Posters, displays and merch. It’s the month of March, and the nation has started its once-a-year recognition of women for Women’s History Month.
This year’s theme: let’s pretend to celebrate women while ripping their rights out of their hands.
Established on the promise of freedom, this country loves to rob half of its citizens of their basic human rights.
It doesn’t take an expert to see the irony in that.
On the morning of Feb. 28, 1980, the 39th President Jimmy Carter issued a Presidential Proclamation that declared the week of March 2-8 Women’s History Week, according to The American Presidency Project.
“Understanding the true history of our country will help us comprehend the need for full equality under the law for all our people,” said Carter in the Proclamation.
Seven years later, Congress officially recognized March as Women’s History Month. What started as a local convention in Santa Rosa, CA, suddenly became a nationwide celebration of women past, present and future.
Today, politicians use religion and outdated views to justify widely controversial legal actions against women.
Not only is this practice elitist and unethical, but it does not appropriately represent the citizens of the United States.
More specifically, this practice strips women of a basic human right: the right to choose.
For example, the debate on the morals of abortions has been heated since the U.S. Supreme Court infamously overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022. With the reversal, the legality of abortion became the decision of individual states.
Since then, abortion has been made illegal in 21 states, according to The New York Times.
The reversal jeopardizes the safety of women as it doesn’t put a stop to abortions, only safe ones.
It also strips women of a basic human right: the right to choose.
Another example, pregnant women cannot get divorced in Missouri, Texas, Arizona and Arkansas.
There are no exceptions, not even for domestic abuse.
This once again takes away women’s autonomy and puts them in danger.
This has become a trend among new policies concerning women. They endanger women and push the term “women’s bodily autonomy” to the brink of extinction.
If the issue with abortion and pregnant divorce were strictly in the best interest of underdeveloped, unborn children, the government would work to improve the quality of life for children post-birth. Yet education, safety and childhood hunger remain major issues.
The future for women’s rights has always been uncertain, yet history has proven women will always work toward change in legislation.
Undoubtedly, women will regain their bodily autonomy once more.
However, history has also proven that legal change can take years, decades even, to occur.
So women have found ways to adapt.
If the government will not take care of women, they will take care of each other. Recently, women distributed menstrual journals on Instagram to anyone in need after Roe v. Wade was overturned.
In yet another uncertain era for women’s reproductive rights, women will continue to show up for each other.
That is truly “girlhood.”
