Designing the American Burqa
by Janet Brazill
The Taliban has been notorious for its treatment
of women in Afghanistan. Whenever they appeared in public, women were
forced to wear a burqa, an all-enveloping garment that covers the
wearer's entire body except for a small region about the eyes, which
is covered by a concealing mesh or grille. Women were not allowed
to work or to be educated after the age of eight. They could not be
treated by male doctors unless accompanied by a male chaperone, which
meant that many illnesses remained untreated. They faced public flogging
and even execution for violations of the Taliban's Islamic laws. The
burqa effectively assigned Afghan women to a secondary status in society.
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American women may soon be required to wear the Burqa
being fashioned by religious forces in our country. This will not
be the confining garment favored by the Taliban, but a network of
restrictive laws that will accomplish the same objective of placing
women under male control. |
Make no mistake, this garment has been in the making
for a long time. And now its shape can be clearly seen with the recent
U.S. Supreme Court decision in which five Catholic men who formed
the majority opinion now permit a particular abortion procedure to
be banned with no exception for a woman's health. The case itself
was based on a law passed by Congress where Roman Catholics are the
majority, a law which sought to overturn a previous Court ruling that
determined the health provision was necessary. |
This effort to oppose women's reproductive rights began
shortly after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.
In his 1980 ruling on the Hyde Amendment (which denied federal funding
for abortions for poor women), Federal Judge John J. Dooling referenced
the Pastoral Plan which he concluded had been implemented. This was
the 1975 "Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities," a detailed blueprint
created by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) for
infiltrating and manipulating the American democratic process at the
local, state, and national levels to favor Catholic policy on birth
control and abortion. In 1980 this infrastructure helped elect a president.
The Reagan administration, overwhelmingly the most Catholic in American
history, assigned an ambassador to the Vatican, and instituted the
"Mexico City policy," reversing U.S. commitment to international family
planning. William Wilson, the first ambassador, told Time magazine
on February 24, 1992, "the Reagan Administration agreed to alter its
foreign-aid program to comply with the church's teachings on birth
control." Since then, the NCCB has become a powerful lobbying group
in Congress. |
To reach the public, fundamentalist Protestant ministers
were cultivated, none of whom had shown a previous interest in abortion.
Catholic Bishops helped finance the Moral Majority (started by Paul
Weyrich, a Catholic) after Jerry Falwell agreed to oppose abortion,
a new topic for him. Now, with the Supreme Court on their side, these
allies hope to pass many more laws restricting abortion. Will America
eventually join El Salvador in prohibiting abortion altogether, even
to save a woman's life? There, women suspected of having abortions
are examined by forensic vagina inspectors, and if guilty, can be
imprisoned for up to thirty years, along with family members who help
them. |
This holy war on women's independence may be creating
an American Burqa fully as terrible as the Taliban's. |
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