Missouri Passes Bill Allowing Employers To FIRE Women Who Use Birth Control

Photo: feministing
missouri sb 5 handmaid's tale

Now, you’re going to have to bear with me a moment while I compose myself, because it feels like only yesterday I was warning everyone that we were becoming a nation that so mimicked the misogynistic insanity in The Handmaid’s Tale that I thought I was losing my mind.

But Republicans have been working really hard to make sure that we know we’re being discriminated against. They want us to know that women are always in a position to lose everything, just because we’re women.

Just like they made being a woman a pre-existing condition in Trump’s “healthcare” bill, or how they took away our ability to make choices regarding our own reproductive health, or gave companies the right to deny us birth control through insurance, and even let the courts refuse to properly punish rapist white men because they didn't want to mess up their promising rich-boy lives.

I’m going to let some of my usually hidden Southern side come out when I say in all sincerity to women all around this country, “Y’all need to wake THE F*CK up.”

This is serious.


Related: Wake Up, America, Or We’ll Be Living In Our Own ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ Nightmare
 

It has been serious, but now more than ever, we need to take action. Why? Because we ladies are one step closer to donning our red gowns and being labeled as walking uteruses. Forget your career. Forget having a home on your own. Forget being able to make decisions for yourself, your body, and your life. Maybe within the decade, forget being able to read, write, or do anything other than pop out babies, clean, and make your family meals.

And forget being able to vote to change these rules, either.
 


 

Some misogynists in this country have already suggested that we should repeal the 19th amendment, which is the amendment that allows women to vote. You know. The amendment that we fought for, bled, and in some cases were jailed or died for?

The one that we didn't get until 1920? The right that former male slaves got before women did?

We are violently careening into the ugly side of 1950s America — not the glamorous movie side, mind you. The heavily discriminating, uber-masculine, racist, sexist, atrocious side whose greatest fear was communists, homosexuals, dark-skinned people, and any woman who wanted to speak her mind or control her own body.

Apart from the many, many other travesties that have been piling up in this nation since the dawn of Trump, there has been one long list of attacks on women that are slowly reducing us to DNA incubators. And recently, another bill has been put into play that brings women closer and closer to that line of being openly and legally discriminated against in sickening form.

Missouri —  yes, the entire state of Missouri, which is the seventeenth most populated state in America has just decided to pass a bill that allows employers to fire women for using birth control.

I want you to hold onto that thought for a moment, because as awful, restrictive, and invasive as that seems, it doesn’t even stop there.

If you’re a woman in Missouri and you’ve ever had an abortion or a child out of wedlock, then you, too, are eligible for being discriminated against by employers and landlords — present or future — legally.
 


 

SB 5, the bill that was passed and is waiting to become a law in the Senate, is in response to a St. Louis ordinance passed this spring that “bans employers and landlords from discriminating against people on the basis of their reproductive health decisions.”

While this seems like a reasonable idea, apparently it’s too much for Republican men.

SB 5 is the insidious response to that ordinance, and it would completely obliterate the anti-discrimination law and let literally everyone make decisions about your body and reproductive health except you, the woman in question.

Missouri is giving corporations the ability to control their female employees’ bodies.

Not men, mind you.

Men aren't being fired for using condoms.

Let that sink in.

I want you to imagine that you go to work tomorrow and have your boss call you a slut to your face and fire you because you’re on birth control. And it won’t matter if you’re taking it because you have PCOS or other reproductive issues and need it to regulate your period; it won’t matter if you take it because you’re allergic to latex and can’t use condoms; it won’t matter if you simply want the protection that comes with taking the pill because you can’t afford a child at this time in your life or don’t want one at all.

This is the very real life that women all over Missouri — and let’s face it, probably a lot more Republican-led states very soon — will face if SB 5 passes the Senate.

And the discrimination laws put in place for employers will also, of course, extend to landlords, so you can lose your home, too.

So if your apartment complex decides that they don’t want to have some sex-having harlot like you stinking up the joint, they can kick you out on your ass. Legally. Without question.


Related: 10 WTF Things Donald Trump Has Actually Said About Women
 

In fact, very soon in Missouri, it will be completely legal for your company to fire you, your landlord to throw you out, and for new companies to refuse to hire you, just because you’ve been on the pill (or any other birth control device), you’ve had a child and aren’t married (or are pregnant and not married), or you’ve ever had an abortion.

This is not normal. This is not okay. So why are we letting Republican men control our lives and bodies like this?

If we don't fight back, it will become the new normal. It will become the new ordinary.

It may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time, it will.

It’s time to join together and fight against tyranny and misogyny in this country because things can still get a whole lot worse before they get better. You owe it to yourselves, your sisters, your mothers, and your daughters.

And if you’re not willing to stand, united, and make your voices heard, then you’d better start practicing your lines.



“May the Lord open.”