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Godly Males Mock Women Who Oppose Them On Issue Uniquely Affecting Women

By Fannie

Via shakesville, a group of Catholic nuns broke rank with the dudely bishops who, for anti-choice reasons, oppose the health care bill.

For some background, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops opposes the bill because it doesn't "do enough to block federal money from being used to fund abortions." Thus, they've ran an inflammatory ad opposing the bill because, as they put it, health care should not be about "destroying lives" via abortion (PDF). The nuns have countered this rhetoric, noting that the bill will actually do quite a bit for those who are already alive. Specifically, it "will make crucial investments in community health centers that largely serve poor women and children... and it will make historic new investments ? $250 million ? in support of pregnant women."

The bishops' Deep Concern about the destruction of lives and human dignity, however, appears somewhat implausible, when coupled with the Catholic institution's historic subjugation of women, the perpetuation and cover-up of child abuse, and Vatican staffers' implication in an alleged gay prostitution ring.

By these actions, rather than its Concerned Words, this institution tells us that restricting abortion has less to do with protecting unborn human life and more to do with maintaining, abusing, and misappropriating power over others, but especially over women, via the co-option of the female role in reproduction.

Bart Stupack, known recently by his infamous anti-abortion amendment to the health care bill, sums up this pathologically male-dominant attitude quite nicely, admitting:

"'When I'm drafting right to life language, I don?t call up the nuns." He says he instead confers with other groups including 'leading bishops, Focus on the Family, and The National Right to Life Committee.'"

The entitlement that groups of powerful and exclusionary men have that tells them that they, rather than women, get to be the ultimate deciders about an issue that uniquely affects the rights of women is something that must be highlighted whenever it is exercised. It is in a world where man has made himself god, that men could and do get away with such inappropriate exploits.

Full post as published by Fannie's Room on March 22, 2010 (boomark / email).