The word "rights"-- too controversial for the FCC?The writing's on the wall people. Now we just have to decide which part of the fight or flight impulse we listen to.
We live in a time when a public radio station thinks the phrase "reproductive rights" will provoke the ire of the FCC: "WUNC-FM recently informed Ipas, a Chapel Hill-based international women's rights and health organization, that the phrase 'reproductive rights' in the group's on-air announcement could be interpreted as advocating a particular political position. The station required Ipas to use 'reproductive health' instead."
"... What concerns me is the chilling effect of the world we're living in, which makes everybody super-cautious about what they say," said [Anu Kumar, executive vice president of Ipas.] "The issue of reproductive rights, like many others, has been cast as an 'either you're with us or you're against us' issue, and so much of the language is assumed to be code for something else."
-- Geraldine Sealey
Saturday, November 13, 2004
hold on to your hats. . . or wombs
So, all you peole who keep telling me that the Handmaid's Tale scenario can't happen, check out this note from Salon:
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I bet if the base reason for this was dug into, it would be found that it is related to Campaign Finance Reform laws. These have had far reaching effects on free speech if it even remotely looks political.
Now on too the meat of the post. The work "RIGHTS is thrown around way too carelessly today.
There is no such thing as "reproductive rights".
A Right is something that everyone is born with, are self contained and cannot be given or taken by anyone else. Only the individual can exercise a true right. That is, you must be able to exercise a right with no external help, and your right stops where someone elses rights begin.
That is why there cannot be a "right" to healthcare, affordable housing, public transportation..., who would be FORCED to provide them?
Furthermore, where are men's "reproductive rights"?
If men do not have this right, do women have different rights than men?
What are the rights men have that women do not?
You see it does not work, rights cannot belong to a group, only the individual.
What is being called "reproductive rights", is actually a right to be secure in ones person, a basic right, without which there can be no liberty.
No new rights can be created, since they always have existed and always will.
Take care.
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