ATTY ANITA ARRIOLA AND THOSE EVIL MEN

By Tim Rohr

This morning on K57, Patti Arroyo interviewed Attorney Anita Arriola regarding the current status of the Heartbeat Bill. The whole of Arriola's position was functionally: "those evil men," specifically Doug Moylan, Bob Klitzkie, Peter Sgro, and Tim Rohr. And Arriola's charge against said "evil men" was 1) that said men "write letters to the editor," and 2) they are men.

Meanwhile...

• Never mind the fact that the aforesaid letter writers have no public power other than to voice an opinion.
• Never mind the fact that the Heartbeat Bill was actually introduced by a woman lawmaker. 
• Never mind the fact that 4 of the 8 senators who voted to place the bill on the current legislative agenda are female senators.
• Never mind the fact that the real reason abortion is not available in Guam is because women doctors who openly advocate for abortion (and write their own letters to the editor) like Dr. Ellen Bez, an OB-GYN from Sagua Managu, will not provide abortions or even abortion information as required by the informed consent law. 
• Never mind the fact that the current governor, a woman, and a registered nurse - and as such a "qualified person," chooses not to provide informed consent information to women seeking abortion and instead forces women to access the required information via teleconference with doctors in Hawaii who they don't know and who will not be in Guam to care for them should something go wrong with their do-it-yourself, mail-order abortions.
• Never mind the fact that the real threat to abortion on Guam is not the Heartbeat Bill, which does not make abortion illegal, but the 1990 "Arriola Law," which is the product of a woman senator who just so happens to be Atty. Anita Arriola's late mother. 
• Never mind the fact that it was Atty. Arriola's mother who publicly - and on the floor of the legislature - despaired that abortion would wipe out the CHamoru people - which it was at the time and still is. (1)

LINK

• And never mind the fact that it was 7 men in 1973 who made abortion a constitutional right to begin with. 

In other words, never mind facts, never mind history, never mind the decimation of the CHamoru people, never mind anything, anything but these evil men who write letters to the editor. 

(1) "Let me tell you, at the rate Guam Memorial Hospital is aborting children, between 400-600 a year, and most of them are not even reported. Where are the lives that we are going to protect and preserve? Here we go talking about indigenous rights and self-determination. What good is all that if we don't have our followers to follow and enjoy the fruits of our labor, of this generation's labor, of your labor and my labor to fix this island and have autonomous rights to govern our people?" - quoted in: Asian/Pacific Islander American Women: A Historical Anthology, pg. 372, edited by Shirley Hume, Gail M. Nomura