I AM WOMAN, HEAR ME ROAR! A Call to Arms to Fight For Women’s Rights AGAIN!

While many of us who fought ferociously for women’s rights in the 60s were busy climbing career ladders, raising our children, pampering our grandchildren 🙂 the religious zealots on the right were equally busy desperately trying to find ways to roll back the gains that were made!

The religious zealots first attacked the word “feminist” associating it with extremist actions in an attempt to shame women who spoke up and openly admitted that they supported women’s rights. This worked so well that numerous “young” women proclaimed with pride that they WERE NOT FEMINISTS! I was concerned about the movement but thought “well, so many laws have been put into place to protect these unknowing women in the market place that all would be ok and that nothing could reverse the sexual revolution that allowed them NOT to be called whores just because they chose to have premarital sex like many men”!

After making such successful gains against the feminist movement, the religious zealots began searching for code words they could use against the women’s rights movement as a ruse to lure in support from decent, well-meaning people. They finally found one that has been very successful for them, the excuse that they don’t want their tax dollars being spent to support things that are against their “values“, a code word for religious beliefs!  Unfortunately, this ruse has been so successful that it has now expanded to not just include tax dollars but to allow those in the medical profession to use their “values” (religious beliefs) to withhold medical benefits and prescription medicines from women! Even well-meaning, decent people are being duped by the code word “values” and really don’t think about the immorality of allowing those in the medical professions to use their religious beliefs to trump the needs of their women patients especially poor women!

There are MANY things that my tax dollars support that go against MY “values”, many of which are fervently loved by those same religious zealots!  But, of course, they don’t want anyone thinking about withdrawing support for those things. It’s time we stopped putting up with this ruse and tell those religious zealots that abortion is legal; if you don’t like that, then get the damned law changed IF you can! But, stop using YOUR religious beliefs to impose your “values” on others by withholding tax dollars; it’s a cowardly, childish method for getting your way when the majority of people don’t agree with you!

Once the “don’t use my tax dollars for abortion because it’s against my “values”  (religious beliefs)” ruse was so successful in the entrapment of decent people to get them to support religious persecution of women, the religious zealots moved to take it one step further.  Having gained strength through duping well-meaning people to support them, they are now like a bully that has the support of those watching them physically and mentally abuse their victim.  They are introducing laws at the local, state, and federal level that would have been absurd and shameful just a few years ago, laws that actually require a woman to have an object thrust into her vagina if she’s considering abortion!  These laws are coming at such a rapid pace that it’s frightening!

Those of us who have been busy with our lives and thought the women’s movement no longer needed our constant attention were wrong!  Once AGAIN, it’s time to let those religious zealots HEAR US ROAR!  So, come out of your homes and work places mentally and physically and join the voices of women in the growing movement to STOP these religious zealots AGAIN from attacking the freedom of women to have regular access to medical benefits they deserve and to have the right to choose whether their bodies are used to reproduce!  We must stop these people, mostly misogynistic men, from abusing and persecuting women without penalty.  Some of us may be old, tired warriors but once again we must come out and let them hear us ROAR!