Last week, Hillary Clinton gave the keynote address at the 2015 Women in the World Summit, and fired a couple of shots at certain should-be-fossilized religious institutions that, for some reason, remain in a more or less constant tizzy over women deciding what to do with their uteri.
Far too many women are still denied critical access to reproductive healthcare and safe childbirth. All the laws we’ve passed don’t count for much if they’re not enforced. Rights have to exist in practice, not just on paper. Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will; and deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs, and structural biases have to be changed. As I have said and as I believe, the advancement of the full participation of women and girls in every aspect of their societies is the great unfinished business of the 21st century.
And then:
America moves forward when all women are guaranteed the right to make their own healthcare choices — not when those choices are taken away by an employer like Hobby Lobby.
OK! Hard to argue with that. And yet …
Of course, Clinton never uttered the word “abortion” in her speech, but conservatives are already up in arms about her so-called mission to open “the path to Abortion Nirvana,” which is not a set of words I could ever be dumb enough to make up.
So, to refresh: It’s 2015, some morons out there are still conflating reproductive healthcare with baby-killing sprees, and Hillary’s fed up — as are we all.
