I haven't posted in this thread so far because, wow, so many of these comments are just...wow. But I have something to say to all the pro-"life" people ("life" in quotations because you and I both know you're very selective and subjective about what that means) and all the waffley if-and-but sayers:
Basically my stance on abortion is:
I am a woman who had an abortion and you need to stay out of my life decisions. I could not find an single commenter here who likewise can say that they themselves have had an abortion (if anyone did in this thread, I overlooked you and I'm sorry). Any discussion on abortion should start with the women who need or needed an abortion, like me. We're the ones getting the abortions, we're the one most immediately impacted by them. You need to listen to us--first. No exceptions.
Granted, in an ideal, civilized world, women like myself shouldn't have to come forward to assert themselves into conversations about them that have not bothered to include them. We would have been included from the start. Likewise, I should not have to discuss such a personal and entirely justified choice with complete strangers, included ones I would regard as hostile to my dignity and rights, because they got some ass-brained idea that my reproductive health, my body, my quality of life and ultimately my right to be alive, healthy and safe is open territory for them to moralize and judge from afar. That is an egregious display on one's privilege, not to mention misogyny (yes, thinking you don't have to listen to women about something that is a woman's issue pretty much qualifies you as someone who thinks woman have no personal agency that you need to respect, i.e. a misogynist).
That you don't know why women seek abortions is entrely because you haven't bothered to find out. You just assume. You take an issue about
real people (women--yep, we're real people) and their rights over their own lives, and you make it an argument of
definitions, like such and such trimesters, "personhood" or how the woman got pregnant. By doing that, you cut out the human being--and the fully human, fully living person who is the woman--from the picture and reduce her to mere mention, a thing that can't speak, can't voice her choices, wishes or fears, can't defend herself and cannot demand you respect her rights, her personhood, her dignity and her agency. And for those who somehow think the embyro or fetus is a victim and a "person", that you need to victimize the woman first and deny and dismiss her personhood and agency to make your argument makes your argument null and void--go take Logic 101 & Social Justice 101 before rejoining the discussion.
You likewise haven't bothered to get an education on reproductive health and all the many, many things that can go wrong with it that no one can control. You likely don't know many of the basic stats about abortion that reveal the intricate social implications and burdens of having children that fall upon women but, not surprisingly, rarely impact men with children in the same way, like how most women who get one are already mothers and have to make the choice to limit their family size themselves, or how women who cannot get an abortion are far more likely to stay in an abusive relationship than ones who can, or that single mothers living in poverty who cannot get abortions have a far less likely chance to get themselves and their children out of poverty.
Additionally, you probably don't know that by leading medical experts' estimates, 50% of all fertilized eggs are spontaeously aborted, many of which end up being flushed down a toilet or thrown out on a used maxi pad without the woman or anyone else knowing she was even pregnant. Think about that the next time you fret over whether or not an abortion by choice is "killing a person." What about all those "persons" rotting away in a sewage treatment plant or a landfill?
Where's the outcry for all those thrown-away souls?! You probably haven't really given thought about what "personhood" is, so you haven't realized that idea that nature or God would give "personhood" to something so physiologicaly incapable of possessing personhood is absurd. Thomas Aquinas understood that--in the bleeping 13th century. Please try to catch up.
And lastly, having never been pregnant yourself (or perhaps, for a slender few of you at this largely male user site, you were pregnant, wanted to be pregnant and your life circumstances, health and relationships all supported you pursuing your choice to stay pregnant) you have never known what it's like to be pregnant and know in your heart and gut that this is not the right time to be pregnant. You don't know what it's like to know it's a wrong time to bring a child into this world. You also don't know what it's like to want a pregnancy but know something is very wrong and that child will never be. This is why abortion has been part of our society for as long as we know, because a woman's drive to not be pregnant when it's not the right time or when something is wrong is as strong as the drive to be pregnant when it is the right time. It's not abnormal. It's not immoral. It's perfectly natural and right. It's how we evolved as a species.
I tell you want, anti-abortionists and fence-straddlers: when YOU get pregnant and it's not the right time for you to be pregnant, for ANY reasons, be it physiological, medical, emotional, finanical, relationship-wise, or if you got preganat from being raped by your father/stepfather/uncle or any other man, or something unforeseen went wrong with a pregnancy you wanted, get back to me and I will be HAPPY to dump loads of clueless moralizing, uneducated debating and other irrational, pretentious nonsense on you to make you feel isolated, guilty, powerless and vicimtimized in the middle of an urgent personal matter that is none of my bleeping business. Agreed?
TeneReef wrote:Because of abortion of female babies, there are no enough girls for men to date,
and women get gang raped.
You have got to be kidding me.
Ignoring the silly heteronormativity of that comment...
If you are worried about women aborting female fetuses, then make this a world where women don't have to be afraid to bring a female child into it. Try, if you can, to imagine the
horror of this woman's motheras she watchd her daughter die from the horrific injuries from being viciously, savagely raped and left for dead. BY MEN. If there are women in this world who are afraid to have female children, it is because they are afraid of what MEN will do to their children--whether it's condemning them to a dehumanizing life of poverty, domestic violence and no opportunities to escape, or being sold into sex slavery, or being brutally raped like this Indian woman--and they feel they have no other option. I can't blame such women. On the other hand, I am also among countless feminists and women's advocate worldwide who very strongly advocate for change so no woman anywhere has to be afraid to have a daughter. You're welcomed to join us.
<trigger warning, for sensitive readers>
<Note to mods--what I'm about to say is very graphic, but given that someone said something so ignorant about the nature of rape, I think it warrents being this explicit. I hope you don't get squeamish and delete it, because that would be allowing people to continue kidding themselves about the horrific violence that is rape and how it is NOT about sex, but about controlling others>Additionally, TeneReef, about this Indian woman who died after being gang raped, tell me how--PLEASE, you really need to explain this to me so I can understand--HOW IN THE WORLD is shoving a metal rod up a woman's vagina--repeatedly--until it punctuated her cervix and uterus and did massive, horrific and ultimately fatal damage to her internal organs about men needing to satisfy their sexual urges? Seriously--tell me how that is. Were they just boys being boys and just get carried away? Did they mistake this woman's undoubtedly agonizing screams for pleasure, hmmm? Do you think the sight of blood of the weapon increased these men's pleasure in the act? Do you see yourself and other men you know getting off to that?
I hope you're as sick to yoru stomach from reading that as I am from writing it. But that's how so very far away from reality your notion of why men rape is.
Rape is not about sex. It uses sex as an avenue for violent, truamatizing acts of control. The worse thing anyone could do when talking about rape is
blame the victim, because that's
PART OF THE CONTROL. Rape is used worldwide to control women, but also men. Whenever there are people not behaving how the dominant, most privileged group thinks they should, rape get utilized as a weapon. The most common targets of rape are indeed women, as worldwide men are the most privileged group, but also gays & trans/queer people as well as men and women of ethnic, religious and cultural minorities. Anywhere you find a dominant group in conflict with a less powerful group, there is rape being using to control the less powerful, to punish them, to police them, to break and crush them. It is a worldwide epidemic, fueled by people's refusal to hold the rapists accountable for their own actions but instead blame victims. As species we ought to be profoundly disgusted with ourselves, and if we have any decency, we should commit ourselves to ending what has been rightly called "rape culture."