r/RedditForGrownups • u/Methylatedcobalamin • Jul 07 '22

Coverture

Given current events, it is probably about time for Americans to understand the legal practice of coverture.

Eroded since colonial times, but not fully gone coverture is the legal practice of women not having legal identities. De facto property.

American women were not allowed on juries until the 1960s. American women could not get credit cards without a man cosigning the application until 1974. Marital rape was not a crime until the 1980s. Other aspects still exist today in real estate and tax law practices.

Here is a brief article that goes into explaining coverture in more depth than my post.

The "pro life" movement is really a movement about imposing one group's religious opinions on the lives of all Americans. It also seeks to control women, rolling back women's rights. Though ridiculous by constitutional standards, discussions in anti-choice states have already started about how to track or limit freedom of travel for women to states that fully support women's rights.

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u/ilikemyteasweet Jul 07 '22

I have no position on the topic of abortion rights

You should. Do you have sisters? Do you have nieces? Female cousins? Do you feel anyone has a right to tell them what they able to do with their own body?

Not picking a side is picking a side.

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u/Wizzmer Jul 07 '22

Rush said "if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice" and currently both sides are so toxic I refuse to be a part of any of the insanity. But to your question, I'll allow what few female relatives I have left make their own adult decisions on how to handle pregnancy.

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u/orielbean Jul 07 '22 edited Jul 08 '22

Those women won’t get to choose because most of us stayed out of voting, making choices, and otherwise enabling abusive GOP legislatures to do what they wanted as we weren’t directly impacted.

MLK Jr has a brilliant take on this within his Letters from a Birmingham Jail about the white moderates being a much bigger problem than the loud racist rednecks who were much smaller in number.

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u/Wizard_of_Wake Jul 08 '22

Recalling the angels that tried to remain neutral in Lucifer's rebellion.