DC Residents “Second Class Citizens”

While many of us rejoiced that the government didn’t shut down last Friday (or, if you were in my house, you were outrageously yelling that we should fire “all of those a**holes!”), the “compromise” came at a hefty cost for District of Columbia residents as well as the entire pro-choice movement. Because of this deal, tax revenue collected from the DC area can no longer be used to fund abortions.

Representative of the District, Eleanor Holmes Norton, had this to say: “This morning, District residents learned that the administration and Senate Democrats were willing to let the House Republicans treat them as second-class citizens. I am relieved that the bill did not include the national policy riders I abhorred. However, this entire city of 600,000 taxpaying Americans has every reason to be angry that the administration and Senate Democrats did not draw a similar line in the sand that stopped at the District, and the self-governing rights of its citizens.”

You know, we’re really tired of having our reproductive rights—our medical conditions—being treated as “social issues” (as the president himself called them) or “wedge issues.” We’re also tired of being told that taxpayers shouldn’t have to fund them—though they fund everything from Medicaid to Medicare to SHIP—because they don’t support a women’s right to choose.

For one thing, the majority of Americans do support this right. For another, it’s none of their business, since it’s a medical issue. On the other hand, I wouldn’t mind raising a stink about my family and me having to pay taxes that fund crooked politicians, corporate bailouts and corporate welfare, illegal wars, torture, rape, the policing of nations all around the globe, or even schools (since we homeschool). But I still have to pay for all of these things that I do not believe in with one ounce of my being. So I think it’s pretty damn fair to allow tax dollars to provide the minimal funding that they gave to women who had their very lives on the line due to unplanned pregnancy.

It’s also yet another slap in the face to the women’s reproductive freedom movement, since after so much work just to get basic human rights to control our bodies we have to keep fighting for them again and again against all of these old men in power and their religious supporters. Will we ever truly have separation of church and state? Like the age old tootsie pop question, the world may never know.