![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torquillEx-head of FDA under criminal investigation by a grand jury over the "Plan B" contraceptive pill snafu.
Normally I wouldn't post something like this, as it's just one step in an investigation... but it got me to thinking.
I never used to view the fanatic "pro-life" people as misogynistic, particularly; it didn't seem like they were trying to keep women under their boot, as I heard a lot of people assert. It was a religious conflict, like prayer in schools, which was a regrettable but understandable situation. I thought the issue really was about abortion itself.
I have come to really doubt that view, given some of the actions by the "pro-life" people in power. Sometimes the only way I can explain their actions is by concluding that they want to subjugate women to men's will. I've never been a radical feminist, and it sounds like a really wingnutty statement when out in the open, but it's the only way I can grasp their actions (short of them being raving lunatic insane, which a few of them probably are).
Now this whole Plan B thing -- this guy saw the holdup in the FDA, and promised that if he was put in as chief, he's cut through all of this "it's for scientific reasons" bullshit delay and push it through. He gets in, and almost immediately announces an indefinite delay, which still remains. Now when he's brought before a jury about his own claims that the delay was scientifically necessary, his lawyer wants him to take the fifth.
This kind of neanderthalic moron is the reason women can't get decent contraceptives as easily as we should. Women find that BC pills aren't covered by their insurance and aren't carried by all pharmacies, condoms can be scarce in stores in the heartland, the morning-after pill (for heaven's sake, fertilization wouldn't even have happened yet!) is unavailable, and yet Viagra is given out like candy. Sure, have more sex, unless you're a woman, then you'll be punished for your sin with a baby. Nope, no abortion, you shouldn't have been having that sex anyway, never mind that the man has no penalty at all. The anti-abortion laws being passed that make no exception for rape or incest cement the view that those acts must have been the woman's fault too. Exception for the health of the mother? If they can't be baby factories without getting crippled or dying, who the heck cares?
It's the rant that I've heard since I was little, with a few details changed, and I never put much stock in it other than for a few fringe nuts who bomb abortion clinics and condemn their own daughters to hell for having premarital sex. Yet now I'm making it. It took a lot to beat down my more moderate view, but as the "pro-life" faction has been given free rein lately, it's gotten harder and harder to cling to the assumption that they're not trying to deny women the same freedom of action that men have. These people want women barefoot, married, pregnant, and chained to the house. I don't think that much of America, given a break from the talk-radio spew, would agree with that... but they are not the people in power or the ones with the megaphones.
I re-read "The Gate to Women's Country" this month. The Holyland people seemed pretty farfetched when I read it the first time. They don't seem so unlikely now. I can see men out there who would fit right in.
The point of this whole rant -- which has gotten longer than I meant it to -- was not to scream and rant and say it's unfair (though it is). The point was to ask a question of the ex-FDA chief, the people in South Dakota who don't care about rape or incest victims, the pharmacists who dispense Viagra but won't give out birth-control pills.
What have I ever done to you?
Normally I wouldn't post something like this, as it's just one step in an investigation... but it got me to thinking.
I never used to view the fanatic "pro-life" people as misogynistic, particularly; it didn't seem like they were trying to keep women under their boot, as I heard a lot of people assert. It was a religious conflict, like prayer in schools, which was a regrettable but understandable situation. I thought the issue really was about abortion itself.
I have come to really doubt that view, given some of the actions by the "pro-life" people in power. Sometimes the only way I can explain their actions is by concluding that they want to subjugate women to men's will. I've never been a radical feminist, and it sounds like a really wingnutty statement when out in the open, but it's the only way I can grasp their actions (short of them being raving lunatic insane, which a few of them probably are).
Now this whole Plan B thing -- this guy saw the holdup in the FDA, and promised that if he was put in as chief, he's cut through all of this "it's for scientific reasons" bullshit delay and push it through. He gets in, and almost immediately announces an indefinite delay, which still remains. Now when he's brought before a jury about his own claims that the delay was scientifically necessary, his lawyer wants him to take the fifth.
This kind of neanderthalic moron is the reason women can't get decent contraceptives as easily as we should. Women find that BC pills aren't covered by their insurance and aren't carried by all pharmacies, condoms can be scarce in stores in the heartland, the morning-after pill (for heaven's sake, fertilization wouldn't even have happened yet!) is unavailable, and yet Viagra is given out like candy. Sure, have more sex, unless you're a woman, then you'll be punished for your sin with a baby. Nope, no abortion, you shouldn't have been having that sex anyway, never mind that the man has no penalty at all. The anti-abortion laws being passed that make no exception for rape or incest cement the view that those acts must have been the woman's fault too. Exception for the health of the mother? If they can't be baby factories without getting crippled or dying, who the heck cares?
It's the rant that I've heard since I was little, with a few details changed, and I never put much stock in it other than for a few fringe nuts who bomb abortion clinics and condemn their own daughters to hell for having premarital sex. Yet now I'm making it. It took a lot to beat down my more moderate view, but as the "pro-life" faction has been given free rein lately, it's gotten harder and harder to cling to the assumption that they're not trying to deny women the same freedom of action that men have. These people want women barefoot, married, pregnant, and chained to the house. I don't think that much of America, given a break from the talk-radio spew, would agree with that... but they are not the people in power or the ones with the megaphones.
I re-read "The Gate to Women's Country" this month. The Holyland people seemed pretty farfetched when I read it the first time. They don't seem so unlikely now. I can see men out there who would fit right in.
The point of this whole rant -- which has gotten longer than I meant it to -- was not to scream and rant and say it's unfair (though it is). The point was to ask a question of the ex-FDA chief, the people in South Dakota who don't care about rape or incest victims, the pharmacists who dispense Viagra but won't give out birth-control pills.
What have I ever done to you?
