Monday, April 27, 2015

Female reporter for Slate gives ten reason why she is not only pro-choice, but pro-abortion.

I think I am like most people who are for a woman's right to choose, in that I don't feel comfortable suggesting that there should be more abortions, only that I think it should be up to the woman to decide if she wants/needs one or not, and nobody else.

However this Slate reporter, Valerie Tarico, has a much more definite point of view.

She starts off with this declaration:I am pro-abortion like I’m pro-knee-replacement and pro-chemotherapy and pro-cataract surgery. As the last protection against ill-conceived childbearing when all else fails, abortion is part of a set of tools that help women and men to form the families of their choosing. I believe that abortion care is a positive social good. I suspect that a lot of other people secretly believe the same thing. And I think it’s time we said so.

From there she goes on to list, and explain, her reasons for being, not simply pro-choice, but pro-abortion.

Number 1: I’m pro-abortion because being able to delay and limit childbearing is fundamental to female empowerment and equality. A woman who lacks the means to manage her fertility lacks the means to manage her life. Any plans, dreams, aspirations, responsibilities or commitments–no matter how important–have a great big contingency clause built: “until or unless I get pregnant, in which case all bets are off.”

Okay you know that conservative women will lose their minds over this reasoning.  After all they believe that a woman's single greatest achievement is to make a little human being., and NOTHING should ever delay or interfere with that.

Number 2: I’m pro-abortion because well-timed pregnancies give children a healthier start in life. We now have ample evidence that babies do best when women are able to space their pregnancies and get both pre-natal and pre-conception care. The specific nutrients we ingest in the weeks before we get pregnant can have a lifelong effect on the wellbeing of our offspring. Rapid repeat pregnancies increase the risk of low birthweight babies and other complications. Wanted babies are more likely to get their toes kissed, to be welcomed into families that are financially and emotionally ready to receive them, to get preventive medical care during childhood and the kinds of loving engagement that helps young brains to develop.

I see nothing wrong with that logic.

Number 3: I’m pro-abortion because I take motherhood seriously. Most female bodies can incubate a baby, and thanks to antibiotics, cesareans and anti-hemorrhage drugs, most of us are able to survive pushing a baby out into the world. But parenting is a lot of work, and doing it well takes twenty dedicated years of focus, attention, patience, persistence, social support, mental health, money, and a whole lot more. This is the biggest, most life-transforming thing most of us will ever do. The idea that women should simply go with it when they find themselves pregnant after a one-night-stand, or a rape, or a broken condom completely trivialized motherhood.

Preaching to the choir.

However I will add one caveat, and that is that quite often women are indeed ready to be mothers even if they do not yet know they are ready.



Number 4: I’m pro-abortion because intentional childbearing helps couples, families and communities to get out of poverty. Decades of research in countries ranging from the U.S. to Bangladesh show that reproductive policy is economic policy. It is no coincidence that the American middle class rose along with the ability of couples to plan their families, starting at the beginning of the last century. Having two or three kids instead of eight or ten was critical to prospering in the modern industrial economy.

Very, very good point.

Number 5: I’m pro-abortion because reproduction is a highly imperfect process. Genetic recombination is a complicated progression with flaws and false starts at every step along the way. To compensate, in every known species including humans, reproduction operates as a big funnel. Many more eggs and sperm are produced than will ever meet; more combine into embryos than will ever implant; more implant than will grow into babies; and more babies are born than will grow up to have babies of their own. This systematic culling makes God or nature the world’s biggest abortion provider: Nature’s way of producing healthy kids essentially requires every woman to have an abortion mill built into her own body.

Never thought of it that way, but true.

Number 6: I’m pro-abortion because I think morality is about the well-being of sentient beings. I believe that morality is about the lived experience of sentient beings—beings who can feel pleasure and pain, preference and intention, who at their most complex can live in relation to other beings, love and be loved and value their own existence.

In other words actual people. living, breathing, and existing among us, have more value than embryos.

Number 7: I’m pro-abortion because contraceptives are imperfect, and people are too. 

Okay.

Number 8: I’m pro-abortion because I believe in mercy, grace, compassion, and the power of fresh starts. 

Who among us hasn’t had unprotected sex when the time or situation or partnership wasn’t quite right for bringing a new life into the world? Most of the time we get lucky; sometimes we don’t. And in those situations we rely on the mercy, compassion, and generosity of others.

I'm not sure about this one as it seems to be a restatement of number 3.

Number 9: I’m pro-abortion because the future is always in motion, and we have the power and responsibility to shape it well.

The author uses the famous Ray Bradbury story "A Sound of Thunder" to help suggest that choices have consequences and it is up to potential parents to choose the right time, and circumstances, to bring a child into this world.

Number 10: I’m pro-abortion because I love my daughter.

For this last one the author gets very personal and tells her own abortion story when she and her husband discovered that they had an unhealthy fetus.  And that if they had decided to give birth anyway, the circumstances would have changed so that the daughter that she loves so desperately today would never have been conceived or born.

Part of me thinks that's a rationalization. However I am quite aware that parents of special needs or medically fragile children, and I don't know which category best fits her unborn child, often have an incredibly difficult row to hoe. So she is correct that the life, and even relationship with her daughter, that she enjoys today, would have been significantly altered.

I decided to share this list with you because I found it a little troubling, and wondered if that were due to my gender, to the fact that my teenage mother chose to give birth to me, or simply because it challenges my own definition of what it means to be pro-choice.

So once again I would like to open the floor to debate and get your input.

51 comments:

  1. Anonymous6:33 AM

    She left out another good reason: There are already far too many people in this world. We are straining and will soon break the resources of our world.

    And her point that giving birth to her flawed fetus would have meant her current daughter would never have been born is not rationalization. It's true even if an unwanted child is born healthy. Most sane people try to limit the number of children they have for economic reasons. Have one when you're not ready, you won't have another one when you are ready.

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    1. Anonymous10:33 AM

      No woman should have to be forced to give birth to an anacephalous child, or an otherwise horribly deformed child, particularly when its life will be cut abnormally short and/or she can not afford to give the child the medical care it needs – or there is no medical care that would treat and heal the condition. This is not a statement of eugenics: this is a statement of compassion for both the mother and child, as well as the rest of that mother's family. And by the way, the GOP is deliberately sabotaging this goal by ensuring that abortion will not be available, anywhere, under any condition, at a state of pregnancy where it becomes possible to know these things. Their goal: every pregnancy should be (sorry for using such a crude expression) a pig in a poke. To add insult to injury, they THEN wish to deny both the mother and child all the medical care, economic support, and social support that would be necessary for raising such a child. IOW, the GOP literally believes that pregnancy should be a punishment – to be borne almost exclusively by women – for having had sex, including forced sex. Their view of the sexual act is so far from being one of love and the union between two caring, prepared, and mature individuals that it makes my head spin. It is clear to me, from everything they do, that the GOP hates, yes despises, both women and children, because they hate and despise anything they consider weaker than them. To use, nay force on others, pregnancy and child birth as a 'payment' for the evil deed of sex is just so far beyond despicable that I have no words for it.

      And totally apart from the above, the economic and social costs to society for having unwanted children are so far beyond astronomical that no one can assess them: prisons, juvenile care, foster homes, police budgets, bullying in schools, physical and mental illnesses of the child that can last a lifetime, broken future relationships by these same unhappy and dysfunctional children as they grow older, alcoholism, drug addiction, violence toward others, and more. Every child should be a wanted child, plain and simple. To deliberately devise a plan that is opposite to that is demonic. The harm done to society through unwanted children far exceeds the harm done to one aborted fetus: think about it.

      I have never had an abortion, and don't know if I could endure the emotional pain if I were in a position to do so. But it sure is none of my friction' business to force such a decision on other people, whether they be family members or total strangers. This is the grossest violation of the 'Mind Your Own Business' rule (established decades ago by Ann Landers and Dear Abby) that I can think of.

      To top it all off, there is no sexual equal to the GOP's perceived slight, when it comes to their alleged 'pro life' position. That is, if life is really THAT sacred, why isn't Viagra illegal? Why aren't vasectomies illegal? Why isn't male penile enhancement for those too old to procreate illegal? Why is porn on the internet okay for men? And why the heck is male masturbation ("oh, the loss of sperm – thousands of potential lives!!") illegal? See how silly it all sounds to them when we try to put the shoe on the other foot? No, it's just all a big game of misogyny and male uber superiority, including toward children, pure and simple.

      I've had way more enough of this monkey business for one lifetime. They are proving daily that we're long past due for a female president.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous11:17 AM

      YOU SAID IT!!!

      Delete
    3. Anonymous11:52 AM

      Wow. Amazing comments.

      Delete
  2. Anonymous6:40 AM

    However well-intentioned, comments like "However I will add one caveat, and that is that quite often women are indeed ready to be mothers even if they do not yet know they are ready" are incredibly condescending. I know that they seemingly make the case that most women are stronger than they know and that that's arguably a good thing to point out, but what comments like this do is lend credibility to the idea that women aren't capable of knowing what they want or need, or even what they can accomplish and so it becomes necessary for men to protect women from themselves. It's not that women who aren't ready to be mothers actually are ready and just don't know it, it's that they become ready when the situation is thrust upon them because there is no other choice.

    This article is really the pro-choice movement growing up and deciding to embrace the parts of abortion that the anti-choice crowd has made unapproachable for decades. We need to start questioning the premise of their arguments, rather than accepting the premise and attempting to fight on their ground. I care more about the actual life of the pregnant woman than I do the potential life of the fetus. It's weird that pro-choice people have avoided asserting that for so long.

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    1. Anonymous7:37 AM

      Excellent points! I applaud your intelligence.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous7:45 AM

      Thank you. That 'caveat' irritated the heck out of me, too. And abortion does not have to do only with readiness to be mothers. In my case it was something else entirely. And nobody's damn business but mine.

      Delete
    3. Anonymous10:35 AM

      And for anyone to claim to be anti-abortion and ALSO anti-birth control is a hypocrisy so grand you can drive a 24-wheeler through it. And THAT is the ground game playing daily, including today, before the United States Supreme Court – which is currently nothing more than a non-semitic sharia court taking orders from Opus Dei.

      Delete
  3. Anonymous6:42 AM

    Look: an Apr 2015 piece on the hoax; it links to a long-time blogger.

    <a href="http://themoderatevoice.com/204270/seven-years-on-why-the-sarah-palin-birth-hoax-story-still-shouldnt-go-away/
    </a>

    Seems like we should give it clicks, or comments, or something. To support it.

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    1. Anonymous9:00 AM

      Thanks for that link, 6:42 am!
      Yes, let's click on there, and supply them with more facts!

      Delete
    2. Anonymous10:41 AM

      Look: an Apr 2015 piece on the hoax; it links to a long-time blogger.

      The linked page has only the first half-dozen paragraphs. The full article is at:
      http://kikoshouse.blogspot.ca/2015/04/seven-years-on-why-palin-birth-hoax.html

      Delete
  4. Randall6:42 AM

    One argument often overlooked in the abortion debate:
    Roe vs. Wade saved many, many lives...

    the lives of the mothers.

    FACT: before Roe vs. Wade many, many women died of botched back-alley abortions as well as childbirth.

    FACT: despite the feigned concern for "the precious life of the fetus", many, many anti-abortionists are all about punishment, i.e. "she should have thought about that before she got pregnant."

    Abortion should be legal, safe - and rare. Period.

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    1. Maple7:00 AM

      Yes Randall, the self-righteous fundies and others are all too eager to label any woman or girl who wants an abortion a "slut" for having had intercourse. Perfectly okay for the men to poke their members into any and all, but heaven forbid a woman should allow, let alone enjoy, the act. In their small minds, women are nothing more than chattels to be used and (all too often) abused. The "precious little life within" has nothing to do with their rhetoric, otherwise, they'd do all that they could to protect and care for that "precious little life" after it's born. And they don't.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous8:21 AM

      Yes, THIS. I'll never forget walking by one of the regular abortion protesters and having him attempt to thrust literature at me. Feeling a bit snarky, I told him when he could get pregnant, I'd maybe take a look at his literature. His screamed response? "You cunt."
      Yep - it's all about the power. Nothing in that movement is about babies or women. Just power and control over women's lives.
      Later, I found the postscript.- This well known local activist was divorced; the former wife had a restraining order; and he had several (five, if I remember correctly) grown children who refused to have anything to do with him. What a shocker -not.

      Delete
    3. Anonymous10:38 AM

      His response to you ("you cunt") suggests to me that he, like many males who are violently anti-abortion may also be struggling against latent homosexual tendencies. Tendencies that are expressed as anti-women, a despising of women's bodies, a shaming of the entire pregnancy process – in other words, a complete and safe (for them) deflection away from the real issue: that they hate women because they are not willing to be true to their own sexual leanings. Just a thought.

      Delete
  5. Anonymous7:06 AM

    Amen to 640am

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  6. LisaB25957:16 AM

    I think it's troubling because I take the topic seriously, everything about it. Sex before marriage, hook up culture, lack of proper sex ed, lack of access to good birth control or pre-natal care, having a child.

    Abortion is not some panacea to fix these problems. It's a symptom of these problems. It may be the best choice out of a other shitty choices, but I don't think it (and everything about getting pregnant) should be treated cavalierly. There's something cavalier about her statements regardless of whether they are logical

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    1. Anonymous7:44 AM

      No one's treating it cavalierly or claiming it is a panacea. These are the types of statements that shut down important conversations about abortion- people are afraid of being accused of not treating it with some ambiguously-defined level of deference. Because it's not a cure-all does not mean it doesn't address a particular set of problems when all previous attempts have failed to do so (sex ed, birth control, etc). The fact is that abortion DOES safely and effectively cure the ailment of an unwanted pregnancy. Should it get to that point? Ideally, no. Ideally, men and women would have the sex education that functioning, sexual beings deserve and have access to birth control and prophylactics that would successfully protect them from pregnancy and disease. In absence of this, abortions become necessary. And, I don't know a single woman who has gone through with the procedure that did so cavalierly. This is such a misconception.

      Honestly, it seems like you're grossed-out by a frank, clinical discussion of an issue that far too often is overly dramatized for the benefit of the anti-choice crowd.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous8:53 AM

      Lisa, I completely understand and agree with what you stated.

      Delete
    3. LisaB25959:10 AM

      Grossed out? No, but as someone who got pregnant the first time they had sex and had an abortion at 18, I do think I have some perspective on it. I don't regret it, but I do take it seriously, even now at 53.

      I don't think "pro-abortion" lingo helps anyone, and is counterproductive to the idea that women must choose for themselves what is right for them. It's just the flip side of "babies are wonderful and everything will be peachy is you stay pregnant." It's never one-size-fits all and the term "pro-abortion" connotes an agenda that doesn't revolve around women making CHOICES in consideration of their personal and medical circumstances.

      Delete
  7. Anonymous7:20 AM

    I do believe that the mutual lack of affection between my mother and me began when she told me "You came along at the worst possible time." Three kids already; marriage made in hell; alcoholism; scrambling for money. "Oops" sex and voila, me. I guess I was that final straw. Kids should be wanted, loved, and provided for. Especially loved.

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    1. Anonymous7:41 AM

      You share my story. Literally the same situation and numbers. My mom never told me, though. I just got to go through life trying to figure it out.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous3:06 PM

      {{{{{{{{7:41}}}}}}} from 7:20

      Delete
  8. Anonymous7:21 AM

    Bristol Palin doppelganger LOL

    https://liveactionnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/pro-abortion3.jpg

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  9. Anonymous7:22 AM

    I will reconsider my pro choice stance once science & technology allows men to carry a fetus for 9 months and labor to deliver the child. Until then all bets are off.

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    1. Anonymous7:47 AM

      I will never reconsider mine. Plenty of men are pro-choice and plenty of women are anti-choice.

      Delete
  10. Aunt Ethel7:23 AM

    Gryphen said after number three:

    "However I will add one caveat, and that is that quite often women are indeed ready to be mothers even if they do not yet know they are ready."

    I think you are trying to say that not every woman knows exactly what they would do, or exactly how they would feel, if they found themselves faced with an unplanned pregnancy, correct? That's a fair statement, and one that can apply to many other circumstances in our lives.

    That said, your statement can also be read as something the anti-choice side would say. If a woman feels that an abortion is the best choice for her, it's patronizing to try and tell her that you know better than she does about her particular situation.

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    1. Well obviously I meant it the first way.

      Delete
  11. Anonymous7:29 AM

    I'm proabortion because I accidentally got pregnant when I didn't want to be, and I got an abortion, the same way I've gotten other medical procedures to deal with small issues before they became big ones.

    I did not want a child and I took steps to ensure that I did not have a child. Period. Do not tell me I may have been ready. The fact that I DID NOT WANT A CHILD means I WAS NOT READY.

    I have never regretted it. I've always been relieved I had the option.

    Yes, fundies and Catholics are all about preventing women from having that option because sex should not be consequence-free -- they want to punish women for doing the dirty.

    To qualify the statement that abortion should be safe and legal with "and rare" really pisses me off. It should be safe and legal, like any other necessary medical procedure. Period. Leave the piousness out of it.

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  12. hedgewytch7:33 AM

    In my life I have had the ability to control my own childbearing choices. I didn't have them made for me. Others around me, not so much. From my 18 year old friend who had an abortion because her family would have thrown her out of the house if she had come to them pregnant, unwed. To the woman who pushes out baby after baby in her quest to be a Good Quiverfull Mother so that her older daughters are raising the babies for her. And stealing the child's childhood under the guise of "learning her future role" while the mother secretly resents her lot in life.)

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  13. Anonymous8:05 AM

    Imagine your 16yr old daughter cones to you upset because her boyfriend wants her to have sex, yet she feels that she is not ready. Would you say to her, "oh honey, you may be far more ready than you know. Go ahead and see!"??? Yep. Didn't think so!!

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    1. I'm sorry, what?

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    2. Anonymous1:37 PM

      The point is, you have no right to determine if/when someone else is 'ready'......for anything!

      Delete
  14. Anonymous8:16 AM

    #1 A female child at age 11 or even younger can and do get pregnant all over the world and have been doing so for eons.
    Anyone who thinks that is acceptable in 2015 is monsterious..

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    1. Anonymous9:09 AM

      Yea exactly. By her father, brother, uncle, boy or man next door, the rapist stranger, ex-lover, artificially and boy friend or husband but should that mean that a unwanted or un prepared for child should be add to THIS FUCKed up country.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous10:43 AM

      Yes, and incest is the poster child for why family planning apart from abortion will not prevent pregnancies.

      Delete
  15. angela8:23 AM

    No one should dictate to a woman the medical decisions she makes for herself, so I still parrot the pro-choice meme because I think if we did it correctly-- no one would need an abortion. But I do live in the reality based world so I'm almost there with pro-abortion.

    I am surrounded by young women who for so many reasons decided to have children before they were ready. Some of the reasons. . . . .

    God will punish them if they get an abortion.
    Their parents want to be grandparents.
    Babies are so cute.
    They "thought" they kinda loved the father--until a few month later--- when they didn't.
    Oh well, I'm pregnant--it was meant to be.
    The father doesn't want them to have an abortion--but he won't be the primary caregiver.

    Most of these women are under twenty-six. I'd say only about
    twenty percent of them have an actual clue about parenthood even though they are parents now. And most of them are financially struggling while half are in tenuous relationships with their significant other.

    Life isn't perfect---but can't we at least try to bring children into more stable environments with less delusion?

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  16. Anonymous8:47 AM

    Oh brother. The SCOTUS ruled:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/27/supreme-court-obamacare-contraception_n_7151868.html

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    1. Anonymous1:39 PM

      I knew that would happen. Fuckers.

      Delete
  17. Anonymous9:02 AM

    642: great link to another blog. Let's supply them with more facts. Especially also the impossibility of a human body to blow up like she claimed in the space of two or three weeks. Also, too, that the 'pregnant' picture did not appear until in AUGUST...

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  18. Anonymous9:13 AM

    I'd like to see the same choices women get to abdicate an unplanned pregnancy also be given to men. Seriously.

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    1. Anonymous12:27 PM

      Do you also think that the man should have veto power over the woman’s decision to abort? It is best when the man and woman agree on what should be done in case of an unplanned pregnancy. But if they disagree, then the woman is the one with more at stake because it is her body that is involved, and she gets the deciding vote.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous1:38 PM

      Only if a woman could get a man pregnant. Then it should be his choice what to do about it.

      Delete
  19. I agree with the woman who wrote the article - the pregnant woman is the only one who should make this decision.
    I especially hate it when someone says they're against abortion because it kills little babies, but they would allow it in the case of incest, rape or to protect the mother's health. Allowing it in those circumstances would still be 'killing little babies'. So they're saying that when it comes to abortion, THEY get to say when it's okay and when it's not. Further proof that it's really about punishing the woman for having sex.

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  20. FrostyAK10:06 AM

    Shit happens. And sometimes abortion is not only expedient, but necessary.

    The extreme human overpopulation of the world is due to lack of thought before reproducing more humans. Enter the duggers... and all those like them who think they can produce enough fanatical Xtians to overwhelm the rest of the world and create the theocracy they so desperately want.

    Abortion is legal in the US, by order of the Supremes. I was around before that was the case. I saw the results of coat hanger abortions. However that court decision is being eaten away gradually by the fanatic Xtian religiolists.

    I chose not to have offspring and continue the overpopulation explosion. A personal decision. Medical decisions should always be personal NOT political.

    Women are NOT INCUBATORS.

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  21. Rapid repeat pregnancies increase the risk of low birthweight babies and other complications.

    I wonder if anyone's ever been tempted to study the Duggar woman and her 20-something offspring in relation to the recovery time for her and the offsprings' ability to thrive, or not?

    I'm surprised she doesn't have a prolapsed uterus by now.

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    1. Anonymous12:09 PM

      I doubt she would admit to it if she has. She's put her life in danger with the last couple of pregnancies she's had. Quiverfull is a special kind of crazy.

      Delete
  22. Anonymous11:39 AM

    Off topic.

    DEATH PANELS IN KANSAS!

    http://www.rawstory.com/2015/04/cancer-patient-with-a-week-to-live-flees-kansas-for-profit-medicaid-for-life-saving-surgery-in-memphis/

    Teabaggers in charge.

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  23. Anonymous11:49 AM

    All you have to do is spend a little time on ancestry.com to realize what a hopeless life of drudgery most women had before contraception. I am so glad to have been born during a time when women have a choice NOT to have 12 children, often beginning 9 months after their wedding day.

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    1. Anonymous3:13 PM

      And more than a few of those 12 wouldn't make it to their first birthday, either.

      Delete
  24. Anita Winecooler4:51 PM

    I totally agree with the woman who wrote the list, on all points. The June Cleaver days are long gone, women are no longer chattel and are in the working world in large numbers, because most men's ego can't take not being able to provide for a dozen and a half kids, a mortgage, shoes, books, diapers etc.
    I'm in my mid fifties and the mother of three children who are loved dearly and know it, my husband and I both work. Anyone that knows me knows I was formally excommunicated by the Catholic church for escorting a college friend into a clinic to have an abortion. Someone took my license plate number and gave it to the archbishop who knew someone that could look up the owners.
    I took her for moral support and came away in the vortex of a tornado of "That's the bitch that took the girl to have an abortion". The hardest part was being outed to family and friends.
    Would anyone let their friend make the choice of a back alley abortion? Or a safe one in a medical center? It's nobody's business unless they choose to make it their business. But the truth is, it was a gift. I've never felt more free in my entire life. And I'm not immoral. I stood toe to toe with the guy who hid child molesters and didn't take shit from anyone over it.
    As a mother, I want the option available to all my children, it should be available, safe and rare. But it should be available.

    ReplyDelete

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