Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
My mother was a stay-at-home mom because my father did not think it appropriate for her to work outside the home while raising children.
As soon as we hit middle school, my mother convinced him she could take a job that allowed her to be home when we arrived home. When we hit high school, she got a full-time job and once out the door, she never looked back (good for you, Mom!).
I have an 83-year-old friend who became the top administrative assistant to the CEO of a major airline when being a CEO of an airline really meant something. She had unlimited possibilities before her but had to leave her position when her husband decided it was best they move out of Chicago.
When I was in high school, I was the only female student in my physics class, so the teacher appointed me to take attendance (no choice), often instructing the other male students to make sure to compliment me on how nice I looked that day.
If you ask any woman of generations past, they will have many stories to tell you of lost opportunities and treatment at the hands of men who, with the best of intentions, believed they knew what was best for them and giving them the metaphorical pat on the head, would tell them what to do without giving them a choice.
I bring all this up now because Indiana’s new law making it nearly impossible for a woman to choose the course of her pregnancy, involving her body, recalls all those metaphorical pats on the head. The difference is that this time, women are being patted on the head not by one man but rather by a group of men: Republican men. Currently out of Indiana’s 150 legislators, 40 are women, or 26.7%. Of that number of women, just over half are Republican. As it was Republicans who carried the water to limit a woman’s right to choose, it was Republican men who have done this to women with the bill being signed into law by our male Republican governor.
It is a group of men who have declared that a woman who finds herself pregnant shall not have the right to choose what will happen with her body. If she has money, she might be able to leave the state and seek assistance in terminating her pregnancy but if she is poor, she will have a very limited ability to choose. If she cannot find assistance to go outside the state, she will have to accept the pat on her head and for the next nine months, per the decision of men, her body will not be under her control.
It makes me very angry when I hear Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita attack the ACLU and Planned Parenthood for fighting against this law, claiming the two groups “have made their intentions clear—this is just another grab for fundraising dollars.” Rokita is completely tone deaf if he does not understand how women—including many Republican women—view this law as setting back the rights of all women.
The Fifteenth Amendment granting Black men the right to vote was ratified on Feb. 3, 1870. The Nineteenth Amendment finally granting all women the right to vote was ratified on Aug. 18, 1920. Ladies, get out there and vote!•
__________
Celestino-Horseman is an Indianapolis attorney. Send comments to ibjedit@ibj.com.
Click here for more Forefront columns.
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.
“that a woman who finds herself pregnant”
Is getting pregnant like catching a common cold?