After beginning this post I realized I was just too angry to write a nice explanatory post.
I’m angry…I’m angry that some really think that a womans’ right of control of her body is something they can have high school level debates about.
I’m angry for my daughters. I’m angry because of the young woman I know who was kept away from all friends and family until it was too late to abort and then beaten so badly that she miscarried at 22 weeks.
I’m angry for the victims of rape forced to carry the evidence of the sperm of the prick they never wanted in their body.
I’m angry for the women who birthed till they died. I’m angry for the women who had to beg and be shamed by a panel of doctors who decided whether their choice to abort was frivolous or not.
I’m angry for all the women who have had to deal with some bastard thinking he had any fucking right deciding what she could or could not do.
I’m angry for the women fought and bled and died to get us as far as we’ve come only to have their victories put up as dartboards on frat boy walls.
Perhaps the white knights could climb off their high white horses for just a second or two and pay attention.
Abortion= a woman’s right to control a) her own body b) her own destiny c) her own life.
Why would you even put that up for debate? Who the fuck gave you permission to discuss what goes on in my womb?
Will we next be treated to a debate on whether or not rape is really a crime? If a woman has no say over her own body then how can rape exist?
And after all we wouldn’t want women saying no frivolously.
Reproductive rights are not up for political wankers wonkers to debate.
My body MY FUCKING CHOICE!
Oh how this needed to be said! The “high school level debate” observation is bang-on. A young guy in my lab is currently applying to med school and practising for his interviews. He responded to the abortion “Issue” as though he were discussing jay-walking bylaws. My face got very hot that day and I definitely lost my temper with him. Sadly, his grades are stellar and his recommendations (from older men profs, not me) are glowing. He will be somebody’s doctor one day 🙁
There wasn’t really an actual debate…was there?
Well if you follow the conversations on BnR, EM, and Babble, as well as various blogs including Bound by Gravity and Saskboy, there are certainly some trying to debate.
If issues can’t be talked about, then there will come a time when no one will understand why things are done a certain way. It’s important that we know history, and question if we’re doing things the best way possible, or we’ll never improve our culture. Debate doesn’t have to mean a slippery slope of regression will happen. I can’t think of a situation in Canada where that happened, can you suggest a few situations where it has?
yes.
EI, was “talked about” and is now available to very few people..most particularly those that really require it.
SWC…perhaps you’ve heard something about it. There were a couple of stories in the press.
Abortion in some of the Eastern provinces is almost impossible to get.
Saskboy writes: “there will come a time when no one will understand why things are done a certain way. ”
Seems that time is now. You don’t understand why abortion must be available? Good goddess.
How many smart women and men have to explain it to you again?
Go back. Read history. I’m too tired.
The rights of an unborn child are inferior, and in fact completely meaningless, when compared to a woman’s right to do whatever she pleases. That is your blanket belief. It’s repugnant in my view.
The sad part is that I agree with most of the things you list yourself as being angry at…. you list very compelling reasons to allow abortions when necessary. Your reasons are not, however, reasons to allow frivolous abortions.
My posts on my blog attempt to illustrate that this is not a black & white issue – there are TWO lives (and thus two sets of rights) in competition (depending on when you believe life begins, of course). I tried to ask questions that would make both pro-death & anti-choice sides squirm…. judging by the reactions I get, I’d say the squirming part worked well, but that people who were so completely stubborn in their views simply refused to debate, and instead reacted with empty angry rhetoric.
Sorry to have made you squirm.
and instead reacted with empty angry rhetoric.
Empty rhetoric like this? It’s repugnant in my view.
Your reasons are not, however, reasons to allow frivolous abortions.
So if someone only has a “right” to something if they make decisions based on (who’s? your?) criteria, can that really be called a right. If you’re only allowed to do it under certain circumstances (again, decided by whom?), it’s not a right but merely a privilege. Meaning that women would again have to be going cap-in-hand to doctors’ panel and other often patriarch institutions asking, “Please, sir, may I have this abortion?”
No rights mean you can do it even if your reasons are stupid. I might not personally respect a woman who makes decisions on her reproductive capacity based on what’s in fashion this season but if we indeed have a right, her reasons are not important.
Why do men feel they have the right to get into our psyches?
Andrew, seriously: you made people squirm? That is one oversized ego you’ve got there; I understand there’s help for that.
Even after I wrote seriously to you about getting your facts right, checking the stats on when the vast majority of abortions are done, on the “partial-birth abortion” lie (which any doctor will talk to you about), and after other people came along and generously gave you some of the stats that, in all fairness, you have the responsibility to be looking up for yourself — even then, you went ahead and composed a list of questions in which all the old propaganda lies were embedded.
Sorry, Andrew, but even if I were disposed to consider this an “issue” or a debate, that was enough to tell me that I did not have a responsible or honest opponent to debate with.
“You don’t understand why abortion must be available? Good goddess.”
Who said that? Not I, or Elizabeth May. In fact we can both already explain why – women will resort to coat hangers and do what they want if we restrict abortions. Stop distorting our argument.
skdadl grades Saskboy’s paper: 50 per cent.
Or maybe no … That’s not a reason: it’s just a clue to how one must begin to rearrange one’s head on the subject of women’s autonomy.
So 50 per cent is too high. What to do, what to do …
women will resort to coat hangers and do what they want
What was that quote from Bush about Don’t think?
I’m having deja vu. Different words same intent.
What did I just say about distorting my position to fit with your apparent desire to hand wave? I don’t appreciate it.
May’s point and mine, is that women don’t WANT coat hangers they want doctors, but they’ll resort to whatever means they can, or they’ll just go through with a pregnancy and birth they don’t want.
And my point, Saskboy, is that you should think about that fact a little longer.
In every society we know of, through history, women have been willing to risk their lives to end some pregnancies. They have defied every authority that has tried to prevent them.
In many different kinds of situations and against tremendous odds, women have still acted upon an interior logic that wrenched them right out of existing power structures. That takes realizing that existing power structures are irrelevant to human truth, and many women have undergone that revolution of consciousness.
Acting upon that powerful drive to end a pregnancy is not an expression of the pathos that you and Elizabeth May keep trying to reimpose on women. It is an act of great dignity, the act of a free human being.
Sentimental moralizers have never been able to stop women from responding to the logic of their own existence, even when they knew that claiming that dignity could kill them, as it often has. And you never will.
Elizabeth May doesn’t get that. Tant pis.
FWIW:
“a gutwrenching decision.”
I’ll assume you weren’t making a pun 😉
Saskboy makes a funny on Dykes Against Harper
I read through most of the forums…All I can say is that I am so glad there are so many smart and articulate women (such a good point, Skdadl, to challenge the notion that abortion is always a defeat somehow…think of how women of certain groups have also used control of their reproduction to resist the exploitation of their peoples!)
I feel so wiped these days…So, I guess the attack on the SWC has spread to a general attack on women across our country.