Do we ever really own anything? Banks often hold
the titles to our homes and cars until we pay off our loans. Consumables
like farm animals, gasoline or electricity provide energy, but need
care unless consumed or sold. The only thing you have that cannot
be stolen, lost or given away is your body; it is the only thing that
you truly control. |
Other than summary execution, institutions can have
no more power over citizens than dictating their bodily functions:
what they can put into their bodies, who they can have sex with or
how they administer their pregnancies. The Human Right to control
your body, mind, sex partners and sex organs transcends the lesser
civil rights of societal, legal and electoral freedoms, and governments
that dictate their People's reproductive processes have rather infamous
histories. |
Rape is a horrific crime of violence accomplished by
taking control of the victim's body (specifically their sex organs),
often under the threat of death. Although rapists forcibly impregnate
more than 25,000 women in the US every year, many religious hospital
emergency departments routinely deny rape survivors information about,
and access to, emergency contraception. |
The Colorado Legislature recently addressed this egregious
violation of medical ethics, informed consent and personal freedom
by passing HB-1042 - Emergency Contraception for Rape Survivors, requiring
Colorado hospitals to inform rape survivors of emergency contraception
and offer contraceptives or refer the survivor to a capable pharmacy.
HB-1042 does not require employees opposing other people's use of
contraception to participate, or require providing contraception once
pregnancy occurs. |
Denying any patient information, medication or services
seems medically unethical. Many religious hospitals appear to deny
all patients informed consent regarding religious contraception policies
by failing to disclose them in the contract patients' sign upon admission.
Refusing to help rape survivors prevent impregnation appears to abet
felony sexual assaults in progress by helping the rapist prolong his
control over the survivor's sexual organs (especially when pregnancy
occurs). |
Governor Bill Owens vetoed HB-1042 on April 5, 2004.
|
In addition to this apparent abetment of crime in
progress, rape survivors denied legal medications and information
on religious grounds also appear to experience a secondary sexual
assault when the rapist relinquishes control of the rape survivor's
sex organs only to have the religious hospital assume control over
them by denying contraceptive information, medication and services.
When their "representative" vetoes a law designed to end
this grossly unethical and arguably criminal behavior by religious
hospitals, survivors appear to experience yet another uninvited
control of their sex organs, and yet another form of sexual assault.
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Under these conditions, rapists enjoy a much higher
probability that their control over the survivors sex organs will
endure for a longer time - perhaps forever. While some see rape
pregnancies as "innocent" life, the genetic material initiating
the pregnancy essentially is the rapist, forcibly coupled to that
of his victim against her will.
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When government dictates citizens' bodily, marital
or reproductive functions, personal freedom cannot exist, "representatives"
no longer answer to the People and the relationship between the
government and the People no longer approximates representative
democracy. Governor Owens decision to help religious hospitals and
rapists expand their control over the sex organs of rape survivors
makes the relationship between Colorado's government and her People
less like a republic and more like the relationship between rancher
and livestock.
Moo.
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