I recently read that GOP candidate Ben Carson compares women who were the victims of rape or incest who chose to get an abortion to slave owners, stating that slave owners had no regard for the life of the slaves they owned. How could someone make such an asinine, callous and insensitive remark?
Once again, this is the reason that I won’t vote for any candidate who isn’t pro-choice. Don’t they get it? Comparing victims of rape to slave owners? Taking a horrific physical and emotional event and trivializing it. Women who have been through such a violent act have enough to deal with. Suggesting that they put no thought into their decision, that they are behaving like slave owners, is unconscionable.
Ben Carson and his ilk are the ones behaving not just like slave owners but like the Taliban or any other extremist group that thinks they have the right to dictate to women what they can and cannot do with their bodies. Once a woman is pregnant, she becomes nothing more then an incubator to these self-righteous hypocrites who think they can step in and tell a woman what to do. They want to take away her voice, her power, her right to make decisions for her own body. They preach that they are speaking for the unborn child, when the truth is they fear the independent woman making her own decisions, her own choices.
It is time that we put an end to this. Women fought long and hard for their civil rights, for their voices to be heard. Whether you are pro-choice or pro-life, in the end it comes down to a woman’s right to make that choice for herself based on her circumstances, to empower her with the knowledge to make the best decision. Do not allow our own Taliban to form in the likes of Ben Carson, who refers to victims of rape making difficult choices to be no better than slave owners.
Joanne Graves
Forest Lakes
