Annie Laurie Gaylor is the co-founder of the Freedom from
Religion Foundation and editor of Freethought Today.
Freedom from religion foundations wouldn’t exist without the
Catholic Church’s war on reproductive rights. Women have to save ourselves from
theology-festered misogyny – the rising of women means the rising of us all.
In the wake of the child abuse scandals, Catholic Ireland
must choose between women, children and their rights, or bishops and their
wrong; between reproductive freedom or returning to the dark ages. Humanity should
come before dogma, however as the tragic and unavoidable death of Savita Halappanavar
last year proved, Catholic Ireland hasn’t reached this point of consciousness.
A doomed fetus was placed above the life of a woman due to adherence to religious
dogma. ‘But the Bible says abortion is murder’ many have cried, yet Gaylor
notes that it doesn’t actually say this at all. What it does is provides ammunition
for anti-women ideas, dooming them to be subservient, responsible for all of
mankind’s sins though maternal servitude. Yupp, we get periods and the pain of
childbirth in order to atone for sins on a global and timeless scale. Bit of a
shit deal, in my opinion.
Gaylor goes on to tell us about her life growing up in
Wisconsin before Roe vs Wade. Her mother was the one to go to if you had an
unplanned pregnancy, and she would help you get to Mexico City for a
termination. It was also illegal there, but considerably safer than back alley
abortions in the US at the time. In 1971, Wisconsin’s first abortion clinic
opened, and three weeks later a Roman Catholic attorney raided the clinic,
stole records and appointment details, and removed a 17 year old girl from the
clinic, despite being literally in the stirrups at the time of the raid. In
response, Gaylor’s mother raised money to send the women who had appointments
to New York for a termination.
Women were attempting to give themselves abortions using
coat hangers and dying. Abortion was, and still is, a matter of life and death.
No woman can call herself free until she has complete control over her body,
until she can make the decision whether or not to become a mother. Yet legal
abortion doesn’t mean much if it remains, or becomes, inaccessible; if it
remains expensive, if clinics are shut down to the extent that entire areas are
without a single clinic, if remaining clinics have strict regulations imposed
on them.
The root of this bodily control is religious influence in
governments and laws. Secularism (that is the removal of religious influence
and dogma from all legislation, laws and governmental decisions, so that
religious belief is a personal and private thing alone) is vital for women’s
advancement, safety and control over their own bodies and reproductive
healthcare choices. To empower women, we must disempower the Catholic Church,
and all other religious institutions. Free thought is the best weapon women
have in a world where religious dogma expects our silence and subservience.
We may not have a god on our side, but we have humanity and
the enlightenment. Morality does not stem from theology, but from nature.
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