Human Rights Law

Aunt Sarah

By Alexa

There's more than one kind of freedom. Freedom to and freedom from.

In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underestimate it. -- Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

The Christian Heritage Week Sarah Palin signed into law in Alaska sounds like a far milder version of a state-sanctioned Prayvaganza. When a group of Handmaids-to-be chants "her fault, her fault, her fault" at a rape victim, I thought of women in Wasilla paying for their own rape kits on Palin's watch.

And of course there's the reverence for childbearing that permeates the culture of The Handmaid's Tale, from the gruesome displays of executed abortionists to the arranged marriages of girls as young as fourteen in order to "start them soon." All this is reminiscent of Palin's avowed pro-life stance, a stance so unswerving it's hard to imagine her daughter could have gone against it.

Dear Governor Sarah Palin:

Many Americans agree with your position regarding abortion -- they do this as a matter of faith, ethics, personal experience and sometimes politics. I am just wondering though, if you have thought about what would happen if you succeeded in getting your position -- that fetuses have a right to life -- established as the law of the land? Did you know that it not only threatens the lives, health and freedom of women who might want or need someday to end their pregnancies, it would also give the government the power to control the lives of women -- like you who -- go to term?

Your last pregnancy, the one that has become the topic of widespread discussion and speculation provides an important opportunity to demonstrate how this could be true.

According to press reports your water broke while you were giving a keynote speech in Texas at the Republican Governors' Energy Conference. You did not immediately go to the hospital -- instead you gave your speech and then waited at least 11 hours to get to a hospital. You evaluated the risks, made a choice, and were able to carry on your life without state interference. Texas Governor Rick Perry worried about your pregnancy but didn't stop you from speaking or take you into custody to protect the rights of the fetus.

After Ayesha Madyun's water broke, she went to the hospital where she hoped and planned to have a vaginal birth. When she didn't give birth in a time-frame comfortable to her doctors, they argued that she should have a C-section. The doctors asserted that the fetus faced a 50-75 percent chance of infection if not delivered surgically. (Risks of infection are believed by some health care providers to increase with each hour after a woman's water has broken and she hasn't delivered).

The court, believing like you that fetuses have a right to life, said, "[a]ll that stood between the Madyun fetus and its independent existence, separate from its mother, was put simply, a doctor's scalpel." With that, the court granted the order and the scalpel sliced through Ms. Madyun's flesh, the muscles of her abdominal wall, and her uterus. The core principle justifying an end to legal abortion in the U.S. provided the same grounds used to deprive this pregnant and laboring woman of her rights to due process, bodily integrity, and physical liberty. When the procedure was done, there was no evidence of infection.

When Palin first ran for mayor, the town's six department heads supported the incumbent. When she took office, she demanded that all of them resign and re-apply for their jobs "in order to test their loyalty to her administration" (one had already resigned upon her election). She also issued a gag order, requiring them to obtain her approval before talking to reporters (ADN 10/26/96). She then fired two of them - police chief Irl Stambaugh, who sued for wrongful termination, and librarian Mary Ellen Emmons, whom Palin was forced to rehire after a public outcry and a threatened recall vote. Palin's successor Dianne Keller, in contrast, was a political ally who took office with Palin's best wishes. How exactly would keeping on her deputy administrator until her term expired have caused Keller any difficulties?

There seems to be an element of sadism in Palin's firings. John Bitney, a childhood friend and close aide whom she fired after he confessed to an affair with the wife of her husband's business partner, found out that he was out of a job when his Blackberry stopped working. As for Walt Monegan, Alaska's director of public security who claims he was fired because he refused to fire Palin's estranged ex brother-in-law, he told the Anchorage Daily News (reported 7/13/08) that the news of his firing "out of the blue," adding,"If the governor was upset with me for one thing or another, it had never been communicated to me."

Governor Palin, you have led an extraordinary life, balancing work and family, public service and private family obligations. We hope you know though that your freedom relies on exactly the same legal principles that guarantee that American women can choose to have an abortion when they need and want one.

Sixty one percent of women who have abortions are already mothers. Eighty-four percent of these women will be mothers by the time they are in their forties. As a proud mother of five beautiful children, we hope you will recognize that the issue isn't abortion -- it is ensuring the lives, dignity and freedom of all pregnant women and their families.

Lynn Paltrow
Executive Director
National Advocates for Pregnant Women

And returning to The Handmaid's Tale:

However, a character named Serena Joy should offer a chilling cautionary tale to Palin and her ilk. Before the theocracy, Serena Joy was a popular televangelist, preaching about the need for women to return to the home. Afterwards, she does just that, and she is trapped in an arranged marriage with knitting and gardening as her only occupations. Atwood writes:

She doesn't make speeches anymore. She has become speechless. She stays in her home, but it doesn't seem to agree with her. How furious she must be, now that she's been taken at her word.

If you walk away from The Handmaid's Tale with only one lesson, consider this. Women who want to take power away from women should be careful what they wish for.

Full post as published by Never In Our Names on September 26, 2008 (boomark / email).