From Iraq to the Supreme Court: A New Dark Ages for Women

n an act of perverse dishonesty, Bush claimed the war on Iraq would liberate women. In reality, it has visited the stench of death upon the birth wards, the bedrooms of children, and the daily routines of women as well as men throughout Iraq. In the post-Sadam central power vacuum, Sharia law is flourishing, forcing women under the hijab, fostering "honor killings" and filling the morgues with growing numbers of women's bodies bearing signs of rape, sexual mutilation and torture. A dark curtain is being curtain being pulled over the schools that once served girls and dreams of equality are being snuffed out.

Here at home, George Bush's claim to support the liberation of women is more shameless hypocrisy. Speaking sanctimoniously about the "value" of fetal tissue, Bush has overseen the most aggressive and cruel assault on women's fundamental rights and the fostering of an openly patriarchal culture.

Yesterday's Supreme Court decision, which Bush heralded, criminalized the abortion procedure scientifically known as dilation and extraction (and manipulatively labeled "partial birth abortion" by anti-choice fanatics) and was written so vaguely that it could be used to ban the most common abortion procedure used by women after the first trimester. It is a law that lays the basis to begin sending the courageous doctors who provide women abortion procedures -- often at the risk of death -- to prison. And, in a situation where lack of abortion access is beginning to drive women to seek illegal abortions, this new law is a five ton weight pressed down on women's lives already stalked by brutality, degradation, and endless insults large and small. It is not only a new legal precedent along the way towards outlawing abortion it is also red meat thrown to a hungry movement of Christian fascists determined to end not only abortion, but also birth control and any kind of independence of women.

If women are not free to decide for themselves without shame and without apology when and whether they will become mothers, they cannot be free. If women are not free, then no one can be free.

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