Issues for Your Tissues is back.

The Issues for Your Tissues radio show and podcast is back. It seems lately I'm watching a historical dramatization of the effects of anti-woman legislation on American women. Except as soon as I do, I then realize that it's not fiction; it's not a dramatization. Today, in 2014, in the United States of America women are driving hundreds and hundreds of miles, using their rent money, their grocery money, pawning their wedding rings, staying with strangers, and having to make dire choices as they endure legislation that transforms what would be a simple doctor's office visit into a two or three day ordeal.

It's some kind of crazy carryover from days when women were overtly property. Now it's worse in that the objectification, the possession, the ownership, the patriarchy (what a loaded word) is insidiously internalized by men and women alike. It's given some men the idea that controlling women's major life decisions is a good practice. It's also given about as many women the pseudo-gift of complacency with or acceptance of this practice.

I am confident that in 100 years we will not be debating women's freedoms as a matter of course. Eventually, legislators won't be able to pass laws disguised as women's health imperatives that actually reduce access to healthcare and worsen health outcomes. 

Adults look me in the eye and say that a fetus should have more rights than me. Any and all fetal personhood efforts negate the personhood of women. I am ashamed that we still allow this cognitive dissonance in public debate.

I find myself comparing social conservative practices of today to those of social conservatives of 200 years ago. Those men thought they were exercising god-given rights. They thought people they owned were unable to make decisions for themselves [24 hour waiting period]. They thought those people were wholly ignorant of anatomy and medicine [forced ultrasounds]. Their rescission of human rights forced people to travel hundreds of miles for freedom [HB2]. They used the law of the land to disenfranchise those on which they capitalized [77 cents on the dollar].

If social conservatives targeted a specific race with this legislative malarkey, we would all condemn and put an end to it immediately. Unfortunately, when they target an entire gender there is no universal condemnation. Issues for Your Tissues is back to serve as the loyal opposition to misogyny, the champion of reproductive equity, and the definitive discourse on reproductive health and sexual well being.