By now, interested parties are aware that The Manuscript has a chapter called "The Best Feminist in the World." Tongue firmly planted in cheek, you read my case for Hillary Clinton, Jessica Valenti, Shirley Chisholm, and ME. All that changed today.
The following clip from the brilliant Rachel Maddow (a Best Feminist candidate herself) is extraordinary not simply for the fact that Maddow is bringing to light how outrageously disgusting the new crop of anti-choice conservatives are. What totally blew my mind, and should blow yours, is the passion, intelligence, and calm conviction of Maddow's guest, Princeton professor Melissa Harris Lacewell.
Says The New Best Feminist in the World:
"There is no place in the world and no time in history where restricting women‘s reproductive rights makes a people or a nation more free or more equal. These extreme positions on abortion are without any question a war on American girls and women."
"When you talk about the rape and incest clause, I suspect that many Americans, maybe even many pro-choice Americans think that rape and incest and pregnancy resulting from it is a pretty unusual occurrence. ....but the fact is that sexual assault is an embarrassingly common experience......we‘re talking about hundreds of women, thousands of women in pregnancies."
"Look, I‘m from a people who really did experience the need to hold on to a God who would see them through difficult times, including generations of black women who in slavery were forced to bear the children of their rapists. .....But I'm also an American who believes that the point of government isn‘t to make life so hard for half of our citizens that the only force there to help them is God. We, as a government and as a people, deserve and should do better."
I LOVE YOU, MELISSA HARRIS LACEWELL. You should be running for Senate, not Sharon "rape lemonade" Angle or Christine "no touchy" O'Donnell. Let's start her fanclub now!
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