Happy Belated B-day Roe v. Wade!
How's that for irony, eh? Wishing happy birthday to a 36 year old Supreme Court decision responsible for the legal slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent unborn babies!!!! Right? Yeah? WooHOO! Seriously though, let me just say that my childless ass is very thankful for Roe v. Wade.
Oh, and to add candy sprinkles to the top of Roe's birthday cupcake, Obama took his turn at the tug-o-war that is the "Mexico City Policy" (aka. Global Gag Rule) yesterday. Yep, pretty much as expected, Obama overturned Bush II's overturning of Clinton's overturning of Reagan's policy barring any non-governmental organization from receiving federal funding if they perform, recommend, or even tell women about the availability of abortions. Isn't that fun? You know all those NGOs are rooting for the Democrats during every presidential election cycle.
So yes indeed, not only do US women have the legal option to not be enslaved by their own biology, but now responsible NGOs can even travel the world telling poor women the world over that they don't need to be enslaved by their biology either. What a fucking revolutionary idea! Like, wow … women don't have to choose between celibacy and risking childbirth. A man can't just accidentally knock someone up and ditch them with a baby, because women can walk away from an accidental pregnancy too! (Granted, there's still a little more pain and hassle for the woman involved, but it's no big thing compared to having a kid.)
Let's be honest here. Equal rights for women are impossible without abortion rights. Sexually active men never had to worry about being semi-debilitated for ~4 months every time they got laid. Sexually active men never had to worry about losing their job because they had to take time off to give birth (and didn't have the respectability of being married). Sexually active men never had to worry about possibly dying from an unsanitary medical procedure because they decided the consequences of carrying a pregnancy to term were worse than the risk of an illegal abortion.
Teenage boys never have to worry about dropping out of school to take care of a baby (or just to avoid the embarrassment of being pregnant in school). Teenage boys also never have to worry about watching their college education and career plans go down the toilet because they can't afford to go to school and care for a child.
Sure, it's easy to say "Well, give the baby up for adoption if you don't want it," when you're not the pregnant one. But a pregnancy is no small thing to endure physically, for one thing. Women can actually suffer permanent life-altering injury during pregnancy and childbirth. And beyond that, a lot of women (if not most) form an emotional bond with their developing baby during the latter weeks of pregnancy. Just sending a baby off to live with strangers after carrying it for 9 months is not the simple solution it may look like to an outside observer, to say nothing of a low income woman who already has a family and simply can't afford to care for another child … what should she say to her existing children after they watch the whole pregnancy, and then the baby disappears?
So the pat answer is not to have sex unless you want to have a baby, or get your tubes tied. And what the fuck planet are you living on, if that's your solution?! A woman who just doesn't want to have a baby right now needs to be celibate? Only women who're certain they're done with childbearing, and have the money to have an elective surgical procedure, are allowed to have recreational sex?
But it's not just about recreational sex. There are women who get pregnant as a result of rape and incest (not many, but it happens). And that's when the really fun moral acrobatics start…
The "humane" anti-abortion crowd generally says there should be laws to allow abortion in cases of rape, incest or to save the mother's life. That's just a bit intellectually dishonest, IMO. Either abortion is murder, and wrong, or it's not. It's not wrong sometimes and OK other times. I can see how "one life for another" could be justified in cases where abortion is medically necessary to save the mother, but how is the "baby" of a rape or child molestation case less deserving of life than any other?
The emotional trauma the rape victim would suffer is worthy of committing "murder", but it's not worthy in the case of a woman who can't bring herself to make the heartwrenching decision to give her newborn up for adoption? The emotional trauma of a teen mother impregnated by a relative justifies "murder", but that of a teen mother who's boyfriend disappears as soon as he hears she pregnant doesn't? It's more than a little bit arrogant to think you can quantify the emotional stresses of thousands of women you'll never even meet, and somehow think you can make life-altering decisions on their behalf based on your uninformed assumptions.
What the whole abortion debate comes down to is this: Either a woman should be as free as a man to live her life without the constant fear of being stuck with an unwanted pregnancy, or she shouldn't, because God cursed Eve, women are supposed to be subservient to men and just be wives and mothers, and abortion is murder.
So, happy belated birthday, Roe v. Wade, and thank you President Obama for helping women all over the world exercise their right to live without being enslaved by their biology.
Always struck me as odd to give a damn about what, even if one were to view it spiritually, is an unfinished shell for a ghost.
Not like most of the rigorous anti-abortion people really are all that caring about life, either.
They tend to strike me as very anti-life overall, and all for smiting and punishing the already living.
I've guessed previously, that it had a lot to do with the fundamental view of "life", in the first place.
Some people have this really quite strange lack of feeling any sort of consistency within the world, or even of reality, so a 'living human' is something entirely separate to the 'universe', and something "holy".
Then there's the horrifying 'free choice' aspect, which I've often heard (i.e the puddle of plasma and goo's "future choices", and removing it means "hindering it from ever having had a choice in life"); which is again something that shines through to me at least, as a sign of a very strange view of society.
It's like many of these people just are not aware of how fucked up life can and is for a large portion of the world (in every country), and apparantly having never read a single story or book from the naturalism periods/perspective, can and do still clinge to this absurd 'holiness of the human' – even that which is not yet human.
Honestly, that take on it makes me think even stranger things about them, because if it is indeed that 'the holiness of humans' comes from 'humans are the creation of god' and so 'anything that might become a human and its action, is an extension of such', then the very tenants of the something as silly as the "orthodox" satanists would be just as valid to them.
In other news, waking up at 3am and still feeling drunk is pretty nifty.
24th January 2009 at 6:32 pm | permalink |YOU'LL BURN IN HELL YOU MURDERER! HAVE YOU NO RESPECT FOR LIFE!!?!
Now, off to kill some wildlife with armaments that are illegal in most places for their exceptional ability to end life.
…
What are you talking about? What's 'irony'?
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This morally outraged pantomime brought you you by Contemptuous Sarcasm Inc.
24th January 2009 at 9:46 pm | permalink |As a gay man,I am never going to be pregnant, nor impregnate anyone. For me to tell a woman she shouldn't abort would be an act of deep hypocracy. I'm glad Obama killed that policy!
24th January 2009 at 11:31 pm | permalink |Now if we can just push through legalizing retroactive abortions…
25th January 2009 at 3:32 pm | permalink |let me preface my argument with this…I just watched Juno 10 minutes ago so everyone else's opinions are invalid as I am now the expert on this matter. and my prognosis is the none of anyone elses business approach. anyone who claims that they can understand another persons situation enough to decide what that person should do with themselves and their body is an arrogant (sometimes due to religion) prick. the sanctity of life is tight and all, but then why is it that our criminal system that doesn't flinch when it takes life from a 40 year old who is ACTUALLY alive. A baby, until it comes out of the womb, is attached to a mother's umbilical cord and thus an extension of that woman. This being the case, it is once again no one's right/business to tell a person what to do with his/her body.
25th January 2009 at 3:51 pm | permalink |Alphabitch, wanted to offer a brief critique, of your arguments rather than your position. I will preface by stating that I support legal protection of abortion with no caveats, preceeded by only enough councelling to ensure the person requesting it is aware of any medical or psychological precautions they should take and that they are not being pressured by a 3rd party (i.e. parents or babies father) into a decision that is not theirs. Abortion and pre and post councelling should be state funded and all councelling by medical profesionals with complete seperation from religions. So I think we are on generally the same side of this argument.
In general, not just on this issue, I am troubled by arguments that are overly emotive which are hard to logically defend. These types of arguments tend to cloud issues rather than illumitate them; and increase conflict rather than reduce it. The abortion debate has a plethora of these on both sides. Two of these you mention in your article, that abortion issue is an equality issue specifically because men cannot fall pregnant; and that pregnancy can be considered enslavement by biology.
Enslavement is one of the most emotionally charged words there is and implies an insidious intent. While physics and the crap shoot that is our genetic makeup place restrictions on us, that's just the way the universe is and fair doesn't enter into it. While we can use our brains to overcome our limitations it does not mean we gain any inherent rights to do so. I cannot fly because genetics did not give me means to do so, while I can get in a plane the government does not have the obligation to provide me with free flights. (please forgive the triteness of the example, I was going for simple)
I agree that other people could use your biology to enslave you, e.g. a religion that forbids you using contraception forcing you to risk pregnancy with every sexual act. This is not your biology enslaving you though but another person. This may seem slightly pedantic, but I believe that the highly emotive nature of "enslaved" requires that rigour be placed on its use.
Maybe we have different opinions on equality, but I do not see how abortion is necessary for women to have equal rights. Equality is not about making us all the same, it is about treating us all the same, or better yet, giving us all the same opportuities. To take one of your examples, being forced to drop out of school, true equality would be that if a girl got pregnant the school would accomodate her, society would help provide for her or impel the co-instigator to, and would not restrict her future options because there are flexible arrangements for all parents to be able to contribute to both work and family.
Equality is about not treating people differently because of what they have done, but because of what they are. We don't support GBLT rights because we support their decision, but rather because what they ARE should not be an impediment to their work and social opportunities. True equality for women would be that if they fell pregnant, marrying the father, becoming a single mother, adopting the baby or having an abortion, each decision would have similar opportunities open to the person.
In the end I think we both agree that the issue is not whether the government should ALLOW women to have access to abortions, the government should butt out of a decision that is not there's and offer their protection from those that want to subsume her will/belief/decision to theirs, the same as they would for similar situations like enslavement (ironic I know), physical intimidation or murder.
27th January 2009 at 2:44 am | permalink |@MattG: "I agree that other people could use your biology to enslave you, e.g. a religion that forbids you using contraception forcing you to risk pregnancy with every sexual act. This is not your biology enslaving you though but another person."
True enough in that case. However, I have two siblings to attest to the fact that condoms fail, and one who's living proof that diaphragms aren't 100% either. Many women cannot tolerate hormonal birth control (I went through three birth control prescriptions when I was younger before I found one that worked, and a friend of mine had to have her norplant removed.)
Currently, I'm using an IUD, which is the most reliable form of non-hormonal birth control available … but it cost over $700 at my local Planned Parenthood clinic, and until we have a healthcare system in this country that pays for birth control for women without the financial means to afford that (or afford tubal ligations for those who actually want to be sterilized), biology precludes equality without the opportunity to choose an abortion.
Hell, even IUDs have a certain failure rate, but abortion is pretty much automatic (in the US) in the event a woman with an IUD becomes pregnant.
And the post isn't just about the United States. Third world countries? How many women in Africa or South America can afford an IUD? Especially when the US government withholds funding to groups who want to provide reproductive services to women in these countries?
Until all women everywhere have affordable access to effective birth control and abortion services, and adequate support services in the event they become pregnant and choose to have the baby in cases where the father and/or mother's family will not or cannot, I stand behind my use of the word "enslaved".
27th January 2009 at 1:49 pm | permalink |You know I was listening to my friend Diana Cage rant recently about "just say no" to sex sex education and she was right. Who the fuck has the right to tell a young woman (or young man) to close off their sexuality for the comfort of some god damn fuddy duddy in a broken BerkaLounger.
Promising virginity until ???? just seems to lead to unprotected stupid teen sex so what the fuck.
(feeling spicy tonight) LOL
27th January 2009 at 8:25 pm | permalink |@Metis: The most recent stats on abstinence only sex-ed are showing increased STDs … not so much abstinence.
Apparently if all kids hear about condoms is how often they fail, they figure protection ain't worth the trouble? Funny how that works, isn't it? hehe
Feel free to stop by whenever you're feeling spicy!
28th January 2009 at 8:44 pm | permalink |This is also a good thing because many girls are forced to marry and give birth when they are too young to do it. Think of the 12 and 14 year old *children* who suffer fistulas because they are not big enough to give birth, and then are "worth nothing" and given up by their husbands because they are always bleeding and therefore "unclean" or cannot have more children.
I'm very glad Obama turned over the Mexico City Policy. It will save so many lives and so much needless suffering.
30th January 2009 at 2:36 pm | permalink |True story: When I was working in Kansas over the summer, one of my fellow interns asserted that abortion was wrong in all cases. This of course prompted me and others involved in the discussion to bring up the rape/incest question. His (yeah, a guy, surprise!) response was that the mother should deliver the child and that god was on top of things. This led to a moment of incredulous silence and then of course to the suggestion that abortion should be legal in cases where the pregnancy threatens the woman's life. He asserted, and I'm 100% serious, that this never happens. Not wanting to miss a chance to call out fundie shenanigans, I whipped out ectopic pregnancy. He told me he'd never heard of that and would have to … yes … ask his clergyman.
People are entitled to their opinions, but unfortunately I think there are large numbers of people in the abortion debate who have their facts wrong. I'm not sure if those people are easier or harder to sway.
1st February 2009 at 9:44 am | permalink |I think the larger problem is that many people aren't even interested in the facts.
1st February 2009 at 5:28 pm | permalink |Any Jeebus-freaks here need a smacking?
2nd February 2009 at 2:04 pm | permalink |Dibs if there are >.>
2nd February 2009 at 3:30 pm | permalink |@Becca: I was really hoping for a showing, but it doesn't look like it. Anyone know if there's a fundie-only version of Digg out there?
5th February 2009 at 5:04 pm | permalink |There's the fundie wikipedia
Which is hilarious.
For example, "Liberal Bias" can manifest (among other things) as "an attempt to be consistent by treating men and women alike" or "a reliance on obscenity to attract attention."
The latter, has to have been for your benefit ab… but, well, it's not exactly liberal bias if I yell "THOSE FUCKING UGLY HOMO FUCKS SHOULD ALL FUCKING DIE!"
The former… yeah, fucking gender equality loving pinkos.
5th February 2009 at 11:59 pm | permalink |@grimbles: Holy shit, I totally did not believe you on the obscenity thing until I looked it up. AHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA
WTF kind of drugs are they smoking?! I want to make sure I avoid them at all costs…
6th February 2009 at 2:49 pm | permalink |"I totally did not believe you on the 'x' thing" is pretty much the template response for anything about conservapedia :p
6th February 2009 at 4:37 pm | permalink |RAmen, ab. and to russ, give it over to the power of the holy noodliness of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
11th March 2009 at 8:30 pm | permalink |