Eid Mubarak and a Note on Abortion Rights

We hope you had a wonderful Eid celebration with your dear ones. If it wasn’t for the warm, civil, and welcoming Eid reception on May 2 at the White House with President Biden, Dr. Jill Biden, and Doug Emhoff, where the President underscored that it is our diversity that makes America great, I would have probably spiraled into a slight depression upon hearing about the leaked draft Supreme Court decision on abortion rights.

I have been enraged and have written repeatedly over the years about America’s shift toward theocracy. I called it Christian Sharia law, because just like its Muslim equivalent, human beings legislate repressive and oppressive laws, in the name of God, pretending to be God themselves. In the Muslim world it has resulted in oppression, violence, hopelessness and death being a better option than life.

America, when you take away peoples’ right to freedom, liberty and happiness, you take away their zest for life.

At the Women’s March in Los Angeles in 2021, I spoke about the The Declaration of Independence which states: “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.”

The usurping of a woman's reproductive rights, her right to bodily autonomy, HER life, HER liberty and HER pursuit of happiness by the fanatics is the demise of the idea of America, the idea that has made America exceptional.

The fanatics of America are winning the day, and they are because many of us have been sleeping at the wheel. Just like the fanatics of the Muslim world, they are the minority, but they yield fear and power. Similarly, in America, Gallup Polls show Americans’ support for abortion in all or most cases are at 80% as of May 2021, but the fanatical minority in America have unleashed their abusive power.

While we struggle against the fanatics, I will hang on to the memory of the reception at the White House, one that represents the real America, the America at its best.

Onward and upward…

Ani ZonneveldFounder, president