It is getting frustrating to see yet another abominable Republican attack on women’s reproductive rights without any acknowledgment that it is a concerted religious effort to dominate and control American women and nothing else. It is true that it is a uniquely American unwritten cardinal sin to utter one negative word about Christian extremists imposing their “religious liberty” on Americans, but for dog’s sake the time to stand up for women and against theocratic assaults on their rights is long past. There are, allegedly, “good Christians’ in the population and they certainly outnumber the fanatical evangelical control freaks, but except for one Catholic nun, they are silent cowards.
For the record, again, there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution regarding enforcing religious edicts for the sake of a religion, and yet Republicans are wasting more taxpayer time and money forcing religion down the throats of Americans with no pushback against theocracy. Republicans, the Koch brothers, and the evangelical movement claim that taking control of women, and their reproductive health, is a moral issue their god has given them unquestioned moral authority to enforce, but according to a Catholic Benedictine nun, Sister Joan Chittister, O.S.B., there is nothing ‘moral’ about pro-life Republicans.
Sister Joan said, “I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don’t? Because you don’t want any money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.”
Although the Sister is spot on that so-called pro-life Republicans are only ‘pro-birth,’ she failed to elucidate what their real motivation is in opposing any form of birth control; abject male control and subjugation of women. Sister Chittister is right about one thing though, pro-life Republicans, the Koch brothers, and so-called pro-life Christians lack any sense of morality whatsoever, and worse, Americans are silent as they waste taxpayer time and money attempting to legislate religion according to a bastardized form of Christianity instead of doing the job they are paid for. As a reminder to Republicans, Congress is tasked with “The Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the general Welfare of the United States.” As an aside, when Founding Father George Washington was asked exactly whose “general welfare” taxes, duties, imposts, and excises were to provide for, he said “the people’s welfare.”
Republicans oppose, out of hand, the idea of laying and collecting taxes under any circumstance, but they are particularly opposed to providing for the general welfare of anyone except corporations, the filthy rich, and especially the extremely religious. It is not enough to force taxpayers to fund religion to the tune of over $85 billion annually, Republicans in Congress and state legislatures across the nation regularly use taxpayer money to decimate women’s reproductive rights with exceptional urgency. This is particularly true since they took control of, first the House in 2011, and then the entire Congress in 2015. That is the price women have had to pay for Americans allowing the Koch brothers to fund anti-choice organizations as a means of buying Congress.
In fact, the latest threat from Republicans is to shut down the federal government unless they are allowed to use their ‘religion’ to destroy Planned Parenthood in its entirety. Even though doing so will punish men who depend on the organization for all manner of cancer screenings, family planning, and contraception, but religion is the motivation and evangelical patriarchs and misogynists will accept men as collateral damage in their crusade to control and dominate women. In that sense they are no different than Islamic extremists in the dreaded ISIS and every bit as vicious.
It is stunning that while Republican lawmakers and anti-choice extremists continue introducing and passing misogynistic laws restricting woman’s reproductive rights, there is never any outrage that they are legislating religious edicts. Republicans in states and Congress work tirelessly to close women’s health clinics as well as Planned Parenthood using taxpayer dollars, but there are no lawsuits challenging their blatant “establishment of religion” with taxpayer dollars for the sole purpose of controlling over half the population. However, the so-called pro-life godly and moral Republicans do spend inordinate amounts of taxpayer dollars to slash programs providing school lunches for children, cutting food assistance, and heath care aid to families with newborn babies.
America is allegedly the “land of the free and home of the brave,” but according to the silence of millions of men, and so-called good Christians, the idea of bravery to protect free American women’s rights vanishes when the aggressors are religious, and predominately Republican men. The people of this country have a world of things to be ashamed of; gun proliferation, blatant racism, a quarter of the children going to bed hungry, a decrepit infrastructure, and an out-of-control and predatory law enforcement system. Add to that, a population of a liberal democracy that is so terrified of speaking out against Republicans violating the Constitution by establishing religious laws to control over half the population and it is beyond humiliating; it is an abomination. It is particularly shameful that while the majority of the population quivers and quakes in fear of speaking out against religious and immoral Republicans ramming evangelical religion down the population’s throat, that a Catholic nun is the sole voice of courage against the immoral attack on American women.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn't look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
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