Mother’s Day, the Nation’s gesture of salute and grateful recognition of that consequential member of the traditional family that gives birth to its children, changes diapers, wipes noses and occupies the significant office of partner, to the so-styled “Head of the Family.” The annual holiday, made official during the Presidency of Woodrow Wilson in 1914, is celebrated the on the second Sunday in May (this year, May 12, 2024). On that day, predictably, Mother will be the loved recipient of greeting cards, long-distance telephone calls and flowers (usually, roses or tulips) and sundry personal gifts. Often, her household chores and food preparation for the day will be undertaken by other family members.
On our thematic holiday, we express gratitude for the devoted performance of an overfull menu of chores and responsibilities which, functionally analogous to an effective epoxy, sustains the social architecture of the family unit. The Mother, perhaps, in addition to outside employment, is taxed with the responsibilities of a nurse, cook, and household manager in addition to the ubiquitous services inherent in childrearing. Most notably, Mom courageously performs the dangerous and existential service of giving birth to babies, the metaphysical precursors to the continuance of the human species.
Yet, remarkably, any cursory review of history will reveal that, contrary to granting them an empirically appropriate and well-deserved, rendition of gratitude and respect, women have eternally been relegated to an underprivileged and markedly subservient status, bizarrely inconsistent with their equal membership, and elemental service.
Until relatively recently, women could not legally vote, own property nor enter into written contracts. It is notable that an atavistic society finally granted freed male slaves the right to vote, but long before women were legally afforded the franchise. Society’s age-old grant of low status to women is often best shown in the inherent atavistic inclinations of religion, which have eternally, ascribed a subordinate position to Mother, which injustice persists to her forthcoming celebration.
The indisputable intent and signal purpose of the Founders of this Nation, as they often articulated, was the enforceable prevention of the newly created government from any interference with the rights of citizens to the free exercise of their nuanced belief. As clearly mandated in the “Establishment Clause,” of their promulgated Constitution, government may play no part, whatsoever, in citizens’ religious or secular thought or practice.
Notwithstanding the clear and understandable mandate of such Establishment Clause, the same has been violated by religious zealots on a number of occasions, but, thereafter, mercifully repealed or withdrawn, including, as illustrations, the Sunday Blue Laws, forbidding the conduct of business on the Christian Sabbath, and the Prohibition of Alcoholic Beverages. These instances are indicative of a signature myopic and timeless evangelical Christian disregard of the provisions of the constitution in aid of their religious beliefs. Painful history has demonstrated time and again, that religious beliefs, suitably expressed in Churches and other Houses of Worship, empirically lack universal concurrence. The Founders, in their wise and democratic intentions, had in mind the long and consistent history of horrendous misery, experienced in Europe due to monarchial or ecclesiastically established religion.
It may not be useful to again recount the worrisome facts relevant to the extant tenuous state of our republican democracy; exemplified by the perverse influence of the former President and would be dictator, Donald Trump, on his cultish (MAGA) populist horde. The latter has, inarguably, resulted in a disruption of the storied tradition of American liberty and its definitional way of life. Among other causation, self-interest based upon the perception of insecurity relating the voting power of the numerous MAGA miscreants has completely undermined one of the Nation’s two political parties, populated SCOTUS with right-wing, religious and politically influenced Justices and as well, many legislators and officials. As a result of the ubiquitous right-wing promulgation of anti-democratic and Nazi-like policies, such as censorship and proscription of citizen rights, the mainstream American is currently, perhaps, desperately, hopeful of a resounding re-election of the incumbent, Joseph Biden and the exigent restoration of our invaluable constitutional democracy.
The just and appropriate restoration of our constitutional democracy would, of necessity, include the reinstatement of the legal right of women to obtain an abortion when needed. The right of privacy and personal sovereignty over their own body, legally confirmed by a half-century of legal precedent, (Roe v. Wade) has more recently been denied to women by the unconstitutional politically and religiously influenced, Justices of the Supreme Court (Dobbs decision); who were tactically inserted by the MAGA interests under the tutelage of their Pied Piper, the autocratic Donald Trump. Mainstream, traditional American citizens have merely to glance at the daily newspaper or attend the broadcast media, to obtain an understanding of the horrific human misery and tragic implications attendant upon this clearly fascistic intrusion into women’s lives.
The re-establishment of the woman’s right to her own bodily autonomy, specifically inclusive of her natural right to obtain an abortion, as opposed to the present un-American, fascistic intrusion thereon, would incomparably be a more loving and valued Mother’s Day gift than the most colorful flowers or the sweetest of chocolates.
-p.
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