It’s been another whopper of a week. This time, you’ve all been part of it. Stage 6 of load shedding!
Over 13 hours a day without power, and we expect the economy to recover?
I don’t know about you, but I feel unsettled by it and keep waiting for a tilt moment. I expect that it will be me beating up some cretin for throwing a chip packet out of a car window while I’m waiting for the homeless man to direct the traffic at an electricity-free traffic light.
On top of all that, Roe vs Wade was overturned in the USA. For those of you who don’t know, it’s the Abortion Law’ that gave women the right to abortion for over 50 years.
Now, I am not going into the debate about whether abortion is right or wrong, that I leave to your conscience, but what I am fascinated by is the outpouring of astonishment from people in the States. For those of you outside America – you can be outraged and forgiven for it.
If you are American (and I’m not sure my readership stretches that far) – how did you NOT know it would happen? I don’t know if you watched Trump at a rally this past weekend, proudly announcing that he had delivered on his promise. Probably the only promise in the history of politics that has been delivered.
This decision has been the source of heated debate around our supper table. It has brought up issues around the right to choose – so naturally, the anti-vaxers jumped on the bandwagon.
Transgender rights got thrown in, and everybody was offended.
In South Africa, thankfully, abortion is still legal, and I pray that we don’t follow the USA back into the dark ages. I know women who have had an abortion and regretted it. I women people who have had one, and it allowed them to achieve great things.
I know women who chose to have the baby and have it adopted. Some live with demons, and some don’t. The point is that it is an extremely difficult decision to make with lifelong consequences. I pray that none of you are very in the position that you have to make these difficult choices.
Pregnancy is a by-product of sex, whether you have consented or not. Whether you have planned for it or not. Whether your birth-control worked or not. What I do know is an unwanted baby has a lifetime of trauma ahead of it, and a baby born into poverty will almost certainly never escape it.
Over 900 babies were born to girls under the age of 10 in 2021 in Gauteng alone. Read that again. You read right. How is that okay on any level? Over 150 cases of child abuse go to court in Gauteng every month. I’m sure these children were not wanted and are now being punished for their very existence.
I do a lot of work in communities, educating them about menstrual and reproductive health, and almost always, the girls tell me that when they have plucked up the courage to go to the clinic for contraception, they are shamed by the sisters at the clinic. More times than not, they leave without contraception.
I tell them all to loudly shame the sister back. How dare she shame and judge you for wanting to protect your reproductive choices? I hope that those judgemental imbeciles face the wrath of the Department of Health and lose their jobs. Who am I kidding, they can’t be found in the dark?
Access to safe and informed contraception is a basic human right. It’s a female right so let’s ignore it and put the right of a man who identifies as a woman ahead of the agenda. Let’s not talk about women who bleed but rather persons who bleed because they far outnumber women who identify as women? When did we become so accommodating of stupidity?
Can you hear me having a melt down?
Let me end off this rant with what Bette Midler has had to say about the whole Roe vs Wade debacle: “Time to ban Viagra. Because, if pregnancy is God’s will, then so is a limp dick!”
Saturday Star