“In patriarchal societies violence against women has always been widespread. It is not only based on the belief that women matter less, it is actually based on the assumption that women are not fully equal and self-determined human beings, that they somehow need to be disciplined to be controlled. We are battered, we are raped, we are abused. Our choices are being restricted because we do not matter enough, but also because patriarchy tells her that we have to be kept in check.
That includes also the denial of our right to choose over our own bodies. Forcing a woman to go through with a pregnancy against her own will is a form of violence against women. That is true for the 10-year-old rape victim who had to travel from Ohio to Indiana to get an abortion. That is true for the 31-year-old Savita who died in Ireland in 2012 after being denied abortion care when she was miscarrying. And that is also true for already six women who died in Poland after not receiving very much-needed abortion care because of the inhumane defacto abortion ban.
Whenever a woman dies because she did not receive the abortion care she needed to be saved, society sends a message to all of us, that even in moments of absolute vulnerability, they will not help us, because our lives do not matter enough. They will actually let us die. They will let us die because a fundamentalist ideology matters more than our lives. Honestly, I do not want to live in a society like this, and definitely I do not want to get pregnant in a society like this.”
A brilliant speech by Terry Reintke