Moral Monday - Women's Health

     This Monday was focused on the suddenly passed legislation in the N.C. Senate that was a very restrictive bill on Women's health options.  The crowd was much bigger than the first Moral Monday on Clergy Day, and it was made up of a lot diverse groups. This one had a lot more older women and their husbands than the first one I attended, and I think there were less African Americans in attendance.  If it is any indication of the size, at the first one I went too, I easily found people I knew. At this one I did not run into anyone I knew.

     As I was walking back to the car after the rally, I was carrying the sign I had held up all evening. "United for Women's Health."  I passed a young woman who was walking to her car in a parking lot. She saw my sign, and as we walked passed each other, she said loudly, "Abortion is not women's health."  It took me by surprise and all I could say on the spur of the moment was "Well, that is a large debate."

      That debate is at the heart of much of what we are talking about.  Abortion is not a good thing. Abortion is an act of violence that is not wanted by anyone I know.  But the question is who gets to decide that question.  There were good posters which read, "If you want to make health care decisions for women, go to med school."  The question is who is going to decided whether or not an abortion is the final solution to a horrible situation.

     It is a large debate because those who want to make that decision for women, who want to say when and how and if a woman can have an abortion, also want to make the decisions about whether or not a teenage girl can get the morning after pill. Those who want to make the decision about abortions also refuse to allow the teaching of birth control, the pill, and condoms.  Those who want to make the decision about abortions also do not want to provide help to single moms who carry the child to full term and have the child.   The people who make these rules about abortion have these funny ideas about sex and how it works so that they believe rape cannot cause a pregnancy.  The people who want to make the decisions about when, who and how a woman can have an abortion have been primarily men, like bishops, popes and priests, like Senators and Representatives who are old males.   As somebody in Ohio in their state legislature suggested, Men ought to be required to have psychological counseling before getting Viagra.

     It is a large debate because there are just so many factors, so many issues to be considered. All the things that the anti abortion people say about abortions are probably true. All the horrors of an unwanted, unloved, unhappy, child are also true and very obvious for long term cost to family and society.  So how are we as a society going to balance all these issues.  I am united for women's health care because I believe that in these kinds of complicated situations the person closest to the situation, the woman, ought to have the power to make that decision. For a political party which wants to get government out of our lives, they have had a pretty aggressive agenda of getting themselves right in the middle of telling lots of people what they can and cannot do.