On Friday October 25, Kamala Harris held an impassioned rally in Houston that focused entirely on the issues involving reproductive rights. The next night, in Kalamazoo, Michigan (temporarily renamed Kamalazoo), Michelle Obama spoke for 40 minutes before Harris, also focusing on women's health issues. These were powerful events, on an issue that thanks to what's happened as a result of the Chaotic supreme court decision erasing the rights affirmed in the Roe v. Wade case decades before, has assumed great importance.
If Chaos was not threatening to trash the Constitution and fully become Homemade Hitler, it would easily qualify as the issue of paramount importance. Even with this, it's right up there. Because it is about so much more than a woman's right to choose. It's about a woman's right to live.
This was revealed earlier in the campaign with the report confirming that two women had died in Georgia because they were not given medical care by doctors terrified of arrest and incarceration under one set of the extreme laws passed by a number of states that criminalize medical care. It was further emphasized in the days following these speeches with the confirmation of a similar--and similarly heartbreaking--case in Texas in which an otherwise health young woman in distress was left by doctors to suffer and die. This woman did not enter the hospital to have an abortion; she was there to give birth. But there were tragic complications that required procedures that had essentially been outlawed.
That this is happening in America should shock every American, and every American should demand that these cruel laws be abolished. Reproductive rights for all women is at the center of this, but because of these laws, the danger goes far beyond restricting abortion. Women who get pregnant with the intention of bearing the child can suffer from miscarriages. That is tragic enough, but add to it the denial of care that has been routinely offered for as long as it has existed, because of these laws. It has led to young women bleeding to death, alone and afraid.
Michelle Obama was eloquent also on the ripple effects of the Chaos abortion bans. They are driving women's health facilities out of business, and so denying routine care to millions of women, including preventive care and early diagnosis of cancers and other life-threatening ailments. They are discouraging doctors from specializing in women's care, and medical students from learning it.
As both women emphasized, this is an issue not just for women but for men who have women in their lives--including their mothers and sisters and daughters. It is in fact a human rights issue. This is an abrogation of human dignity in America that is morally on the level of slavery.
The solution is the return of reproductive rights as guaranteed under the Roe decision, but this time written into federal law so that no corrupt court or repulsive legislature can deny them. That can be accomplished by electing Kamala Harris to the presidency, and Democrats to both houses of Congress.
Among the avalanche of revealing statements that Chaos is making in the last week or so of this campaign was his assertion that he would be the protector of women "whether the women like it or not." Spoken like a true sexual predator and supreme misogynist. There are signs that this issue as well as others are driving women to the polls in record numbers. That includes Republican women and the many primarily younger women who register to vote as unaffiliated to any party. There are so many issues of such great importance that this one has slipped to the background in media coverage and analysis. On November 5, that may really change, big time.
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