Murdering Women and Pushing Aside our Reproductive Rights

The Cleveland murders of 11 black women who were buried in the back yard of a previously convicted sex offender chill me to the bone. How could 23 women be murdered, almost completely unnoticed by the local community, media or the police. My gut feeling is that is was racism and sexism, even class that came into play, as some of the victims family members have accused the local police of ignoring their missing person reports. Whatever the reason the lack of media coverage is disturbing.

Also the throwing aside of reproductive rights to get the health care bill passed has really ticked me off. The Hyde Amendment, one in which has to be passed every year, was used as a reason for why women under the health reform bill will be unable to use any government funds to get a insurance plan that covers abortion. Not to appease just Republicans, but so called Pro-Life Democrats, even though the platform of the party still claims to be Pro-Choice. Yet despite this not every Democrat voted for the bill and only one Republican did.

To play around with woman's reproductive rights (in my opinion really human rights) as a bargaining chip in a health reform debate seems contrary to the purpose of the bill. If we want to lower health care costs and save lives, more access to abortions (and reproductive care in general) would mean less pregnancies, less costs and less deaths due to complications during pregnancies. The issue of the other side of reproductive rights; pregnancy and childbirth, has still been widely ignored as an issue. Once again human rights have been compromised as to not get into a debate as to why our Congressmen would happily see women die during pregnancy and childbirth or receive substandard care under the current Medicad system.

While our media would like to pretend we live in a post-race, post-gender, post-sexuality society these very issues are still affecting our society in HUGE ways we should not just ignore. I feel like sending every member of the house a huge letter that just read "Shame on you. My body is not a political bargaining chip! I'm sending YOU my next abortion bill". Heck, maybe I will.