America Hates Women

Petertopia should never happen.

The United States of America, the greatest country on Earth, land of the free and home of the brave, has it out for women.

We've accepted that women are going to be in the workplace. They haven't shut up about working and voting and having a say in how business is run in this country for 70 years, and they're still having babies and taking care of the house, so we grant them this. And they might as well drive and go to college and own property, cause it just gets complicated when they get all mad that they aren't equal.

But this whole women being in charge of their sexual activity and reproductive rights? Or having either of those two things to begin with?

There are two laws proposed right now that will make it all sorts of fun to be a modern woman. The first is an Arizona law (surprise surprise) that will force women to provide proof to their employers that they are using the birth control their company insurance policies provide for medical purposes that are unrelated to preventing pregnancy. Medical issues such as endometriosis or polycystic ovarian syndrome are treated with hormonal contraception, and Arizona law currently requires employers that provide medical benefits to their employees to include birth control. But not only is that being repealed (meaning health insurance no longer has to cover birth control at all), the new proposal will also make it possible for an employer to fire a woman for using birth control that a company chooses to provide for its intended purpose: preventing pregnancy.

So, religious Arizona employers who are kind enough now to include prescription birth control in their health insurance plans want to make sure that it's only a last resort type of medication, taking advantage of medical side effects. And if you can't or won't prove that you have a life threatening or debilitating medical condition and you're using company provided birth control? Fired.

Fired for not wanting to get pregnant. And being a whore.

If you'd rather keep your job and take the birth control that your company is so gracious to provide (no word on whether there's any sort of cost associated with these health plans, which means women could very well be fired for something they're paying for) all you have to do is provide your private medical records, with proof of your diagnosis and doctor-recommended treatment to your employer. Now your employer will know more about your body than most friends probably do.

No word on whether or not men will have to prove their erectile disfunction to their employers in order to get prescription Viagra.

The other proposed law is actively attacking women and accusing them of child abuse just for being unmarried. The bill proposes that a child being raised by a single mother (not father) is considered to have an abusive living situation. The sponsor of the bill, Donald Pridemore (a Republican, if you can believe that), says that women should not "jump into a divorce" and look at alternatives or try to remember why they got married in the first place. He's quoted as saying the traditional family is in crisis, and this is why what he's calling the child abuse law must exist. If you think about it, he does kind of have a point: we're letting gays marry, women have abortions, and the divorce rate is at an all time high. What is our country coming to?

He also said children living with single mothers are "20 times more likely to be sexually abused" but doesn't say where he found those statistics. I wonder how he believes the fathers of these "abused" children are free from blame: it takes two to get married and it takes two to get divorced, and if courts award sole custody to the mother, what does that tell you about the father? Seriously, this is one step away from making divorce illegal.

These bills come on the heels of two different measures that force women in two different states to have an ultrasound (not the regular kind you see in movies, the up the vagina kind) before going through with an abortion, groups everywhere denying women's right to not get pregnant, and making abortions illegal or incredibly difficult to get in other states. Pretty sure I'm moving to Canada.