The Dominican legislature has approved an amendment to the constitution (is not exactly and ammedment, but bear with me) that says that “the right to life is inviolable from conception to death”, effectively banning abortion in *all *cases. In theory (though not yet in practice), it also makes illegal the IUD, morning after pills and other similar contraception methods.
I had no hope that most of our legislators will locate their gonads and don’t get rolled over by the campaign from the RCC. Well, they did, so fuck them. Screw them all! This only increases my hate of the institution.
The sad thing is that it will be poor women (of which none is probably related to our congressmonsters) that will suffer the consequences. If I ever need, or even just fucking want an abortion I will get it.
Honey, if you kick butt there like you do here, they’ll never know what hit 'em! Sic 'em! Give them good reason to seek the warm forgiveness of the Goddess, and Her healing power!
They’re two different places, so it’d be improper. (I had no idea until a coworker of mine announced she was going to med school in Dominica, and had to correct everyone when they said “Dominican Republic?”)
It’s always The Dominican Republic. Dominican is an entirely different country (once I am Empress of the Universe they will be punished, their cities destroyed, their villages plundered, their women and children sold into slavery and the earth salted for having taken that name and inconveniencing me when my mail got lost by Fedex).
Anyway…
Abortion was already illegal, except when the life of the mother was in danger. Even so it wasn’t uncommon for women to take medications or do things to start an abortion and show up at the hospital with a “miscarriage”. This is a dangerous practice, and the doctors were the first to oppose the change in the law. They actually wanted it relaxed.
Now, this is not going to stop anything, people will do what they have to do and doctors will too. Women like me (middle class and higher) will get an abortion either here or elsewhere, because we can afford it. My poorer sisters will pay the price. And some day somebody will be made an example of to please the RCC.
The church painted the pro-choice movement as “pro-abortion”, I found that very dishonest. No-fucking-body is pro-abortion. What the hell kinda person wants abortions for everybody? What the people who opposed the change wanted was to keep abortion legal when the life of the mother was in danger.
If I were a worse person I would wish ectopic pregnancies on the female legislators, or the daughters, wives and sisters of the male legislators who voted for this monstrosity. See how they like that. Unfortunately I am not *so *bad.
No Dominican I know believes our priests to be celibate. Really.
Wanna hear a funny story. Well, not funny exactly but…
There was this deacon of the church who worked in a Catholic orphanage about 3 years ago. He was fucking the little kids on the side. Nothing big really, but then things got weird.
He was also stealing money from the place. So a couple of “associates” started blackmailing him. The guy did what anyone of us would: he murdered them, chopped them into little pieces, put them into some metal drums and abandoned them in a remote location.
When the whole thing came to light our esteemed cardinal took the obvious, moral approach and announced that “all homosexuals” would be thrown out of the seminaries. :rolleyes:
Yeah, I hate the RCC.
Dominica is an island, formerly English, in the Lesser Antilles. For the name of the nation that shares Hispaniola with Haiti, “the Dominican Republic” is always used in English. However, “Dominican(s)” is appropriate as adjective and identifier of national for both; context makes clear which is meant.
Some right wingers, even on this message board, ignore that many Latin American nations have a good number of congress critters that are reactionary to the bone. People that would even certify a new right wing government as legal even if comes thanks to a military coup.
But IMHO, regarding abortion, it is thanks to Catholicism that the reactionaries can also get support from some leftists. We then get votes like this.
One thing that saddens me is that on THIS side of Mona Passage the one thing keeping OUR bunch of jackasses from doing the same thing (and reinstating “sodomy” as a crime as a bonus) is that we’re under the jurisdiction of US Supreme Court decisions. (I was there and I saw it: They virtually wept with thankfulness when the Lawrence decision spared them having to actually vote on the sodomy statute.) Here, too, if you know where to look you can see the 14-year olds from Good Families in their Catholic or Christian Fundamentalist school uniforms arriving into the discreetly unidentified clinic through the rear parking lot in the Cayennes driven by their mothers… who will be joining their pastor in picketing the Family Planning center at the poor neighborhoods next week.
But this has been happenning across Latin America… Nicaragua also did an absolute “no abortion ofr no reason ever” amendment recently – an amazing confluence of Catholic, Protestant Fundamentalist and yes, even leftist-nationalists(*), joining in.
(*Because, of course, reproductive and sexual freedom is all a Yankee Capitalist plot to contaminate our values and further their goal to make our culture extinct :rolleyes: There would be no premarital sex or homosexuality south of the Rio Grande but for pernicious foreign influences, oh no sir :mad: )
And that’s what’s sad about all this. The people who campaigned and took the streets where the people who least needed it or you least expect it: professionals, middle class, intellectuals the lawyers’ association, the doctors’ association. Some are definitely lefty, but all have in common pragmatism and common sense. And you and I know it’s all bullshit, you know the mentality in our countries.
You know this same congressasses are shaggin’ anything with a pulse around them, and if one of their “girlfriends” need an abortion they will get one stat. You want proof: one of the legislators who voted for the amendment just said to the press he doesn’t know what the big deal is. Illegal or not women know how to get an abortion. And then proceeded to tell them how.
(I had no idea until a coworker of mine announced she was going to med school in Dominica, and had to correct everyone when they said “Dominican Republic?”)