South Dakota Sharia

The news became surreal today, as if somehow it hadn't already been surreal enough.

Sometimes when I watch CNN, I have a sense that I'm looking at a nation that never quite made it to modern democracy. It's the nation that invented modern democracy for the world to take up, but then failed itself to maintain it, develop it, bring it to its full potential -- like healthcare, eliminating the death penalty, maternity benefits, respect for plurality and differences, all those hallmarks of modern democracy that are weirdly absent. The abortion debate that was considered and decided in virtually all other western democracies still rages here like a fresh wound. The nation's constitution is the same one that was written in the 1700s. Things got stuck and didn't grow. Meanwhile, the world changed. Maybe the effort of maintaining super-power pulled too much thought and energy from democracy. I can't quite figure it.

On the news, the governor gave his reasons. He wanted to protect the vulnerable.

Protect the vulnerable.

With one sweep of a pen, he has brought South Dakota back to the days of backroom abortions, women dead on motel floors.

Who decides who is vulnerable?

What about persistently low incomes and systemic barriers to financial independence? What about those who have been shuffled from foster home to foster homes all their lives so that they don't know what touch means anymore, or those whose bodies have been bought and sold, exchanged for someone's kicks or someone's cocaine or for what someone told them was love? What about those who are too old, too young, too mentally infirm, too broken or weak to bear more burdens? Those whose jobs will be taken away, who have no health care, who have too many other mouths to feed? Those who have been raped or defiled or taken? Those who die or become physically damaged through pregnancy and childbirth? Those with youth, intelligence, and a promising future, like their male counterparts, but whose birth control can fail and push them into a life of poverty, unlike their male counterparts?

These women will never have the power or wealth to influence public decision-making, never have the bus fare to get to a rally or demonstration. Who decides who gets to be vulnerable?

Oh, no, no, this is not about protecting the vulnerable. This is about sharia.

Sharia is religious law. It's based on the rules and values of religion, not open to rational discussion. It is imposed by religious people in power and does not respect laws, traditions, rights, or differences. It is opportunistic, sly, watching for the right moment to strike. It cares for nothing but itself.

In any sharia, women come last. They are told what they must suffer, what rights they can have, who is unclean and who is holy. They take a backseat to the men who sign the documents into law, who run the religions, who want their exclusive power uncontested. They take a backseat to the children, even to the scraps of DNA that create children. All these are greater than woman. She is the least, the last.

Sharia is the failure of democracy, of rights, of reason.

We who live beyond the US borders watch the debates in the US in great amazement. What we see is a culture spiralling out of control. The traditional divisions between the judicial, legislative and executive functions are gone. Laws and rights that have taken decades or centuries to create are now at the mercy of groups with agendas. Guantanamo Bay hangs like an offshore flag to the erosion of a culture of integrity and rights. Any law, any document can be ignored or overruled. Power rules, nothing else. More sharia is on its way.

Like you, I watched yet another man in history sign a document to remove women's self-determination. Inside, I wept for American women and the struggles they face. But I also felt a cold shiver, echoes of The Handmaid's Tale, that book I wish I'd never read.

Please God, don't let it come here.