The Iranian morality police targeted Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman visiting Tehran, over her hair. Allegedly, too much of it could be seen despite Iran's mandatory hijab law.
Amini died suspiciously in police custody. Protests have roiled the country for weeks.
The oppression she and millions of other Iranians face is far removed from any religious values. There are millions of Muslim women, myself included, who do not wear a hijab.
Her death had nothing to do with hair.
It had everything to do with power: brutal, misogynistic power designed to keep women in their place. Using religion as a bludgeon to abuse and kill others is blasphemous -- an affront to the very notion of a divine and merciful creator.
Watching the protests from afar, I can't help but feel grateful to live in a country where no one can arrest me over what I choose to wear. But I also can't help but see the bright line of misogyny connecting laws that oppress women even in places that claim to take pride in freedom.
Laws and political statements that were once unimaginable to my generation of women have become a cruel reality. In 2019, Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano – a Republican, and now his party's gubernatorial candidate – said he believed people who got abortions in violation of a proposed state-level ban should be charged with murder.
This is what they believe, and what they are willing to say when they aren't actively campaigning for higher office: A woman wanting to save her own life and decide her own future is a murderer.
Our lives have no inherent value -- only our uterus matters; only our hair matters. Our bodies require state policing.
Sen. Lindsey Graham said recently he wants a federal ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, making clear that this isn't about states deciding their own abortion laws. In Idaho, a total ban on abortion care makes no exception for women who are likely to suffer serious health consequences, such as organ damage, by continuing a pregnancy. In Missouri, state Rep. Mary Elizabeth Coleman proposed a bill allowing private citizens to sue anyone who helps a Missouri resident have an abortion out of state. She wants to control where women can travel for their own health care.
If it's difficult to understand why a woman would assist in restricting her own rights, look at the officers who confronted Amini.
They included two Iranian women.
Our country's morality police want doctors to wait until a pregnant woman is actively dying -- until enough blood has flowed uncontrollably from her body -- before attempting to save her life.
When a fetus is not viable because of severe abnormalities or when a woman's water breaks at 15 weeks, they want doctors to tell her to go home and wait, rather than provide medical care that could alleviate her suffering. This recipe for sepsis and death has become standard operating procedure in hospitals across America.
It doesn't matter if an ectopic pregnancy might kill you or destroy your ability to ever have children. It doesn't matter if you are diagnosed with cancer while pregnant. Don't count on treatment: The fetal cells in your body must be protected from the medicines that could save your life.
Whenever and wherever the state invokes power over its citizens' bodies, the ultimate message is the same: Let them die if they dare to disobey us.
The men and women who would beat a woman with clubs for exposing her hair would cheer the men and women who tell a 10-year-old rape victim it's God's will for her body to be torn in half delivering a rapist's baby.
Last November, Iran's Guardian Council passed a law severely restricting access to abortion.
This November, women in the United States of America will respond to this same curtailing of rights in our own country.
Tell the American morality police: We refuse to let you kill us.