It seems like everyday you get to hear stories that make you ask yourself are we actually living in the 21 century in a free world?
This is one of those stories.
A woman , that we are going to simply call R.W. in order not to disclose her identity ,was the unfortunate victim of a rape. After she was examined at Tampa's Rape Crisis Center, the doctor provided two anti-contraception pills for her to take.
While she was reporting the crime, however, an arrest warrant on her name was found for failure to pay restitution and failure to appear. Being detained at Hillsborough County Jail, her pills were confiscated by the staff who refused to return them so R.W. could take them.
Michele Spinelli, jail employee, motivated her actions on religious beliefs. Even though eventually she did not get pregnant, R.W. decided to sue the jail guard and Hillsborough County Sheriff David Gee for gender discrimination and violations of the right to privacy and the right to equal protection under the 14th Amendment.
Is the Sheriff accountable for Spinelli's actions?
Even though judge Kovachevich dismissed the claims against Gee, she did wrote :"The single action of a final policy-maker can represent official government policy, even when the action is not meant to control later decisions. [...]Gee, as the representative of the municipality, promulgated no policy on anticonceptive medication and provided no guidance or supervision to Spinelli on the matter. Given that some entity must set policy for the government in each situation, plaintiff has rendered plausible the claim that Spinelli was designated the final policy-maker with respect to her decision to withhold anti-conceptive medication for religious reasons.”
What I found so disturbing about this case is how religion has made some people think they have the right to decide about other people's life, even when that goes against the law.
I wonder what would happen if Michele Spinelli herself would have been the victim of a rape. Would she still be so firm into defending her beliefs? It's easy to be pose as righteous when the other person must facec the consequences of your decisions. It may be easy to say that is wrong to use contraceptives when you're not the on who has to live with this decision, when you're not the one who has to raise the child, and provide for him , while trying to erase the horrible memory of how that child was conceived.
As a common thing for all rape cases, nobody is there to help the victims when they are assaulted, but a lot of people tend to emerge afterwards with their opinions and lessons on morality .
On an unrelated note, in New York, many schools have started banning words on standardized tests that might be considered offensive. Words like "birthday", or "dinosaur" because some of the kids attending those schools belong to a religion that doesn't accept the existence of dinosaurs, or doesn't celebrate birthdays.( I guess musems should be next)
It makes me ask, when did we get to be so intolerant with other people religions that we decided the best way to deal with it is to ignore the subject all together? We are either going to shove our point of view down the other person's throat or just politely change the subject, since apparently we are not able to cope with the fact that other people like us may have other opinions and that we should respect their opinion even though we don't agree with it.
In Michigan , the Sikh community was revolted after a student was denied the right to carry a religious sword at school. Now this is an elementary school we are talking about. Imagine your kid getting in a fight with another kid on the playground, which is a pretty common thing, except the other kid carries a sword with him always.
There is such thing as religion and then there's common sense. You can not use religion as an excuse to break law, and do whatever you like just because your belief demands it . Respecting another person 's belief should be done is such a way you don't offend the other, which may be pretty hard , but not impossible if we all agree that our beliefs are just different point of views, and none of us holds the absolute truth.
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