Women's Equality Under Attack‪.‬

For those of us who believe in humankind and its future, we can learn a lot from Humanism, starting with the ancient Greeks right through to our very troubled twenty-first century. I am a Humanist; Humanism is the foundation of my life. In spite of the right wing's allegations that Humanists have no values, Humanism, as I understand it for myself, is devoted to the supremacy of reason as both a monument to human dignity and as as means to social progress. And that makes the Humanist movement and the pro-choice movement natural partners in a vision for our lives. We share two important values. The first is that we respect the innate ability and right of every woman to make her own decisions, to employ moral and ethical reasoning, especially as relates to the most personal and profound decision about whether or not to bear a child. It is extraordinary to me to really contemplate that we could live in a nation that would force women against their will to continue a pregnancy and bear a child. That puts women right on the same plane as animal species which don't possess moral reasoning, intelligence, and free will. What distinguishes humans that we do have the ability to reason, think, and exercise freewill will be based on moral and ethical values. Bringing a child into the world shouldn't be merely a physical imperative. The fact that we can conceive and give birth doesn't necessarily. make procreation an imperative for us. And yet that is what the anti-choice movement is about in this nation: to force child birth by law . And it's not just going state by state to make it. The movement wants a federal law--indeed, if it could get one, a "human life" amendment to the Constitution--that would literally rob women of their ability exercise moral reasoning, any reasoning in women's reproductive and sexual lives. It is hard to imagine that the people involved in these efforts want to do this but they do--and they're almost there. What we advocate is that a woman has a right to make a decision for her own reasons and in her won way in consultation with her conscience--alone if she chooses, with her physician if she prefers, or with her partner or her parents--but not with a politician.