The only conclusion I can come to about recent debates on abortion rights has been these law makers and their voters want to have sex with their daughters. Based on their votes, they also want to be free to have sex with underage girls, the younger the better it seems at times.
Why else would a lawmaker vote to deny abortion rights in the case of incest and children who have been raped?
We have plausible evidence they want to do so, starting with the former president.
Trump has said out loud, or agreed, with statements that his daughter Ivanka is a piece of ass (Howard Stern Show), that she’s stacked, and he’d perhaps date her if she weren’t his daughter. If we’ve been paying attention, we’ve seen many, what I’d hope you’d agree are, inappropriate pictures of him with Ivanka when she was younger. He was also friends with Jeffrey Epstein and has allegedly had sex with underage girls based on what appear to be credible victims. We’ve also read about his walking into a teen beauty pageant dressing room while contestants were changing and joking about his obligation to sleep with the contestants (Rolling Stone).
Matt Gaetz of Florida has been accused of having sex with an underage girl. How he came to be the guardian of a 12-year old boy from Cuba has also been suspect.
Roy Moore of Alabama got himself banned from a mall for allegedly seeking encounters with girls as young as 14.
Mark Foley of Florida was propositioning and sexting with congressional pages, teenage girls.
The above is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of Republicans (mainly Republicans, but yes, there have been a couple of Democrats as well) and conservatives who have been accused and/or arrested for sex with an underage girl or boy. Almost everyday the news carries another story of a conservative religious leader using their position of power to molest and rape minors across the country.
These are the same men who are working to control the rights, bodily and otherwise, of women and girls across our nation. They want to deny women and girls the right to necessary healthcare, family planning, reproductive rights, and abortion.
To what end I wonder?
Is it control? Yes!
Is it to cause great pain? Yes!
Is it because they want to prove their own masculinity? Yes!
Is it to show a male should have the power in any relationship? Yes!
To me, it has to be all of these reasons and more. Why else go to such great lengths to limit the rights of women and girls?
What gets me the most is the men of this country who may believe the women and girls in their lives are their equal, but refuse to stand up and say something. Who go along to get along at the peril of their daughters, their nieces, their sisters, their mothers, and all the other women and girls in their lives. Or have these men only been paying lip service to equality, but have secretly wanted to exert control and put the females in their lives in their “place”?
Then we have women of voting age who also go along to get along. Who will stand by and watch themselves lose right after right and do nothing. They don’t vote. They don’t stand up for themselves. And most sadly, they don’t stand up for their daughters and granddaughters.
Should the burden rest solely on the women of voting age to right the wrongs of the Republican men? Of course not. There is the ideal and then there is reality. We know there are more females in this country than males. If all voting aged women stood up and said they weren’t going to take it anymore, they could elect, with the help of enlightened confident voting aged men, politicians that would begin to codify the rights of women and girls. Said politicians would also lift us all up through sensible gun control, raise the minimum wage to a living wage, provide reasonable college loan relief, support infrastructure investment, save the social safety nets, and so much more.
As always, I invite you to join me in the fight for democracy and the rights of those to whom history has not been kind. Get involved with a campaign through donations, canvassing, calling, writing, texting, driving, deliverying, or any and all ways in which you feel comfortable.
Together we can change the course of our great country for the betterment for all.
Take that first step, and take it today.
Personal Reflections of a Middle-Aged Man 