This is my body .

How can I feel a sovereign being if I cannot claim my own body?

This body is mine. Not yours. Not the government's. Not the property of rightwing nut jobs who hate their bodies, and want to control mine, too.
I must be able to claim what enters me, consent to what I participate in, consent to what I choose to do with the human body that I will occupy for four score and some odd years (if I'm lucky enough to live that long.)

Did you know that three years ago,  the
Kansas Attorney General wanted records of women who've had late-term abortions?

In certain states, it's illegal for me to pleasure myself with a sex toy. Can you imagine? Guns are legal but vibrators are not?

It's now okay for pharmacists to refuse to dispense birth control they object to, and , Plan B contraception, which is a virtual no-brainer, has become yet another bullet in the magazine of those who would rather our teenagers suffered and died rather than took responsibility for a moment of passion.

We are among those who believe that the coming together of sperm and egg is sacred, and therefore, a zygote floating in Fallopian Tube is entitled to full protection of the law. But what of the women, 500,000 last year, who have no access to safe abortion, prenatal care, or delivery? They died just last year. Half a million women giving birth died. What do you think is going to happen in this country if we illegalize abortion. Do you remember the days of this?

We teach children that their bodies are disgusting, and we call it abstinence education. We deny them knowledge of contraception, and on average, they delay sex by 12 months, and when they do engage in it, they do it unprotected from disease or pregnancy.

America is turning into a kakistocracy, run by people who hate and so distrust their bodies that they seek to control ours.

Sex is unruly. Love is anarchic. Personal connections among us will keep us tied to personal loyalties, and we will be less prone to blind adherence to faceless, abstract concepts like patriotism.

We fight organizations that do not see it as a hate crime when a gay man is beaten to death simply for being gay. Those same organizations now want to make it illegal for couples who love one another—consenting, adult couples—because they present a threat to the "sanctity of marriage." .

Are they not aware that their actions lead to the crimes they claim are not reflective of hate? And they teach this bullshit to children while they deny them the right to read freely.  

They propagate lies. Lies that kill. To tell teenagers that condoms do not prevent HIV, that sex equals death, means that when that teenager does decide to be sexually active, s/he has had one method for preventing AIDS taken right out of their hands. Would they rather their children be dead than sexually active?

Bodies are not negotiable. Bodies matter. They matter when they're being restricted, and they matter when they're being exterminated. And you know what? History shows us, time and time again, that those who seek to control bodies eventually want to destroy them. .

This is my body. And it is.

Part iii to follow