coerced compliance. As such, these scenes are fairly “quiet,” which I think makes it all the more disturbing. Do not watch the show if that is something that will cause you significant emotional distress.
The Premise
The Republic of Gilead, a terrorist group of “Christian” fundamentalists, has taken over much of the United States. Other nations regard them much the way we regard North Korea. They are vaguely aware of the human rights injustices in Gilead, and have mostly responded with trade embargoes and other sanctions.
In the world where this takes place, infertility is a global crisis. Most women can’t get pregnant, and those who do often miscarry or give birth to babies who die soon after delivery. Gilead’s solution to this problem is to enslave those women who can have healthy babies and force them to act as surrogates for “the faithful,” aka the leaders. In a twisted misinterpretation of the Biblical story of Rachel asking Jacob to father children via her maid, these women are raped by the men they are assigned to while laying in the lap of the man’s wife. I honestly cannot overstate how disturbing these scenes are. Ugh.
But it’s not just the Handmaids who are enslaved. Virtually all citizens of Gilead have lost all of their civil and human rights, including the “elite” who appear to be living “the good life.” The government is socialist, in that it controls all means of production and distributes goods to the people through ration cards. There are shortages of many items, such that the characters get excited when the grocery store is carrying oranges. However, it is apparent that higher-up leaders can get things that lower-ranking party members might be denied. Jobs and marriages are also distributed by the government.
Everyone is under near-constant surveillance through a network of state spies and neighbors who will report you for fear of being “complicit.” Interrogations are conducted using cattle prods, and guilty verdicts are reached by a judge asking the accuser to swear he’s telling the truth and then saying the equivalent of “well, okay, if you say so.” Death sentences are handed down and carried out almost instantaneously.
Religion
An emphasis is placed on the religious aspect of Gilead society. As mentioned before, the Handmaid system is based on Rachel asking Jacob to father children through her maid. The characters have call-and-response greetings and phrases that come from Scripture or general Christian language. It can be very tempting to consider Gilead “Christians Gone Wild.”
However, there is something very interesting that disrupts this interpretation that I noticed in the very first episode. There are no clergy. Anywhere. No pastors, no priests except one who has been executed for his crimes, presumably speaking against the state. We see a church being demolished, and two Handmaids talk about churches they knew from “before” that have been destroyed.
What this tells us is that no Christian church got on board with Gilead. No churches, no clergy, nobody. This is a case of a relatively small group of absolute nut jobs managing to take over the government and control the masses through fear and brainwashing.
The show also makes it clear over and over again that all of the Scripture used by Gilead to justify their actions is taken completely out of any context whatsoever. The Rachel, Jacob, and Bilah story used to justify the Handmaid system is a prime example. The people of Gilead treat this story like a direct command from God to rape women so you can have children. It is so incredibly not that. Really, the whole story, in context, is a warning about why polygamy is a terrible idea. God never condones Rachel’s solution to her infertility, and in other places He explicitly condemns similar situations, such as when Sarah tells Abraham to sleep with Hagar.
Most importantly, the characters in The Handmaid’s Tale leave out of the story the part where Jacob gets mad at Rachel for even suggesting the idea, and she has to talk him into it. His first reaction to her suggestion is the right one: “Jacob’s anger was kindled against Rachel, and he said, ‘Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?’“ (Gen 30:2). The end of Genesis 29 tells us that God made Rachel barren and made Jacob’s other wife, Leah, fertile to protect her. Jacob loved Rachel and hated Leah, so God let Leah have children so Jacob would have to treat her better. When Rachel proposes having Jacob impregnate her servant, she is trying to circumvent God’s will.
We also see instances where only part of a verse is quoted, such as “Blessed are the meek,” which is used to tell the Handmaids to “know their place.” Offred, the main character, finishes the verse in her head: “for they will inherit the earth.” The Handmaids are reminded to “remember their Scripture,” which seems to refer to selected fragments of verses used to control them, as they are not allowed to read the Bible (or anything else) themselves. In fact, the only Bible I’ve seen in the show so far is kept in a locked box by the Commander, only taken out for the “ceremony” (the monthly ritual rape intended to impregnate Offred). At this point, only the verses about Rachel, Jacob, and Bilah are read, and then not the complete passage. The Commander reads Genesis 30: 1, 3-5 (King James Version), skipping verse 2 that talks about Jacob being angry because Rachel was trying to circumvent God’s will.
Civil Liberties
I think the big warning for us is not about “religion run wild.” It’s about our civil liberties and the dangers of socialism. In fact, I think The Handmaid’s Tale makes an excellent case for Libertarianism. We see this in how the Republic of Gilead manages to take over the country and strip the people of their rights. They do this through coordinated terrorist attacks which destroy all three branches of government (they bomb Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court and basically kill everyone) and convince the people to give up their rights and submit to martial law.
Once this is achieved, Gilead leaders take control of the banks and essentially all industry very quickly and in a very strategic way. They ban women from having jobs or owning property all at once, freezing every woman’s bank account and credit card before the people realize what’s happening. They start shooting protesters and anyone who opposes them, shutting down resistance before it can get organized.
Offred remarks in the show on how she didn’t see this coming because she wasn’t paying attention. She had her own life and her own problems, and she didn’t speak up or take action when her rights were taken away. In fact, it is made clear that most people didn’t realize what was going on until it was way too late. In this story, the complacency of Americans with tyranny and their disregard for their own rights was America’s downfall.
Gilead happened not because of religion or Conservative ideology. It happened because people were willing to give up their liberty for a promise of temporary safety. They ended up with neither.
Bringing back this post from 5 years ago in light of Margaret Atwood claiming that the end of Roe would bring about Gilead ♀️
There’s a lot of interest at the moment on who exactly these mysterious 10 MPs are that the Conservatives have teamed up with to get their majority. A lot of misinformation is spreading, so here’s a quick run-down of the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland.
The DUP were established in 1971 by Ian Paisley, the leading figure for loyalism during the Troubles. Although he would later be instrumental in the peace process in Northern Ireland, in 1971 he was involved with paramilitary groups fighting to keep NI under British rule.
Theyopposed the Good Friday Agreement due in party to the allowance for Sinn Fein to hold government. Other reasons included clauses for the early release of paramilitary political prisoners and lack of accountability of the Northern Ireland Executive and the North/South Ministerial Council.
The majority of their support is in the North of Northern Ireland, with border constituencies voting in Sinn Fein MPs in the 2017 general election.
Theirleader is Arlene Foster, who serves as the First Minister of Northern Ireland.
Theyadvocate for the union of Northern Ireland with the UK. Arlene Foster said during the 2017 election campaign that she does not intend for NI to have a border poll (a referendum on reunification of Ireland) in her life-time.
The DUP were at the centre of the Renewable Heating Incentives scandal. Arlene Foster, as Minister for the department in charge of the scheme, was heavily implicated. The poorly worded RHI scheme went over budget by £400m and the poor structure of the scheme made it prime fodder for fraudsters. Foster personally campaigned to keep the scheme open even after experts pointed out its flaws.
In 1977 the DUP campaigned against the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Northern Ireland. They no longer follow this policy, although many DUP members still see homosexuality as a sin due to strong religious ties.
In terms of Brexit, the DUP oppose a hard Irish borderandsupport a soft-Brexit.
The DUP support triple-lock pensions and the Winter Fuel Allowance, in direct opposition to current Conservative policies.
They have vetoed same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland since 2015, despite its legalisation in the rest of the UK and in the Republic.
The DUP are strongly ‘pro-life’, and unanimously voted against a proposal by Labour to protect women from prosecution who abort their foetuses using pills bought online. Their stance on abortion also led to opposition to extra funding for international family planning programmes.
tl;dr The DUP are social (very) conservatives but will not support the Tories in every vote.
If you genuinely oppose abortion because you think the baby is alive, then you also need to oppose abortion in cases of rape and incest.
Like, it’s not the baby’s fault that his/her father is a rapist. Why would he/she deserve the death penalty for being the result of rape?
And yet. The vast majority of so-called “pro-life” people would allow abortion in the cases of rape and incest. And to them I pose the question: Are there other crimes where the punishment should be the death of the criminal’s child? If I kill someone should my kid get killed? If I steal?
You can’t call yourself “pro-life” if there are lives even you are willing to end. That’s hypocricy.
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If you are seeing this post as a reblog, read my tags before you add anything. Or don’t, if you’re the kind of person who crosses other people’s boundaries.
“The man who allegedly severely vandalized a reproductive health-care facility in Kalispell, Montana, requested that his $100,000 bail be reduced to zero on Thursday.”
Abortion clinics nationwide face significant threats of harassment, intimidation, and violence, according to a new report showing that threats of violence against abortion providers have doubled since 2010.
The survey of 242 abortion providers in the United States found that there has been significantly higher levels of threats and targeted intimidation of doctors and staff in recent years. The report comes as widespread intimidation tactics were deployed against clinics during the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision affirming a woman’s right to choose an abortion.
More than 500 plastic handcuffs placed inside “care packages” were reportedly delivered to abortion clinics throughout the country last week, according to The Christian Post. The packages were sent by the anti-choice organization Pro-Life Action League.
Trust Women is a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing abortion access by opening clinics in underserved areas. They recently opened a clinic in the building where Dr. George Tiller, a doctor murdered by an anti-choice fanatic, worked.
These pictures were taken by Julie Burkhart from her front window.
And here I was finding all the mugshots of the doctor-killers and clinic-bombers…
I love the way Cultureshift thinks one image of angry pro-choice protesters and one image of smiling pro-life protesters shows oh how very different the two movements are.
Like, really? As if there aren’t pictures of angry pro-lifers or smiling pro-choicers? (And as if pro-choicers don’t have valid reason to be angry…)
I think it’s funny how conservatives get so excited about how much prettier (and in cultureshift’s posts, more benign-looking) “their” women are.
Something about valuing women who prioritize and adhere to their assigned gender roles over those who don’t…
Today I want to share with you something very crucial that happened in my country.
Yesterday (May 15, 2020) in Poland a pro-life (anti-choice) activist Zuzanna Wiewiórka was honored with a medal of justice.
(”Stop hate for life defenders”)
She have been harassing a seventeen years old girl, who wanted to have an abortion due to risk of death. The teenager was seeking help online and she was found by the activist, who stalked, blackmailed and sent her pictures of aborted babies.
Moreover this is not Wiewiórka’s first action like that.
The girl refused changing her mind about abortion, but the activist was unstoppable and got information (most likelyillegaly) about her child’s father and her family in order to tell them about young girl’s plans. The family locked her at homeand she is apparently struggling with side effects of a failed abortion made with non-medical tools.
Zuzanna Wiewiórka also said that “Blowing up clinics offering abortions is a good way to prevent murder and killing doctors who provide abortions is crucial to stop killing innocent”.
What’s more Zuzanna’s brother Maciej Wiewiórka supports his sister. He said that “Sometimes rape is the only chance for a man to have sex”. I do not even know how to comment that I will leave you with that.
How could someone who technically took away that young girl’s life get a prize for saving a life?How is she called a hero?
I wanted to mention that anti-choice activist try to take advantage of epidemy and lockdown that makes strikes impossible. Their actions do not seem like life saving at all.
I am shaking right now. I cannot even imagine how the poor teenager must be feeling. I definitely do not want to live in a world like that.
Please share! Spread the news, we have to resist this madness.
kirksceruleanpools said: Have you considered there are people in the world who just never want to be pregnant? Who never want their body to be put through the myriad of permanent medical changes for a child they don’t intend to keep? How devastating this is to people’s mental health? You can’t be forced to donate blood or organs. Why should a person give their entire body to this? Sure, in a perfect world, we wouldn’t need the choice. But it’s a CHOICE you never need to make.
This is a great example of how bodily autonomy rhetoric has gradually just become anti-body. We know how our bodies work; it’s embarrassing to suggest the mechanics of reproduction are just something you can accidentally do.
About to have sex which could result in pregnancy in a time/place/relationship in which you don’t want it to happen?
“Our bodies are sacred and so are the decisions we make that honor each of our circumstances AND our beliefs. To ensure that people have healthcare they need is just and moral work and so is making sure people can get a safe abortion!”
