“Equality
for women is progress for all.” Is the theme for this year’s International
Women’s Day. From the brief recap of International Women’s Day (IWD) on the
United Nation’s Website, IWD is supposed to coincide with the Millennium
Development Goals for 2015.
"The
eight Millennium Development Goals (MDG's) - which range from halving extreme
poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary
education, all by the target date of 2015 - form a blueprint agreed to by all
the world's countries and all the world's leading development institutions.
They have galvanized unprecedented efforts to meet the needs of the world's
poorest."
http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/bkgd.shtml
On
this International Women’s Day, I am empowered by knowing that I have value in
myself because I am who God created me to be. I know what my body is capable
of, and am awed and inspired by what I can do intellectually and physically. I
don’t want to have anything mucking it up now that I’ve finally gotten “right”.
There are those who would say that trying to eliminate the pill and abortion is
asinine. To them I would remind that women voting, having a fair paying job,
being able to raise a family as a single parent would have been asinine too,
all it took was support, empowerment and education to see us through.
These
goals are as follows:
1.
Eradicate
Extreme Poverty and Hunger
2.
Achieve
Universal Primary Education
3.
Promote
Gender Equality and Empower Women
4.
Reduce
Child Mortality
5.
Improve
Maternal Health
6.
Combat
HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other Diseases
7.
Ensure
Environmental Stability
8.
Global
Partnership Development
While
these are all great goals, I want to look at four of them in a different light.
I want to look at numbers three through six in the light of birth control and
abortion.
Promote
Gender Equality and Empower Women
In
my opinion there is nothing that has ripped gender equality away from women
than the over prescription of artificial birth control to women. From the
lightest case of acne, to menstrual cramps, to just a girl being a girl I have
heard too many reasons for women to be prescribed the pill. It is true that
there are legitimate reasons for prescribing it such as Polycystic Ovary
Syndrome and Endometriosis, there are many other medicines or holistic
treatments that can be used before going on the pill.
Women
should be empowered to know what they are capable of and what their body is
capable of doing if we just leave it alone. 60 years of “casual” use has left
women ingesting a Class 1 Carcinogen. A Class 1 Carcinogen as defined by the
American Cancer Society is a substance “known to cause cancer
in humans.”
Lower
on the page you can find a list of what those substances are. Included as a
Class 1 are alcoholic beverages, asbestos, benzene, coal, Coke production, (I
am looking at my empty bottle of Diet Coke a little afraid)
estrogen-progesterone oral contraception and menopausal therapies, hematite
mining, and tobacco use and secondhand smoke exposure. I have been exposed to
many of these in my life, including hematite mining, but the exposure to those
I have control over, I make as minimal as possible.
Being
an equal to a man does not mean that women should strip away their fertility.
In fact, you would never think to ask the same of a man. The only form of true
male sterilization is a vasectomy, which leads to impotence and a weakened
prostate, not to mention it is permanent.
Reduce
Child Mortality
The
inconvenient truth about abortion is that it kills children. A wise pregnant
friend when asked by my husband if she knew what she was having replied
“eventually, contractions.” She knew we meant boy or girl but it was a clever
way to tell us no, she did not know the gender of her child. The same goes for
another mother when asked the same questions replied “I’m hoping for a healthy
baby, my two year old is hoping for a puppy.”
You
may find the above funny but the truth is, a pregnant woman will give birth to
a human child. As a woman, I could not give birth to puppies, kittens, or any
other form of mammal, the result will always be human.
Abortion
advocates have included clever forms of hiding this inconvenient truth by
calling these children, zygotes, embryos, fetuses, and a clump of cells. You
could call me a clump of cells and I could call a dog a shedding, drool
factory.
Endangered
species across the world have more rights and protections than a child in the
womb of it’s mother. If the UN is truly committed to reducing child mortality
rates, they also must call for the end of abortion across the world.
Improve
Maternal Health
Access
to abortion and birth control is currently touted as a fundamental right for
women’s health. Many friends who have recently given birth have often been
asked by their discharging physician what their plans for birth control are
after leaving the hospital.
Unfortunately,
I don’t have the ability to be an authority on Maternal Health, I have never
been pregnant long enough to “need” Maternal Health Care. On the flip side of
Women’s Health, why then is access to birth control and abortion a woman’s
right, but trying to check for reproductive problems and repair them is not a
right. I would love to be able to check if my husband and I have fertility
issues, but they are not covered by my insurance until we have hit our $2600
deductible. It isn’t worth it to go further in debt to try and become
healthier.
Combat
HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other Diseases
This
past fall I had the awesome opportunity to witness Pam Stenzel speak to a
packed house of nearly 750 youth and parents. A few alarming statistics I
picked up from her presentation. 1 in 3 people under the age of 25 are infected
with a Sexually Transmitted Disease. Sexually active teens and young adults are
at a 50% risk of contracting an STD each time they have sex. Most STD’s are not
treatable with antibiotics. Most of our parents and grandparents only knew of 5
STD’s there are 30 in existence today. Some STD’s are not detectable through
normal means of screening and some are not detectable until a person has been
infected for five years.
While
Malaria is a serious problem, there are ways to keep it contained through
preventative medication, mosquito nets and reducing standing water. Looking at
the above statistics, condoms, pills and abortions are not doing anything to
lower these numbers. HIV/AIDS and STD’s can be prevented through education and
abstinence.
By
education I don’t mean telling girls to use the pill, patch or ring, and
teaching teens how to put a condom on a banana. Sharing the above statistics
would have been enough to teach me not to have sex with multiple partners.
Handing out condoms like collector cards and pills like candy won’t prevent
anything, it will just continue to create a generation who will not be able to
have children when they choose.
The
sexual liberation of the 1960’s to the present haven’t done anything to
liberate women. We have seen the normalization of sexual deviant behavior.
Women rather than choosing to be independent have become reliant on their
sexualities not as something beautiful and empowering, but as a currency that
has increased the amount of pornography, human trafficking, and the spread of
countless disease. Children are seen as a commodity rather than a precious gift
and a burden if not “chosen”.
On this International
Women’s Day, I am empowered by knowing that I have value in myself because I am
who God created me to be. I know what my body is capable of, and am awed and
inspired by what I can do intellectually and physically. I don’t want to have
anything mucking it up now that I’ve finally gotten “right”. There are those
who would say that trying to eliminate the pill and abortion is asinine. To
them I would remind that women voting, having a fair paying job, being able to
raise a family as a single parent would have been asinine too, all it took was
support, empowerment and education to see us through.
