The “Protect Life Act” allows Medicare participating hospitals to deny lifesaving treatment to pregnant people if that treatment includes an abortion. A doctor would have the right to let a woman die instead of aborting her pregnancy, essentially saying that a woman’s life is not as important as your control over her body.

Bodily autonomy is critical in the fight for women’s equality. Until a woman’s body is her own, there will be no justice. As long as conservative men continue to make laws redefining rape to benefit rapists and making life impossible for a woman who makes a choice about her own body, we will not be free. Our personal appearance, our weight, our dress, our sexuality and sexual activity will be policed and judged by the world around us. The actions of our lawmakers set a precedent that men not only can but also have the right to make choices about women’s lives.

But as anger and blame on this issue is heaped onto the male Republicans in Congress, let us not forget the misogyny in the liberal community. It was not long ago that Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann went all-out ‘white knighting’ for Julian Assange, to the point of accusing the rape victims of lying and revealing one victim’s name to the public, putting her in danger of more physical violence. Here’s the thing that so many liberals could not reconcile: Wikileaks is great, Julian Assange is great for starting Wikileaks, our government is using the rape accusations as an excuse to go after Assange, and Assange is a rapist. All of those things can be true simultaneously. But I heard one man after another defend him. How could a rapist possibly do something as cool as Wikileaks? Attitudes like these only reinforce rape culture – a culture that allows men like John Boehner to propose misogynistic laws and still get re-elected.

I’ve established that men have no place in abortion law making, but the fact remains there are a whole bunch of women who support laws like these, at least until it happens to them. I can’t say, “Only people who agree with me should be allowed in the abortion debate.” I’d like to, but I understand the problems inherent in that. At least if the debate were made up exclusively of people who could become pregnant tomorrow, there might be something of an even playing ground. I don’t believe it’s any more acceptable for women to police each other’s bodies than it is for men to police women’s bodies, but a diverse coalition of women deliberating on abortion law is far more comforting than a diverse coalition of men (and definitely better than the white, rich, straight men who are coming up with these ridiculous laws).

Now, before you get your boxers too much in a twist, I do want to mention fathers. Abortion is a fantastic example of the personal being political, and the personal interactions of a couple must be seen in a political context. Speaking very generally, there is nothing wrong with the potential father expressing his opinion on whether or not there should be an abortion. It is only if he insists, demands, or forces the woman to go one-way or another that this becomes a problem. The very language of pregnancy reveals who culturally has the power over the child: “She’s pregnant with his baby,” or “Who’s baby is it?”

Obviously language like this shows our willingness to grant ownership to a man over a woman’s body. You’re pregnant with your own child – or not pregnant with child, should you choose. And the possible father who says “I want to keep it, I want to raise it, I want to be a father, I want us to be parents,” is not the enemy, and is not who I am rallying against. The man who says, “You must keep it, you must raise it, you must give me fatherhood,” is the problem.

Get your laws off my body.

Victoria Knobloch is a Collegian columnist. She can be reached at [email protected].