‘Balancing’ the rights of women is our generation’s ‘Separate But Equal’ ruse

It’s easy to understand why the Constitution and the nation would protect women’s right to abortion. The mystery is why so many conservatives don’t understand it.

Even as a kid in Colorado, I could comprehend the basis of the state’s monumental leap past the abortion debate in 1967, when Republicans here essentially legalized a woman’s right to choose.

The words are plain and easy to understand: “women’s rights.”

From the beginning of when states like Colorado pushed past religious zealotry, and the narcissism it would take to think you could make decisions like that for other people, the abortion debate has always been about human rights.

DAVE PERRY Editor

It was easy for most of my generation to understand then, and now, how repulsive it would be to allow the government to make medical decisions for anyone.

White American men had enjoyed that and other freedoms from the day everyone saw the “rocket’s red glare.”

It took about a century before the same right of self-determination was bestowed on men of color.

It wasn’t until well into the 20th Century that men, running all levels of government, begrudgingly began sharing their exclusive human rights with American women.

And here we are, still marching toward 300 years of American independence for everyone but women.

It still surprises me that a political party that led the mythical “death panel” argument against Obamacare so easily turns a blind eye to those very real death panels now in Texas and other backward states.

For those who had no idea before the end of Roe v Wade at the hands of the Supreme Court this summer, the complicated abortion debate is much more than “right-to-life” soundbites.

A Texas woman told the Washington Post in July that the new Texas abortion ban forced her to carry her dead fetus for two weeks because doctors wouldn’t perform medical procedures associated with abortion, outlawed by state lawmakers and Gov. Greg Abbott.

Just last week, a Texas woman told CNN reporters that she had to flee Texas to New Mexico for an abortion after discovering that a long-wanted pregnancy had severe heart, brain, kidney and genetic defects and would be still born at full term. She was more than three months pregnant.

“How could you be so cruel as to pass a law that you know will hurt women, and that you know will cause babies to be born in pain?” Kailie DeSpain said. She described herself as a former, quintessential Texas pro-lifer. “How is that humane? How is that saving anybody?”

It’s not.

The lesson is unequivocal: Neither the government, nor anyone, has any business making any health decisions for others, including women, and especially decisions involving reproduction.

It doesn’t take much imagination to understand how barbaric it is for someone to impose pregnancy on another human.

Republican candidates, thinking they had won the right-wing-base lottery with the indefensible Supreme Court Dobbs decision early this summer, have since been schooled in the reality of the situation.

It’s always been about women’s rights, the right to wield control over their own bodies, just like men.

Candidates like Joe O’Dea, running for Senate in Colorado, still can’t grasp the fundamental wrong in saying that all people are created equal, except for women.

Last week, O’Dea told 9News Next host Kyle Clark that after months of fumbling with his claims to being a “mod- erate” on abortion rights, that he thinks he’s found a political sweet spot in the controversy.

He told Clark that he would see his role as a Republican U.S. senator to bring “balance” to the abortion rights debate.

That sense of “balance” and human rights was what led to Jim Crow laws in the South and the horror of “separate but equal.”

Bringing “balance” to the suffrage fight would have allowed women to vote in school board and county commissioner elections, but not for governor or president.

Don’t think for a moment that even though Colorado state lawmakers earlier this year created a new legislative anchor for women’s reproductive rights that this is just a problem for women in other states.

Local abortion and women’s health care providers say the problem in those other states already affects women here.

“When we are literally overrun with patients who need abortion services, patients can’t get in to see us for birth control, cancer screenings, wellness exams, or emergency contraception,” said Dr. Kristina Tocce, who works at Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, describing the situation to The Sentinel as a public health crisis.

Politics is what created this crisis, and it’s the only thing now that can fix it.

It’s easy to test candidates for state and federal offices this year on this critical human rights question, thrust into the election by the Supreme Court.

If a candidate believes the government has any role in deciding abortion or reproduction issues for women, they’re not “balanced.” They’re the problem.