He who controls the uteri should be she.

We all know this: If you want to prevent abortions, you make sure everyone has health care, a high school education and birth control. Not the exact opposite. Then why do the people who purport to want to stop all abortions seem to favor almost every policy that makes them inevitable?

Egyptian-American journalist Mona Eltahawy offers insight to the roots of misogyny in her new piece about the Middle East for Foreign Policy “Why Do They Hate Us?”:

“Our wombs are the future. And if you don’t control the future by controlling women’s bodies, you’ve lost control generally.”

This echoes the answer that serial rapist Noah Cross gives his pursuer Jake Gittes in the classic film Chinatown:

Gittes: Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can’t already afford?Cross: The future, Mr. Gittes! The future.

This is a truth proven self-evident again and again—in the Middle East and in the United States. Those obsessed with control obsess on two things: rewriting history and women’s wombs.

This is why the GOP emboldened by a Tea Party movement that was supposedly not concerned with social issues passed 135 new laws limiting reproductive health care. On the federal and state level they’ve attacked Planned Parenthood, an organization that exists to provide preventative health care, birth control and choices for women.

These restrictions make no sense because abortion is more common when it’s illegal. So why does the GOP pursue them anyway? The future. AND they think they can get away with it.

Again, I’ll state that this election is about the future. Forget the benefits to women in Obamacare that are clearly at stake. Instead, imagine in election where women show up in vast numbers to state their disapproval of a GOP much too concerned with their wombs and much too ignorant of their health care.

This would change the debate in this country and begin a future worth living.

[CC image by Fibonacci Blue.]











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