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Personal Freedom Amendment

from It Isn't All That We Do by No Strings

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Letter by Harriette Wagner
Music by tulkinghorn + Edvard Grieg

(image by Thaneeya McArdle + Harriette Wagner)

lyrics

December 1981

I am writing regarding Thursday's public hearings in Fresno concerning John Schmitz's proposed human life amendment to the California Constitution. As one who gave testimony in opposition, I was bothered by a number of allusions made by those on the pro-fetal-life side, including the Senator, to a faulty analogy between legalized abortion in this country and Nazi Germany's program of extermination of "undesirables". In so doing they displayed their ignorance of the issue at stake here - government intervention vs individual freedom.

Adolph Hitler believed and acted on this belief to the extreme that, "We must do away with the conception that the treatment of the body is the affair of each individual." Elsewhere he stated that, "The sacrifice of personal existence is necessary to secure the preservation of the species." The Nazis preached against and punished contraception and women whose main purpose was not motherhood. Anti-feminism was a major component of Nazism.

Aryan women could not choose abortion because that was considered
an attempt to control the means of reproduction in defiance of the patriarchal state. "It must be considered reprehensible to refrain from giving healthy children to the nation." Non-Aryan ("unhealthy") women, on the other hand, were discouraged or prevented from reproducing via segregation, threats, labor camps, forcible abortion, sterilization, imprisonment or death in concentration camps.

I am in no way suggesting that Senator Schmitz or those who supported him are Nazis or knowingly promoting Nazi thought. I am merely pointing out that the analogy which they insisted on bringing up is false. Recognizing the German woman's right to determine the outcome of her own pregnancy could not have evolved into an official state program of removing the "unwanted". The right would have remained in the hands of the people, each woman having power over her own body alone. Only by allowing the government to assume such authority is there a danger of such atrocities ever taking place. Aryan women died, non-Aryan women died because the state controlled women as the means of reproduction. Such public policy is an affront to the rights of women, an endangerment to their lives and a threat to all personal freedoms.

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from It Isn't All That We Do, released December 13, 2019

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No Strings

No Strings is a Mother/Son duo recording a wide variety of original songs, jazz standards, rock/pop/country/folk songs + spoken word presentations.

Upcoming ME-related Shows:
5/8...Sierra Vista
5/9...Orchard Post
5/10...Bethal Lutheran
5/12...Oakwood Gardens
5/12...Countryside
5/13...Gateway Clovis
5/14...Cedar Creek
5/15...San Joaquin Gardens

matthewembry.bandcamp.com ... more

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