Generation Y has proved that women’s rights are passé. All that feminist squawking and arguing about things like domestic violence, equal pay and the impossible beauty standards enforced by the swindling mass media is useless. Since our rights were established during the women’s liberation movement, what do we have to complain about anymore?
Feminism has become the more offensive f-word for my generation of women who have replaced icons of yesteryear like Angela Davis and Gloria Steinem with Katy Perry and the ever so eloquent Snooki.
We have been more occupied with perfecting our smoky eye makeup to imitate Kim, Khloe and Kourtney than realizing that the fundamental rights established on under Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortions in the U.S., are being challenged.
The Life at Conception Act, introduced to the U.S. Senate Jan. 25 by Senators Roger Wicker (R-MS) and Rand Paul (R-KY), would establish that human life begins at the moment of conception. If passed, the bill would give equal protection to unborn fetuses and therefore eliminate reproductive rights without actually overturning Roe v. Wade. The bill would not require a two-thirds vote to institute an amendment, but rather a simple majority vote to dismantle the rights of our bodies.
Anti-abortion advocates have long utilized the fetal personhood argument, but in recent months activists have been promoting their cause with notable fervor.
As 40,000 anti-abortion advocates swarmed San Francisco for a record-breaking attendance at the seventh annual Walk for Life Jan. 22, a measly hundred abortion advocates joined the annual counter protest, the Pro-Choice Parade.
With the recently elected 112th Congress, our country will be in the hands of a largely anti-choice Congress as well as under the leadership of new House Speaker John Boehner, who since 1990 has voted 142 times against reproductive rights.
Forget the fact that a recent study conducted in Denmark has dispelled the myth that women who have had an abortion are more susceptible to mental illness. The study did, however, show that 25 percent of new mothers experience post-partum depression. Forget that one in three women have an abortion before the age of 45. Forget that the U.S has the highest rate of unintended and teen pregnancies in the industrialized world. And forget that college-age women have the highest contraceptive failure rate. Unfortunately, the most forgetful is the college-age generation of women.
Has the massive anti-choice movement drowned out the call for secure reproductive rights? Or is no one calling? We have been pampered since pampers and we cannot rely on the legislation established by our grandmothers any longer. Our reproductive rights are at risk and we must take action.
Start the conversation, start the protest, start the movement.
