The Abortion "Debate". Please Just Make It Stop!
I passed yet another "vigil for the unborn" in Maple Ridge yesterday. To say I hate the self-serving, narcissistic, egotistical people who are fighting so hard to remove the dominion of the very bodies of all women, is a grave understatement. I detest the female zealots, sheep who have internalized the almost universal misogyny and regular abuse nearly all women face at the hands of men, on a daily basis, and are standing in support of those very purveyors of misery. I wonder how female anti-choice advocates feel about sacrificing their sisters in order to ally themselves with men who have no respect for any woman?
My real disgust, that which makes my blood boil, is the type of spectacle I witnessed yesterday. All of the "loving children of a loving God" were men. There were no women there at all. IF anyone has the right to tell a woman what she "should" or "should not" be doing regarding a pregnancy, a female doctor, nurse practitioner, nurse, or other health care provider ought to be the one doing it. If a woman has made the difficult decision to abort a fetus, women, not men, should be providing factual, useful and practical information to her.
Yesterday's small but vocal little gang of pro-life thugs were uniformly middle to early senior aged, wearing expensive, carefully chosen casual clothing. They were trying hard to look like someone's sweet uncle Bob, but under the genteel masks and the designer clothes were vile, hateful fanatics who are all the more frightening because they believe their own press. These men, all of whom enjoy male privilege simply due to accident of birth, all of whom have horribly overdeveloped senses of their own importance, think that it is their right, no, their calling, to scare women into carrying unwanted children to term . None of these self-righteous bastards give any thought to what becomes of that unwilling mother and her unfortunate child after she has given birth.
These men carried horrific, graphic photographs of abortions in progress, enlarged to poster size. Strategically placed posters of lovely blue-eyed blond babies were in serious competition for all furtive glances.
Why are we still "debating" the right of women to decide what happens to their bodies? If a woman wants to abort, why is it anyone else's concern? There ought not be a "reason" required, ever.
And why in the name of God are men involved in the abortion debate at all ? Until the male of the species can get pregnant and deliver babies, they should shut the fuck up. The argument that abortion is a public policy issue, a moral issue, a community issue, a family issue or any man's issue is bullshit. The choice to abort a fetus belongs to the woman carrying it. Period.
Oh, and the Adoption not Abortion faction fails miserably. My partner and I were both adopted, and in both cases it was an unmitigated disaster. Same for my three siblings. There are hundreds and hundreds of children awaiting permanent homes and families in British Columbia, but the homes just aren't there. When a healthy baby is born with an adoption plan in place, it's the kind of fairy tale ending everyone lives for, but most babies being born into the child welfare system are not healthy infants with ten families desperate to adopt them. Foster care is often their lot.
Abortion is never an easy decision to reach, and women who comes to that choice deserves support.
My real disgust, that which makes my blood boil, is the type of spectacle I witnessed yesterday. All of the "loving children of a loving God" were men. There were no women there at all. IF anyone has the right to tell a woman what she "should" or "should not" be doing regarding a pregnancy, a female doctor, nurse practitioner, nurse, or other health care provider ought to be the one doing it. If a woman has made the difficult decision to abort a fetus, women, not men, should be providing factual, useful and practical information to her.
Yesterday's small but vocal little gang of pro-life thugs were uniformly middle to early senior aged, wearing expensive, carefully chosen casual clothing. They were trying hard to look like someone's sweet uncle Bob, but under the genteel masks and the designer clothes were vile, hateful fanatics who are all the more frightening because they believe their own press. These men, all of whom enjoy male privilege simply due to accident of birth, all of whom have horribly overdeveloped senses of their own importance, think that it is their right, no, their calling, to scare women into carrying unwanted children to term . None of these self-righteous bastards give any thought to what becomes of that unwilling mother and her unfortunate child after she has given birth.
These men carried horrific, graphic photographs of abortions in progress, enlarged to poster size. Strategically placed posters of lovely blue-eyed blond babies were in serious competition for all furtive glances.
Why are we still "debating" the right of women to decide what happens to their bodies? If a woman wants to abort, why is it anyone else's concern? There ought not be a "reason" required, ever.
And why in the name of God are men involved in the abortion debate at all ? Until the male of the species can get pregnant and deliver babies, they should shut the fuck up. The argument that abortion is a public policy issue, a moral issue, a community issue, a family issue or any man's issue is bullshit. The choice to abort a fetus belongs to the woman carrying it. Period.
Oh, and the Adoption not Abortion faction fails miserably. My partner and I were both adopted, and in both cases it was an unmitigated disaster. Same for my three siblings. There are hundreds and hundreds of children awaiting permanent homes and families in British Columbia, but the homes just aren't there. When a healthy baby is born with an adoption plan in place, it's the kind of fairy tale ending everyone lives for, but most babies being born into the child welfare system are not healthy infants with ten families desperate to adopt them. Foster care is often their lot.
Abortion is never an easy decision to reach, and women who comes to that choice deserves support.
posted by Alphamutt at 6:52 AM
2 Comments:
Well said!
One month of a biomedical ethics class I took at University was devoted to abortion and the issues surrounding it. I am pro choice in the sense that I believe women should have the right to terminate their pregnancies, but, I do feel that it should be done in the first trimester or not at all.
There is a point between 3-6 months where the fetus (notice I didn't say baby) begins to feel pain and I think at that point, an abortion has been left too late.
Great post, Deb! I totally and completely agree. I was a peer counselor as a UBC student and each year, we'd commence preparations well in advance of the visit of a charming group called the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) to school grounds. Their marketing campaign is to have huge, graphic posters of abortions, aborted fetuses, etc. up next to photos of Nazi concentration camps and pictures of abortion providers next to those of Hitler. I and many others advocated to have the group banned from the university (it's not even a UBC group!), but censorship laws prevailed. Still, SpeakEasy (the peer counseling program) set up tents so that students agitated, triggered, disturbed and/or downright terrified by the display could speak to someone. Those were always busy weeks at SpeakEasy, following GAP visits. Terrible.
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