This isn’t a typical post; it’s the closest thing to a feminist rant I have in me.
What triggers (see what I did there?) this rage is Senator Blumenthal’s recent TWC — tweeting while clueless — in which he reiterates his push for abortion and contraception in response to the Zika outbreak. He possesses a singularly one-track mind on anything that resembles a “women’s problem,” and as they say, when the only tool you have is a hammer all problems look like nails. The hammer, of course, is contraception and abortion. Like a miracle drug from a shady salesman, there is no limit to what this hammer can fix. Zika? You need it! ISIS? You need it! It’s a bargain at only millions of U.S. dollars.
I wish I was making this up, but Senator Blumenthal exploited International Women’s Day to launch an attack on the Helms Amendment and hold out abortion as something desperately needed to help traumatized female victims of the Islamic State — as though they just haven’t seen enough violence. Mere days later, it was reported by none other than the New York Times that “to keep the sex trade running, [ISIS] fighters have aggressively pushed birth control on their victims so they can continue the abuse unabated while the women are passed among them. …In at least one case, a woman was forced to have an abortion in order to make her available for sex, and others were pressured to do so.”
If the West were smart, this might be jarring enough news to cause dissonance and make some among us wonder why we’re enlightened when we (ostensibly) willingly choose what are blatant instruments of terror and oppression in ISIS’s realm. If the response of pro-abortion elites is to pat Westerners on the back for being so civilized, I have no words.
The Times article also notes that “the methodical use of birth control during at least some of the women’s captivity explains what doctors caring for recent escapees observed: Of the more than 700 rape victims…just 5 percent became pregnant during their enslavement.” After reading both this and our Senator’s embarrassingly insensitive piece, I have to ask, does he have any brilliant suggestions for helping the other 95%?
Of late, Blumenthal has shifted focus from ISIS back to Zika, promoting a letter signed by him and 30 other Senate Democrats, a who’s-who that 
includes Chris Murphy (who shouldn’t escape these criticisms just because he seems marginally less obsessed) and Bernie Sanders (hello). Unlike the ISIS article, in this letter, abortion is The Thing That Must Not Be Named, which is ludicrous since everybody knows the euphemistic code by now. Contraception, for some reason, is acceptable to discuss. Contraception for Zika…whoo boy. Well, this is obviously very important since we dizzy broads of reproductive age, particularly the poor Latina variety, just cannot figure out this ovulation thing. We live in fear of being randomly ambushed by a creepy stork who stalks people in libraries. If only some kindly old, white, wealthy liberals could rescue us!
To be fair, they do have a point that not all the ladies of the Southern Hemisphere have a choice. Some are raped. The concern is duly noted, but also the lack of any practical initiatives or emphasis in this letter on preventing rape. Breaking news: contraception does squat for that. On this, I have to side with whoever created this meme, which spread rapidly among my liberal friends:
When I’m sharing stuff like this, I might as well go back to bed.
Nope, no urgency to fund rape prevention initiatives. Plenty of urgency for preventing disabled babies from being born. A journalist with microcephaly has already responded masterfully to that arrogance.
The mediocrity of Blumenthal’s proposals is the product of an intellect that is so stuck in a box, the cardboard walls look like flowing fields. Sad. One wants to stage a prison break, but encounters a bit of an ethical hesitation upon recalling the tragic end of Brooks in The Shawshank Redemption — the old convict couldn’t handle freedom once he got it.
Yes, I said his thinking is mediocre and incredibly — even if not intentionally — anti-woman.
Think about it. Why do these things lend themselves so easily to being tools of misogyny? Who can love a woman, yet curse her fertility? Who can love her while despising her offspring? It’s a deeply personal attack on her very self, her DNA.
I sincerely hope that an old dog can still learn new tricks. In the meantime, this is outrageous and I think we have the right to be ticked about how we’re being represented to the world.
You Might Also Like
