When elected representatives are so avidly against the people they are supposed to serve, it creates this hateful void, spaces where people’s natural rights are taken away from them. Bruce Skaug (R), is an example of this. Bruce D. Skaug is an attorney and politician serving as a Republican member of the Idaho House of Representatives, from the 12th district. He was elected into office in November 2020, and assumed his office on December 1, 2020. In order to assume that position, that office, Bruce Skaug needed to make the oath of office. “I, [Bruce Skaug], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.” (US House of Representatives). As of March 8, 2022, Skaug passed ID House Bill 675, which takes away gender affirming surgeries for minors. The Bill makes it a felony for doctors to prescribe hormones or puberty blockers, with up to a life in prison as their punishment. While gender-affirming surgeries are mostly performed on adults, this bill extinguishes that possibility for people under 18.
The irony of swearing in on the Constitution and passing restrictive bills like this one, is extremely apparent. This country was built on its independence. The Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, are all based off of the fact that we, as a people, all have natural rights. These natural rights are introduced in the Declaration of Independence as: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”Who is Bruce Skaug to decide where people stand with their own bodies? Who is he, to take away from people’s lives, from their pursuits of happiness? Bruce Skaug is shamelessly taking gender-affirming medical help from trained professionals, away from Transgender youth in Idaho. Why is it that teenagers are expected to figure out their paths in life, what they are going to do for work, where they are going to live (things that may affect other people!!), but they aren’t allowed the freedom to know themselves and express themselves(something that does not affect anyone else!!). The government shouldn’t be able to pick and choose between our fundamental rights and restrict the ones they may not like.
Sure, people may represent Republican or right-leaning states, but even with all of that, there should still be tolerance and empathy. Your religion, for example, may tell you that you, as an individual, should not get an abortion, but you and your religion do not get to impact MY access to the right to my body. Nobody is entitled to your body but you, and for people in partisan offices, it’s important to remember that there is a difference between something impacting you, and something that may bother you but does not impact you, individually. With the recent infamy of the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, people can feel and see how LGBTQ+ individuals are being targeted and invalidated, by harmful jurisdiction.
Representatives all over the United States are subjecting their legislation to anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-women agendas and laws. Whether it’s New Hampshire’s House Bill 1077, which is aiming to repeal the prohibition of conversion therapy for minors, or Texas’s House Bill 1515, which bans abortion after the detection of embryonic or fetal cardiac activity, which normally occurs after about six weeks of pregnancy, laws and bills just like these, have and are still being passed today. Many of these representative’s explanations of these bills are their “love for life”, their “protection of the future generations”, but they’ve shown us time and time again, their disregard for human life. They show us this through their handling of the pandemic, their flagrant disregard for the better treatment of certain citizens, such as immigrants or people in the prison system, as well as their omission of children in the foster care system. For people so concerned about children’s lives, what are they doing to help them now?
These representatives’ actions show us they are less concerned with both the physical and emotional well-being of their citizens, and more concerned about controlling things and people. It’s a long standing debate over bodily autonomy, but I believe it comes down to a person’s ability to make decisions about their own bodies, completely separate of other people’s decisions for their bodies. However, it isn’t uncommon for appalling and unconstitutional laws and bills to be passed in the United States. We find we need to use our freedoms of speech, freedoms of the press, and our rights to petition and assembly to fight legislative attacks on our people and our rights.
Here are some actions YOU can take to help:
PETITIONS
Bans Off Our Bodies/ Protection of Roe V. Wade (Planned Parenthood)
Tell Elected Officials: Stop Targeting Trans Youth Now! (Human Rights Campaign)
Every Person Should Have Reproductive Autonomy Over Their Own Body (Women’s March)
DONATE
Amnesty International
ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union)
Planned Parenthood
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