Opinion: How Many Ways Are There To Spell Misogyny? Ask Arizona

PixabayPhoto byArtTower

The AZ state supreme court recently voted 4-2 to send Arizona and its citizens back to the 19^th Century where abortions of any kind are illegal, except if done to save a woman’s life.

Pronouncing that it’s the State’s legislature that should determine what women can do with their own bodies.

So, as you review the brochures and think of retiring to Prescott, AZ or one of the other over-55 communities think about your children and the generation now positioned with one foot in the 21^st Century, where iPhones and Fitbits monitor their daily activities, while their other remains planted in the 19th, keeping them in lock-step with the sensibilities of an 1860s US territory.

It’s hard to imagine two ideals so far apart as a group’s (GOP) belief that the Constitution affords us all God-given rights that we should all cherish while at the same time stripping the female of the species of their reproductive rights.

The far-reaching 1864 Criminal Code, authored by one man, Judge Howell, covered various offenses and decrees, ranging from abortion and when it could take place, to who could and could not give testimony against a white man in court (hint: not blacks or people of color) to granting a local Army surgeon’s divorce from his wife while also considering that girls as young as ten years old could give their consent to having sex. One assumes after the blessing of the local minister or justice of the peace.

So, when considering the state of US jurisprudence (remembering the Alabama Chief Justice’s recent statement about abortion incurring the wrath of a holy God) and while wondering what university’s law program has a direct link to religion and the Old Testament, perhaps it would be wise to keep in mind what political party is rejoicing when such laws are imposed on all of us.

When the opinions of a state’s citizenry are ignored in favor of what one man and one evangelical group’s ideal of a God-Fearing America looks like, what should our equal and opposite reaction be, come November?