Editorial: Here’s The Thing

America used to pride itself on being a melting pot: a place where all kinds of people could mix it up. Share community life, build together, sometimes forge colorful friendships and lift one another up. To the extent it was ever true, that was then. This is now: one-half of the body politic champions political vultures who campaign on Americans’ distrust of the people around them. They promise to build walls to keep people out (yeah, that guy—married to an immigrant, not once but twice). They gerrymander congressional districts so as not to be burdened with actual democracy. They craft laws to restrict voting, based on cynically calculated demographics. And they fight tooth and nail to take health care away from masses of people, most of all women.

As for that last one, come on! It’s 2015, people! Nobody is asking that you have an abortion. No one would even attempt to change your opinion about abortion, or your conviction about when life begins, or your religion, or ANYTHING.

But here’s the thing: why would you demand that others live by your beliefs? Is it in the constitution that we all have to believe in the same things, or make the same choices? I don’t think so. In fact, the constitution seems to be all about freedom of thought and expression. Well, for men, anyway.

People used to say the Equal Rights Amendment was unnecessary—redundant, in fact—because, by “all men are created equal,” they really meant all people… Well, white people, anyway.

Okay, here’s the thing. Women are people. (I know, right? Who would’ve thought?) Women are whole, human beings with bodies of their own, minds of their own, hearts of their own, too. Yet a substantial and very loud (sometimes terrorist) contingent of Americans believes that decisions about women’s lives—our futures, our families, our health care, our very bodies—are theirs to make. That their morality is the only morality, their opinion the only one that counts. They believe women must be forced to live by their rules.

Would you agree to terms like that? In America? A deal that says, we don’t care what you believe in. We don’t care about your dreams or your plans for your life. We don’t care about your reasons, your fears, or your medical problems, either. You get the health care we (politicians? white men? tv evangelists? tea-partiers?) choose for you. The body you walk around in does not belong to you, because …

Please finish that sentence if you feel that you should be in charge of women’s health care decisions. Tell us all why your beliefs trump every woman’s autonomy. In America.

Lee Marcus is a Hornell area playwright and former Evening Tribune columnist.