In the 80s, I first attended an historic spring rite at Wrenn’s Mill in the Isle of Wight County when the shad are said to run in the James River.
Shad were put on planks the way the native inhabitants had originally and, while this feast was cooked, everyone talked politics and traded political endorsements.
This shad planking gathering has been going on since the 1930s and it has become a show case for anyone who wants to run for office in Virginia.
When I first attended in the 80s, some of the politicians in attendance whispered that they resented that women had been “recently” allowed to attend; they added, it was no longer just the men, so they could no longer pee in the woods. Don’t ever get between a man who has been drinking beer and an English box wood.
I was discouraged all the more because the Virginia General Assembly, about the time I first attended a shad planking, had narrowly voted down the Equal Rights Amendment that would have declared equality among the sexes.
In the years since, women have been accepted at the shad planking as guests and candidates. So I had the profound misunderstanding that Virginia had become the New Dominion. After all, women appeared to be treated as almost equal. So it appeared until the current legislative session when our General Assembly has shown itself to be the single most chauvinistic legislative body – and the subject of late night ridicule.
Out of one side of their collective mouth, the Republicans say they don’t want government interfering with our health, and then they pass legislation dictating what a woman’s doctor must do, indeed, a procedure that many parents would be embarrassed to describe to their daughters. Having described it, any woman of any age would recoil. You might presume any man would as well at the thought of requiring a mother, wife, sister or friend to endure what our General Assembly contrived without their consent.
Women may have thought that they enjoyed confidentiality when visiting their physicians but the Republicans including women legislators who should know better have fought to intrude upon a woman’s privacy when she consults with her physician about having an abortion.
Lest there be any confusion on this score, I hasten to add that, whatever your religious view of life, and you are welcome to abide by whatever view you have, it is not the law of the land if you believe that abortions are illegal; the U.S. Supreme Court long ago decided that a woman may have an abortion in the first trimester without any government interference.
Our General Assembly, led by the Republicans, would have required a physician to force any woman who wanted to have an abortion to submit to an examination by a probe that is tantamount to a sexual assault under the criminal code of Virginia.
In response to mass demonstrations in Richmond, the General Assembly now thinks it might be better to demand that a woman have a sonogram that does not invade her physical person but that she will have to pay for, and that the experts tell me, won’t show anything – in terms of fetal development – and that appears calculated to demean and humiliate women because it has nothing to do with a woman’s decision to have an abortion.
Indeed, the bill’s Republican Patron, Kathy Byron, from Lynchburg, admitted at a hearing before the Senate Education and Health Committee that her purpose was to try to change a woman’s mind. On her web site, she said, “government control over our health care tramples upon the rights of individuals and families.”
Republican Delegate Todd Gilbert showed his ignorance by saying that women have abortions as a “lifestyle convenience.” Todd was awarded the “Champion of Justice Award.” Maybe he should return it.
Republican Delegate Dave Albo took to the floor of the House of Delegates to complain that his wife denied him intimacy because, as he settled in to seduce her (his description in the General Assembly), MSNBC broadcast a critical report of his support of the intrusive sonogram initiative – and, having seen this, Mrs. Albo announced she was going upstairs to sleep – watch it for yourself - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbLsy9eKBlI&feature=youtube_gdata_player .
You have to wonder what kind of a man would make public such an encounter with his wife.
The answer is easy, a man who doesn’t respect women. More generally, that’s our General Assembly. Write and tell your elected representatives in the State Senate and House that this is just not acceptable.
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