In Case You've Not Thought This Through...

Ebrahim Noroozi/
AP Photo

On PBS Newshour there was a report about new laws for women in Afghanistan. Women are now required to cover themselves in chadori (head-to-toe in a burqa) when leaving the house, IF they are allowed to leave at all. They are forbidden from working or selling their handmade goods. This means millions of Afghani women have been forced further into poverty because they have lost their sole income. The result of that restriction often manifests itself in the necessity to marry off daughters as soon as possible because it would be one less mouth to feed. Five days ago, Voice Of America  published a story about what is happening to Afghani women in poverty. It included this:

For several months Pashtana kept rejecting marriage proposals made for her 14-year-old daughter, Zarghona, until she had to make a final decision. 

"I had to choose between the survival of my four little children and giving Zarghona to marriage," Pashtana told VOA over the phone from the southern Afghan province of Kandahar, where last year her husband, an army soldier, was killed in clashes with then Taliban insurgents. 

The young widow made every effort to provide for her children, but there was no job for her under a Taliban regime that has banned work for women.
Pashtana's family disowned her 15 years ago when she married her former husband against their will, and she only has an elderly mother in-law from her husband's family. 

"I gave Zarghona to this man who was wooing her for several months…what else could I do? How else could I feed my little children?" said the bereaved mother adding the man paid 200,000 Afghanis or about $2,300 in dowry.

Although civil law in Afghanistan has a minimum age of 16 for marriage, that law is somewhat arbitrary. 

"The Sharia is clear about this," said Sadiq Akif, a spokesman for the Taliban's Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, referring to the Islamic jurisprudence.  

"When a girl reaches puberty, she can be given to marriage," Akif told VOA. 

Most girls reach puberty between the ages of 11 and 13, according to Nadia Akseer, a scientist at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.

Under the Taliban's interpretation of Islamic law, the marriage of an 11-year-old girl, considered middle childhood in most countries, is allowed. Medical professionals strongly disagree. 

Sharia law is clear. Which means that 14-year old Zarghona's husband, who is more than twice her age, will bed her, impregnate her, and expect her to carry that child to term...and then do it all again. 

Back in 2014, 276 girls between the ages of 16 and 18 were kidnapped by Boko Haram in Nigeria. Many were forced into marriages with militants, some into sexual slavery, and some just raped and discarded. Forced impregnation was not unknown. When some were finally freed 7 years later, many were rejected by their families because they were no longer pure. 

In the Islamic State, Yazidi females who were childless or virgins at the edge of puberty were pressed into sexual slavery. If impregnated by their master, the child did not technically belong to the mother; the child became the property of the Islamist father. 

Stacey Louise Banwell, in her paper on sexual slavery, Forced Pregnancy versus Forcible Impregnation: A Critical Analysis of Genocidal Rape during War/Armed Conflict, details the difference between the two. The abstract for the article states:

Forced pregnancy and forcible impregnation are contested terms in relation to genocidal rape. The International Criminal Court (ICC), for example, defines forced pregnancy as ‘the unlawful confinement of a woman forcibly made pregnant, with the intent of affecting the ethnic composition of any population’ (Rome Statute of the ICC, 2011). Whereas, The Holy See suggests that the Statute need only criminalize the act of forcibly making a woman pregnant and not the subsequent act of forcibly keeping her pregnant. Thus, they suggest the term forcible impregnation rather than forced pregnancy (Grey, 2017). This paper unpacks the implications of the ICC’s definition of forced pregnancy in relation to the rape and sexual slavery of Yazidi women in Iraq and Syria. Evidence suggests that ISIS engaged in a genocidal campaign against the Yazidis. Many women and girls were forcibly impregnated, resulting in unwanted pregnancies (Genocide Network, 2017; Human Rights Council, 2016). However, forced impregnation (as defined by the ICC) cannot be applied to this case. Drawing on Grey’s (2017) notion of ‘reproductive violence’ - violence that violates reproductive autonomy - I review international criminal law and the reproductive justice available to women and girls raped and impregnated by ISIS.

The Taliban is also in the business of closing women's hospitals and clinics, thereby leaving women with no access to health care and treatment when a pregnancy is ectopic or blighted. The women just die because there is no available medical assistance. 

Meanwhile, in Kyrgyzstan, while illegal according to their national law, bride kidnapping and forced child marriage still exist in that country. In rural areas, it is not unknown for a bunch of guys to snatch a girl off the street, take her home, and then either force her parents to give her in or rape to impregnate so there is no choice. Girls are usually between the ages of 13-17. And the really scary part....this is often considered "romantic," and a traditional way to obtain a bride. 

Can you imagine a 13-year old child being snatched off the street, forcibly married, and raped into pregnancy? Can you imagine a 11-year old being forced to carry a child to term? 

Maybe you should start. If Roe v. Wade is overturned, that's exactly what's gonna happen. 

Amidst all the angst about SCOTUS overturning Roe v. Wade, several very real fears have come to light. The language of that first draft, according to several legal scholars, actually opens the door to the court-imposed diminishment of some civil rights. In plainer English, that means a conservative court can undo aspects of pre-established civil rights by deciding the federal government does not have constitutional jurisdiction. Inter-racial marriage, same-sex marriage, or even segregation would be open to reversal based on the idea these are states' rights issues, not federal ones. Granted, that document is a draft, but the wording is written in such a way that what was once considered settled law, like Roe v. Wade, can be overturned at the discretion of SCOTUS. 

Despite stating that Roe v. Wade is settled law in their senate confirmation hearings, it's pretty clear that the three most recently appointed Justices, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney-Barrett believe no such thing. Basically, they provided false information to the senate to insure their confirmation. But they were confirmed and nothing about that can or will change. 

But what does that have to do with burqas, child-brides, sexual slavery, and forced impregnation? 

Everything.

Since there is no movement in this country to seriously hold men accountable for involuntary pregnancy, one must consider that it is the sole function of a woman to deal with an unwanted or medically dangerous pregnancy.  Since no intervention would be permitted, a woman with an ectopic pregnancy may very well die because the hospital does not permit the removal of the fertilized egg from an incorrect location. That would be termed an abortion. So the woman dies. 

An eleven- or twelve-year old girl is raped. She is impregnated by a man involuntarily. That child then must bear a child despite the damage it will do to her body. The man, however, retains his penis and balls....so theoretically, he can do it again when his 90 days in jail are up. If he even goes to jail at all. 

Maybe I would feel less angry if men were actually held accountable for pregnancy. I mean, it's a well-known fact a woman can have unprotected sex once, then take 9 months to produce one full-term child. A man can have unprotected sex every day of those same 9 months and produce 270 full-term children.

Tell me again what he's responsible for? Feeding? Clothing? Sheltering? Or just macho chest-puffing? Or is it really about pushing women out of the workplace, diminishing their ability to earn their own way by being able to control their own bodies? And who will be next for arbitrary subjugation?

And if SCOTUS can set up a way to send women back to the 19th century because they have personal feelings about how a woman cannot make decisions for her own uterus, what else do they have up their billowy black sleeves?

The intent of the conservative justices is not simply about abortion. This is the opening salvo in the dismantling of civil rights. The draft of the overturn used language that is associated with the anti-abortion movement, indicating that there is a closeness between those justices and the movement itself. On PBS NEWSHOUR [go to 15:10 - End of Roe], Kathryn Kolbert, who defended Planned Parenthood of Southeast Pennsylvania in Planned Parenthood of Southeast Pennsylvania v. Casey in the last serious challenge before SCOTUS in 1992 pointed out that the language used in the draft opens the door to the reversal of all sorts of rights based on the 14th Amendment. She states:

I think the really critical part of the decision is that five justices of this court have said that they can overrule a long history of support for civil rights and civil liberties because they individually disagree with it. And that has never been the case. The doctrine of stare decisis says that, when a law is made, it ought to be respected from generation to generation, and only in really specific circumstances...when the underlying law has changed, when the circumstance of the factual underpinnings of a case have changed. It ought to be upheld. And I think the hard part here is, Let's think about this. We have had five decades of support for Roe vs. Wade. And then entire generations of women in this country have relied upon this decision, and, frankly, ordered their lives. Millions of women have obtained abortions as a result of Roe. And all of that is being rolled back because five individuals have decided, in my view, willy-nilly, to change the law. And I think that is a real hit on the institutional integrity of this court.

She goes on to say that this is a reciprocal right: the right to have an abortion as well as the right to carry a pregnancy to term; that it works both ways. Once you remove the right of decision making from one aspect of civil life, the door opens to the removal of other civil rights based on the personal preferences of the court. 

We don't need no stinking settled law...according to Clarence Thomas, husband of an insurrectionist who goes without any sort of consequence or recusal, who commented in Justice Alito's draft: 

"Precedent is a mantra when we don't want to think."

Really? 

That is not why SCOTUS was created as the third branch of a government that was OF We, the people, BY We, the people, FOR We, the people. Over 2/3 of this nation wants Roe v. Wade to remain as is. Suddenly, according to the Roberts court, We, the People, don't matter. 

IF Roe is overturned...IF the GOP sweeps takes control of both the Senate and the House, get used to the idea that We, the People, don't matter, and that this nation is now a Christian, evangelical nation. The rest of us are no longer welcome. 

Folks, we are living in dangerous times. 

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

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