Blog for Choice Day!

[lady_kishiria]

I didn't know there was such a thing, but there is, so I'll get this done before midnight.

You often hear women say, "Well, I'd never have an abortion, but I support the right of any other woman to do it." That's not me. I can think of any number of reasons why I might have an abortion, and so I am pro-choice.

I want to see RU-486 brought into this country. It seems to me that pro-liars don't want it because they won't be able to wave their bloody fetus photos around since it induces abortions at a stage where the embryo is microscopic. You have to realize, I support legal abortion even MORE than I support it because I can't stand the pro-life crowd.

I've said that I do yearn for a day when abortion is no more. Seriously, I do. That would mean all contraception worked, that there was no rape and that all women were prosperous enough so that an unplanned pregnancy wouldn't be a big deal. That sounds good, doesn't it? When I pray for an end to abortion, that's what I mean. I don't think pro-liars mean the same thing.

Comments

[catdraco.livejournal.com]

I understood mifepristone (RU-486) was already available in the US for terminations up to 49 days.

[kishiriadgr.livejournal.com]

It's not widely or easily available, no.

What irks me is that mifepristone has been shown to be a highly effective medication against breast cancer, but the freakish "pro-lifers" here have done everything in their power to make sure no studies can be done--because it's an "abortion drug". That is just another thing to convince me that they have no interest in womens' well-being at all, but are only out to control their bodies.

[youngfreud.livejournal.com]

Reminds me off all that crap the Anti-Sex League abstinence-only crowd has been pushing about the HPV and it's root in the cause of cervical cancer, especially in light that there's now a vacine for it.

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

Because it's not about health, it's about punishing us for having sex, and enjoying it, and not having to suffer consequences.

I couldn't believe they were trying to pull the "the vaccine will encourage them to have sex" bit. As we all know, only the dread fear of HPV is keeping untold numbers of teenage girls and women from having sex.

Right. With what passes for sex ed these days, how many girls or guys even know what HPV is?

DV

[garpu.livejournal.com]

I tend to call the people you refer to as "pro-fetus."

[youngfreud.livejournal.com]

Yep, they only care for "life" when it's an abstract, invisible thing. As soon as the child is born, it becomes another mouth suckling on the welfare teat or another potential criminal that they have to lock up.

And then, there's the contradiction in capital punishment and war.

[garpu.livejournal.com]

Agreed. nothing pisses me off more than watching pro-fetus people try to justify the death penalty.

[shadowcell.livejournal.com]

I still think this whole "pro-life" position is a construct of the evangelicals, rather than a genuine argument. I fail to see how a microscopic blob of cells in a petri dish is as much a human being as you and me, and how killing it is as much of a sin as killing a grown person. It's illogical, and while your rank-and-file fundamentalist will believe it, surely the James Dobsons of the world can't be so stupid as to believe it themselves. They have to sell this message to people. There has to be enough of a level of detachment in them to realize that they have to spin this so that it looks like a legitimate argument and not the bullshit it really is.

[youngfreud.livejournal.com]

You do have a point. I recall that even before RvW, church leaders would quietly steer women with unplanned pregancies to an abortionist, much like a doctor would. It was after the societal changes in the '70s, such as the rise of the women's liberation and free love movement, the reaction to the fall of the conservative movement in the failure of Barry Goldwater's attempt at the presidency and later, the wake of Watergate, and Jimmy Carter's reach out to the evangelicals, whom Reagan would later steal from him in the '80 election, did this ever really become an issue.

After all, the abortion issue is very much a control issue, not only over women, who've gained in power in the past 30-40 years, but also minorities: one doesn't have to go far to hear a pundit like Bill Bennett mouth off saying that crime would go down if more blacks had abortions or some Fox News tool say that white women need to breed more white babies.

[zare-k.livejournal.com]

Some in the anti-choice camp are now taking the position that abortion should be banned because it is profoundly harmful to women-- specifically, because it causes deep, lasting psychological trauma. Trouble is, scientific studies on the topic don't support that conclusion at all.

See this Sunday's NY Times magazine for a profile on one of these activists. It's pretty interesting.

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

As opposed to the potential harm caused by having to carry a pregnancy you didn't want to term and then having to either go through the adoption process or raise the child.

Right.

I call BS on this one.

DV

[shadowcell.livejournal.com]

Plus there's the immeasurable trauma the child will go through, being forced into the world in the care of a parent who didn't want them. Nobody has yet tried to justify to me that it's worth saving fetuses from being aborted, only to bring those children into a world where they are not loved.

[azelmaroark.livejournal.com]

You're awesome. Can I link to this?

[kishiriadgr.livejournal.com]

Of course.

[helenkacan.livejournal.com]

I'm not really back on LJ but couldn't resist leaving a comment. Or two.

First of all, there are those (and I love the new pronounciation, pro-liars) who consider contraception to be EXACTLY the same as abortion. Gee, thanks a lot. So, if you're having sex with a man, you get to worry. Count. Take your temperature. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

And, then, what really gets me boiling. So, the abstinence campaign fails, the girl gets pregnant - and what is the advice? Well, the most noble sacrifice: carry the fetus to term, so you can provide a baby for an intertile couple. Yup, baby-breeding promoted. Ugh.

Anyway, just my three cents' worth.
H.

[kishiriadgr.livejournal.com]

Cooperative Family Planning, (aka NFP) actually does work. "Our Bodies, Ourselves", hardly a right-wing Christian organization, give it high marks. I know feminists who like to use it because it involves knowledge of how a woman's body works and not putting *things* in their bodies.

I celebrate that, and say it should not be mandatory.

Women are ALWAYS told to sacrifice. Fuck that, let someone else give something up!