The latest attack on women after the Arizona Supreme Court ruled to criminalize women and their doctors over abortions—even in the case of incest or rape— has set off a fearful climate for women everywhere and even though Arizona takes responsibility for the latest blow—women across the nation are getting ready for the next assault.
“These—let’s just say it—men (and sadly too many women) that call themselves “Christians” want to take us back to a time that would inhibit women from having any voice, any power and would strip women of every right they have,” says Tammy Boyd an advocate for women’s and abortion rights and a frequent Northeast Valley News contributor.
“In Arizona, the high court just went back to 1864, when the country was engaged in a brutal Civil War.”
“If they could take the right of women to vote, they would,” said Patricia Castillo, executive director of the PEACE Initiative, who also helped lead the International Women’s Day march last month and is a leading expert on domestic violence in a report from the San Antonio Express News.
We are in an “anti-woman” climate.
“Any state, now that Roe vs. Wade has been overturned and controlled by hardline, right-wing legislatures and white supremacists have begun their assaults. They want to take their states back to the good ole 1860’s.”
This is what it feels like to be a young woman today. Worried about the young girls and young women in their lives who “stand to grow up in a country in which they have fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers did.”
Reportedly many see these harsh rulings as a backlash against women and their right to determine what happens to their bodies, or whether they can decide if they want to have a child or not; whether they can seek safe treatment; and whether physicians can adequately treat them in an anti-abortion, anti-women climate.
“This is the usual response from the ultra-hard line right” says Boyd.
“We need to be out in the streets,” Castillo said. “If we’re not out in the streets we’re complicit.”
In a few months, we’ll hear Lee Greenwood’s song about being proud to be an American — on repeat.
“We’ll hear about a free country,” Castillo said, “yet we’re doing exactly the opposite.”
