On Grown-Up Words Like "Incorporate" and "Uterus"

Mon, 2011-04-11 00:06

Amanda Marcotte, in rare form on the recent brouhaha over the American Taliban's effort in the Florida state legislature to censor censure censor a fellow legislator for using the word "uterus" around children. As in the sentence "If my wife incorporated her uterus, you all would say hands off."

[P]eople who can’t tolerate hearing the syllables you-ter-us spoken aloud should not be filing 18 separate bills aimed at snatching control of the organs away from the rightful owners. If you want to control something that badly, you should be able to say it out loud.

Source: RHRealityCheck.org

This quip more than any other illuminates the wicked-childishness of the anti-choice mind set.

She notes that the children present were high-school age legislative pages, and ponders the (trust me, absolutely real) conservative belief "that a girl of 15, 16 or 17 is too young to hear the word “uterus,” but she’s plenty old enough to be forced to bear a child against her will." But I digress.

I'd just like to point out that this tidbit from, the Washington Independent (via Barbara Morill)

The ACLU of Florida. The ACLU has just launched a website at which women can incorporate their uteri online, thus sending a message to Florida legislators that “less regulation and government intrusion begins with a woman’s uterus.” The website calls on women to literally make their uterus their own business.

Source: Washington Independent

Here's the official ACLU Incorporate My Uterus website.

My feeling is that it's a good idea to keep pushing conservative's operatic tropes into opposition: the "sanctity" of business vs. the "sanctity" of life, the "sanctity" of pollution and pesticides vs. the "sanctity" of life, etc.  It won't affect the true believers, sure, but not everyone who pulls the lever for those guys is a true believer.

A fifteen-year-old girl in

Submitted by ozymandias (not verified) on Mon, 2011-04-11 06:56.

A fifteen-year-old girl in Florida knows what a uterus is. She has had sex education twice (fifth and eighth grade), and possibly three times, depending on whether she'd had health class yet. In both, they have explained the reproductive organs and the process of having a period, in which uteri are intimately involved. She has almost certainly been dealing with the monthly shedding of her uterine lining for two or three years already.

Some people no longer need to be protected.

Or at least they don't need

Submitted by figleaf on Mon, 2011-04-11 07:53.

Or at least they don't need to be protected from *words.* Protected from Florida legislature Teahadists? Evidently so. Thanks, Oz. --fl]

That's awesome; shared the

Submitted by Argyle (not verified) on Mon, 2011-04-11 10:17.

That's awesome; shared the link on my FB.  Thanks for posting it!  :)

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