HEADLINE: REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS IN PERIL

By the way, I would certainly like to see an article
in print reading;
HEADLINE: All males over 30 required by
government to have a vasectomy - we have
a serious population problem which must be
dealt with.

The majority of people in the U.S. are women. Who voted for the narrow-minded and deliberately ignorant idiots in the state legislatures and in Congress? It has been said that people get the government they deserve.

unfortunately this kind of legislation probably has a fair amount of support from the pro-life females out there. . . . . and I think there are a lot of them. . . .

Well, fortunately it was soundly denounced in the Senate.
But I find it so hard to believe that it is even a topic of
debate in the year 2003

WHOMEVER IS IN CHARGE, FEEL FREE TO PRUNE THIS
POST WHENEVER, THE DANGER IS PAST AND THE
SUBJECT IS CLOSED.

Ahh, the time machine, what a great invention;
we can go back and make all the "right to life" ers
abortion recipients.

I have a fertility control issue. When my ex-husband and I married, I convinced him that zero population growth was the way to go. However, during our courtship, I had suffered from crying jags which he -- not my gynocologist, although I did consult my doctor -- was due to the pill. His solution was I would go off the pill and we would use condoms.

Although I had successfully used a diaphragm for at least two years as a single woman, because his sister became pregnant twice while using one (she is a scatterbrain and I suggested that she never used the gel), he wanted to use rubbers.

Looking back, I wish my doctor had not been so popular with such an enormous practice and had had more time for individual consulting with me, because perhaps my problem wasn't hormones but my male partner.

I became pregnant after we were married, the first time we had sex without birth control.

Although I had always said that I wanted my children to be at least three years apart (the spacing in my family of origin) but would prefer 5 to as many as 10 years (I was 30 when I gave birth for the first time), he insisted on a second child two years later.

Our third child was something of an accident: he grumbled about condoms but refused to allow me to use a diaphragm. Of course, I conceived a third time.

The bad part is my former husband kicks the kids out his life as soon as they finish high school. He takes no interest in them.

Women have the kids ... women need to have the power to decide when and how many ... furthermore, with the present state of the world, I would have preferred to have had only one child. The planet is overburdened with humans ... far too many.

Women do have that power, plainoldme. You could have gotten a legal abortion and terminated either of your last two pregnancies if they were so distasteful to you. Besides, who ever heard of a husband who "forced" his wife not to use a diaphragm? I'd say you need to take some responsibility for your own birth control choices and stop blaming him.

Why is it every time I encounter a larry richette post, I find myself reliving the movie, "The Three Amigos"?-

Oh Plainoldme - Don't you pay ANY attention to
Larry or whatever he has to say. On the very day
he passes an 8 pound bowling ball through the head
of his penis - THAT will be the day when he gets to
say ANYTHING about women, fertility, children,
abortion, or any other intelligent discussions about,
and among women ONLY. He is certainly out of place
here on this thread & out of line as well. What does
amaze me about YOU is that you ALLOW your spouse
to make decisions that are YOURS to make. Can you
tell me why you let HIM handle your responsibilities?
He isn't the one carrying or birthing the kid. He isn't
the parent getting up in the middle of the night feeding
or caring for the children. Sounds like he isn't much in
the husband department. Maybe you ought to trade
him in for a better - newer model. One who is a bit
more in tune with REALITY. Like Larry - who says
women have plenty of power (he obviously doesn't read
the papers, where only a few weeks ago - the issue of
a woman's right to have an abortion was AGAIN up for
vote, where it passed the House, but was killed by the
Senate.) In this bill, as it was written - even if a woman's
health was in jeapardy due to the pregnancy - she still
could be denied the right to have an abortion. I can't
believe that this is 2003 and some fanatics are still out
beating the same old dead horse over an issue that was
decided ONCE AND FOR ALL by the Supreme Court
decision in Rose vs Wade. We DO jealously guard this
particular right, because it's one of the FEW that we
actually do have. Aside from having the right to go to
work, and get paid less to do the exact same job as a
man. And going to work, while STILL having ALL those
same responsibilities at home. We can still do all the
housework, cooking, shopping, child care, and on and
on and on.... but NOW we get to work ON TOP OF IT
ALL. Whatever the women's rights movement was, it
was a total disaster. We went backward instead of
forward. Believe me - I hear you and I know exactly
what kind of life you are living. I almost stayed in a
similar marriage, but, I decided that I deserved better
or else I would never marry again. I believe that we
ALL have fertility issues, the point is that we have the
right NOW to make these decisions. We had best guard
this right with our very lives.... for if Bush, Inc could
have anything to do with it - that right would be LONG
GONE!!

babsatamelia,
LOL! You certainly are correct on everything you had to say in your response ... particularly the imappropriateness of the first response to my posting!

I have been divorced from the man described for several years. People asked me why I just didn't get a diaphragm after I was married and the answer is simple: I am an honest person who would not dream of sneaking behind my husband's (or boyfriend's for that matter) back to do anything more serious than purchase a present for him or plan a surprise party. At the time, I lacked an intimate relationship with another woman, so I never had girlfriends to discuss this sort of problem with. Had that been the case, I am certain I might have been inspired to get a diaphragm!

As for the woman's movement, I have long thought that it was completely co-opted by males in general and conservative males in particular because
1.) they were jealous of the time women spent at home with the children and therefore these men sought to belittle and demean such time to make women want to leave the home for the workplace;
2.) they were greedheads, as we used to say in the 60s, and wanted the big house, luxury autos and other doodads only possible if wifey worked.

Had a talk with a young mother yesterday who said that her neighbors often admitted that ... let me emphasize this ... WORKING OUTSIDE THE HOME WAS OFTEN BUT NOT UNIVERSALLY MORE EXPNSIVE THAN STAYING HOME BUT THEY HAD TO THINK OF THEIR OWN FUTURES. When my oldest, now 25, was a baby, I had researched what I could earn then and realized that I would gain very little by working outside the house. While we did have only one car at the time (we lived in an exurban community), I did without getting my hair cut, I made clothes for myself and the my daughter, baked bread and made food from scratch. All of those economies enabled me to stay at home.

Let's face it, babsatamelia, had I written that I seized control of my own body and used a diaphragm without my husband's knowledge (which may not have been possible anyway), I would be condemned for being a " ........ on wheels."

Babs, let me explain some fundamental facts about abortion rights you seem not to understand.
1. The Supreme Court established a fundamental right to abortion in Roe V. Wade back in 1973 and has upheld that decision 3 times since then.
2. Congress has no authority to overrule a Supreme Court decision on constitutional rights merely by passing a bill.
3. The only way Roe v. Wade might be overturned would be for either the Supreme Court to change its stand--highly unlikely--or for all fifty states to pass a Constitutional amendment banning ALL abortions under ALL circumstances, which is even more unlikely.

That is why your hysteria about abortion rights is unwarranted. They are not in danger. You can stop worrying.

BTW, I think it is a sin and a shame that the women's movement has so narrowed its focus over the past few decades that it has become an abortion rights lobby. This may have something to do with the prevalence of lesbians in the leadership. But the movement should be addressing much wider issues of social justice, and it is not. One example: the feminists were utterly silent when Bill Clinton killed welfare, even though that program directly affected millions of women and their babies.

LR - most men have the sensibility and sensitivity
to do what you are doing publicly, in the privacy of their
own bathrooms(with a bar of soap)

POSTED TOPIC CLOSED PER AUTHOR.
ANY MORE AMATEUR BATHROOM OPERATORS???
FEEL FREE TO USE THIS LIKE A PUBLIC RESTROOM.

Typical--you can't answer my argument, so what do you do? You get crude and vulgar. It's "feminists" like you that have given the women's movement the bad name it has.