Abortion: P. Lazos + Privilege + Podcast: Blog Tips + Loan Words

Posted on by da-AL
Blog post title over photo of a woman holding a sign that reads, "Mandatory Vasectomies: Life Begins at Ejaculation."
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While fooling around — erhem, doing research — for my novels, I wandered across findings that conclude many well-off white guys want equality and equity for all. The problem is, since they don’t see it regarding them, their time is all full up with making and enjoying their inherent privileges.

“Humans are rational; we rationalize whatever we want,” or something to that effect, is how noted historian Howard Zinn summed it up.

What sound sleep such people must enjoy! No sweating over transgressions. No tossing over un-involvement with non-blood relatives, people different from them, or who don’t live right next door and aren’t knocking.

To further rile me the other day, when the subject of abortion came up within a group, someone asked whether others cared. To them, it was understandable that anyone who’s had all their kids, better still if they bore only sons and they were post-menopausal, not concern themselves.

Make no mistake, I don’t pretend to be a heroine who devotes every waking moment to bettering the world — but how do people justify take, take, taking, and never lifting a finger?

A breath of fresh air, blogger/novelist/environmental lawyer Pam Lazos is not a “don’t even try” sort. Visit her blog for info on her eco thriller, novellas, beekeeping, and daily laughter practice. Here she describes how, for her, abortion rights are personal…

Evolve or Revolve by Pam Lazos

Let me start by saying this is not my fight in the sense that I, personally, have something at stake.  I am past child-bearing years so the overturning of Roe v. Wade and all the restrictions on a woman’s reproductive system that come with it will not effect me, but if you are like me, let’s not make the mistake of thinking this mess is not going to impact our lives because failure to fight such moral turpitude is complacent, and complacency is how the world goes dark.  If history has taught us anything, complacent people get kicked to the curb because they don’t think the world is coming for them until it’s too late.  Just ask any one of the 6.6 million people living in refugee camps.  

Barring divine intervention — like Zechariah getting the nod from Archangel Gabriel about his elderly wife, Elizabeth, and her pregnancy with John the Baptist — that ship has sailed for me, but not for my daughters, and for them, and every other woman I love, I can never stop fighting until, and this is the tricky part, we EVOLVE into the amazing race of humans we were destined to be, not this crazy, tribal, hunkered-down caricature version of ourselves we have become.  

Imagine living in Texas right now, having a miscarriage, and being too afraid to tell anyone because you think they might arrest you and send you to jail, leaving the kids you have at home to grow up motherless.  Under the Texas abortion ban laws, you experience one of the most crushing moments of your life and rather than being able to look to your friends and community for support in dealing with such an unmooring personal tragedy, you are forced to hide your pain or risk the tragedy becoming public and you being incarcerated.  Don’t think this is just conjecture.  As Brian Stevenson chronicled in Just Mercy, Marsha Colbey spent five years in prison after the state of Alabama determined she was liable for her stillborn child’s death.  With that in mind, the overturning of Roe v. Wade feels like a witch trial where the rules are rigged from the start (ever watch Monty Python’s idea of the “scientific method”?).   

I had two miscarriages as a married woman after trying for years to have a baby.  If I had those miscarriages today, living in Texas, I may have ended up in jail.  So I ask all the whack-a-mole legislators in all the states that wrote such disgusting, anti-woman, anti-family, anti-society laws, why do you hate women, and why is your most fervent desire to see us fail?  Why do you want to see us busted, broke, and broken, without choice, but for those you make for us; pathless, but for those you set our feet upon; and penniless, but for those few coins you’ll throw our way for household items (and then complain because too much money is being spent on household items).  Are we destined to go back to the early 20th century, or will this time around be more insidiously like The Handmaid’s Tale?  Another thing:  once you’re done legislating what we can and can’t do with our bodies, do you think any one of us will want to have anything to do with any one of you?

Photo of Pam Lazos, blogger/author/activist/environmental lawyer.
Photo of Pam Lazos, blogger/author/activist/environmental lawyer.

Why is it only the men who get to exercise their free will?  How about all you chivalrous dudes who seem to think women need champions (we do, but not in the way you think); protectors (we do, but not in the way you think); and role models (we do, but boy, are there too few of those around); how about you take the hit on this?  If life starts at conception and you are so hell-bent on saving every last zygote — it takes until approximately the 11th week of pregnancy to become a fetus — let’s solve the problem by assuring those little eggs do not get fertilized until everyone is in agreement about having a live baby.  You can get a fully reversible vasectomy while we’ll enjoy a brief respite from our birth control dilemma that is never 100% effective — another bonus provided by vasectomies!

You squeamish?  Try walking a hot minute in our shoes.  Do you think anyone who has actually had to get an abortion wants it?  No. Nadie.  I’d wager in 99% of cases, a woman would have preferred avoiding it altogether (using 99% to account for statistical anomalies).  Further, it’s inconceivable to me that there is not one, but two potential sexual predators sitting on the Supreme Court right now, and until Biden was elected president, we had one in the White House, too. Imagine our joy!  And while the MINORITY of ultra conservatives are all high-fiving each other over Alito’s successful, strident, downright diabolical ruling, God is shedding ginormous tears at how satanic you all look to him right now.  The Supreme Court has decided to shove conservatism and Christianity down America’s throat while not one thing they’ve done in the last month looks like anything Jesus would do.  Paid parental leave?  Nah.  Post-natal and educational services for the child?  Fogetaboutit.  Worker training for the mother.  What are you nuts? 

The most vexing thing to me:  why, when we are on the precipice of a sixth mass extinction, are we bringing more babies into the world?  You would think tapping the brakes on overpopulation is a good thing, possibly buying us a few more decades until we sort this climate change mess out — something we’ve only recently decided to take seriously.  While you were busy thinking about how to unravel 50 years of stare decisis, Supreme Court, Mother Nature has been busy plotting her revenge and no amount of judicial reasoning or false piety will save you when the real apocalypse arrives so if you were thinking you could hide behind the robes, think again.

I don’t want to be the last generation on a dying planet, I want to be the first generation on an enlightened one.  How I long for this fight to be over, yet, I think it’s barely started.  So many of my perceived longings are because I think, “when I have xx, I will be happy,” when the truth is, I don’t even know if I want xx anymore, or if I even ever wanted it, I just want to be happy.  Most others want the same, but no one can be happy if everyone else is telling them what to do with their bodies — NO ONE — not even the ones doing the telling.  In order to be happy, we must go directly to the source of light.  Reflections of someone else’s light don’t count, and legislation which curtails a woman’s light, by curtailing her right, is the worst kind of reflection because it reflects someone else views onto us, leaving our own somewhere around our feet, or shoved into a closet with the stuff we don’t want anymore but don’t have the heart to throw away.

It’s the 4th of July, a holiday to celebrate independence, but in America today, independence is now only afforded to the the pale, male, stale variety who mostly write the laws.  To be fair, I know plenty of men who are not of this variety, and to them I say, THANK YOU.  We women need you in this fight and it is the one small ray of light that has sprung from all this chaos:  women and their men are coming together in droves to SUPPORT ONE ANOTHER, something that doesn’t happen too often in America these days.

There are a few things too important to leave to the states:  the environment, civil rights, education, and a woman’s reproductive rights, to name a few, and we all — at least the ones of us who are still thinking clearly — need to get in there and make sure we keep those rights.

Today I feel worse about our country than I have ever felt in my adult life. I don’t know how we get back to center where most of us thrive other than for women of all walks and stripes to get out there and not just vote, but run, RUN, for local, state and federal legislative and executive positions, heck, you can run for dog catcher if it’s going to make all our lives better.  We need our voices to be heard and the time has passed to let the men do it for us.  It’s not going to be easy, and it will take heart and strength and courage, but we can do it — together.

Remember:  no man has ever experienced the pain of childbirth so they have no idea what we are capable of withstanding.  And for all those men who think women should be relegated to the back of the bus, just wait until we find our voices — the concussive effect will be staggering.  If we stand together, we can not only find our way back to the reflection of our own pure light, we can be unstoppable.

Time to show them, Ladies.

Trick question: Do abortion rights involve you?

Published by da-AL

Happiness Between Tails blog/podcast speaks to and from the heart. It connects lovers — of pets, authors, reading — and of my still-unreleased novels. “Flamenco + the Sitting Cat” and “Tango + the Sitting Cat,” are my love letters to all who fear they're too odd, too damaged, too old, too whatever to find love and happiness with or without a partner. HappinessBetweenTails.com • ContactdaAL@gmail.com • BuyMeACoffee.com/SupportHBT

65 thoughts on “Abortion: P. Lazos + Privilege + Podcast: Blog Tips + Loan Words”

  1. I’m in Texas, and I can’t even believe this is where we are now. Most Texans agree that women should have a choice. The power structure here is almost one of fascism at this point. The Supreme Court hasn’t helped anything. The stories of women sacrificing (or their health being sacrificed by health care) is atrocious. I don’t know how we fight this. They keep making laws here that criminalize anything remotely related to birth control/pregnancy/choices.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. Hi! We’re outside of Houston. I think many bigger cities tend to run purple/blue. I blame the people at the top, serving themselves and their millionaire/billionaire donors. I think that the citizens of Texas do not want a lot of what’s going on in our state right now. I hope everyone gets out to vote!

        Liked by 1 person

  2. In Germany and Denmark abortions are legal up to the third month, I think. After that it is from case to case, because the mother could be endangered as well. I think it is the same in all Scandinavia.

    To my American sisters I can only say: Don’t get married, don’t have sex. Or, alternatively, get sterilised. One can always adopt, there are many children without parents. There is no law yet that says that you have to get married, is there? Maybe that will be the next one …

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Thank you, Stella, oh, Stella, for your comment, but query, once again, why should the burden be on women to give up those things their hearts might yearn for such as marriage and sex, just to be safe. We didn’t come all the way from second class citizens to having a seat at the big table only for that to be taken away or for us to figure out how to work within the confines of the ever changing rules. It’s time for women to make the rules for women, IMO, and to do that, we have to stick together as women. ;0)

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Yes, we have to stick together. But, as the situation is right now, the men still have the longer straw, especially in the group of supreme court judges.
        As long as those laws are in power, I would not marry or get pregnant. But, I would strive to change the laws again. And women should create their own companies, organizations to help women, run for office etc. etc. and vote women into office (not women, who applause these laws though).
        Not marrying and not getting pregnant is a kind of peaceful resistance, which would have a strong effect on society. It might increase violence against women though.

        Liked by 2 people

          1. No way, I am 67, and in Denmark, where I live, there are many women in politics. At the moment there are cases against two of them for misuse of power … so there isn’t any guarantee that everything will be better, when women are in power. (One of them is our Minister of State.) Think about Margaret Thatcher, the iron lady. We are no angels … 😉

            Liked by 2 people

              1. I just googled her, a nasty dame. I sometimes don’t understand some of the expressions. What does “white genocide theory” mean? The theory that some people plan to “genocide” white people, or that the white people plan to “genocide” others? The latter has already been going on for centuries.

                Liked by 3 people

                  1. I guess she is also the product of her upbringing, right? This attitude “There is my way or the wrong way” is very widespread all over the world. Both, my mother’s parents and my mother were like that. My mother got a bit mellower with age. So there is hope. 😉

                    Liked by 1 person

                2. She’s all about white supremacy AND she’s dumb as a post making her a particularly heinous and nefarious individual. She heckled a Parkland high school mass shooting survivor, calling him a liar and saying it was all staged. She’s said “Jewish space lasers” are the reason for wildfires in California and she’s all about the Christian Right being in control. She’s definitely a crack-a-doodle! 😳😂

                  Liked by 2 people

                3. Also not sure what white genocide theory is but she and others in her clan are against teaching critical race theory which wasn’t even much of a thing until the right tried scaring everyone with it – basically the theory that white people enjoy privileges that people of color don’t and also slavery was a bad thing so we should address it and teach our kids about it with an unblinking eye. That makes white people uncomfortable (spoiler – I’m also white, but think these terrible wrongs need to be discussed in the full light of day). She would rather forget all that “unpleasantness” with slavery and pretend it never happened, that’s slaves had a “choice.” These people are experts at making themselves out to be the martyrs and the downtrodden. Horrible human beings. 😡

                  Liked by 2 people

    1. Ah, yes, that seems to have become the American way. Take what you can get and don’t look back at those who don’t have what you have. I’m not sure how we got here, but it’s a sad place to be.

      Liked by 1 person

  4. I think it may take a while for the full implications of this Supreme Court horror to reach the broader society, but it is already roiling the medical establishment, where questions about treating ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages are urgent and vexing. We make a mistake when we don’t stress the impact on families—and that includes men.

    If there is any good to be derived from this Supreme Atrocity, it is that it may animate enough voters to keep the Democrats in control of House and Senate with majorities large enough to codify Roe into federal law and expand the SC beyond the current intellectually dishonest, ahistoric theocracy.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. From your mouth to God’s ears, Annie, with the hope that people come out in droves and vote these clowns out come November! My doctor friend believes gynecologists are going to retire early rather than risk prosecution and we already don’t have enough doctors in some places so the fallout could be bigger still. Thanks for your comment.

      Liked by 1 person

  5. As said before, abortion is legal in both Serbia and Germany and, most importantly, free of charge. As it should be.
    I can’t imagine going to prison for…hm…basically being a woman. Decades of emancipation and look at this. Seems we’re back to square one.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Ah, you’ve captured it much more succinctly than I have with this: “I can’t imagine going to prison for…hmm…basically being a woman.” That’s really the crux of it, isn’t it!

      Liked by 2 people

  6. Yes, very much, because Jorge Mario Bergoglio claims and he is the forerunner of the 60 million Catholics in the Republican Party with his statement:
    The death penalty is sinless; the abortion is a contract killing.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. The indivisible human dignity of women is being trampled on by men around the world.
      the domestic violence
      the killing of women every day
      the oppression of women for thousands of years
      the circumcision of girls and women
      etc.

      Liked by 3 people

      1. It’s absolutely horrible to think about how society disenfranchises women. When our bodies have been polluted to the point of infertility by air and water pollution and pesticides, they will blame us for that as well rather than do something to clean up the environment. It’s a lose/lose proposition for women, sadly, as long as the current group of politicians is in charge.

        Liked by 3 people

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