Changing my mind on abortion
March 22, 2006
They say it can’t happen, people’s minds don’t change on this issue, but the last few months have definitely changed my position on abortion. I used to take a soft pro-choice stand: it’s a serious issue, people have legitimate concerns. Maybe we do need a waiting period. Maybe we do need a time after which only medically necessary abortions are allowed. Maybe… maybe…
No more maybes. I’ve been radicalized. I’m pro choice, and that’s the end of it.
Don’t give me “sanctity of life” crap. Are you anti-choice folks out there the same ones who voted not once, but twice, for George W. Bush? In most cases, _yes_. I believe life is sacred, too, but that doesn’t mean we have to preserve it at all costs. And I also don’t think it’s right that my feelings on the matter should judge how someone I don’t know lives her life.
Don’t give me the “think about the children” crap. Are the anti-choice folks looking out for the interest of children? “No”:http://www.thudfactor.com/textpattern/520/5-ways-redux, “No”:http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/12/index.html#008620, and “a thousand times no”:http://tinyurl.com/jnpej. If you’re anti-choice — that is, you support the criminalization of abortion — then either you or your political “allies” are doing their absolute level best to ensure children are used as punishment for sex.
Sex is not against my religion, recreational or otherwise. Birth control options are like heavy winter coats or houses. They reduce the natural consequences of our decisions so we can live in ways _other_ than how nature intended. If you’ve got a problem with sex, that’s fine. But don’t try to make it my problem, too.
See, I don’t want “Bill Frist”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48119-2005Mar18.html deciding when my family and friends have a medical need for an abortion; he thought Terry Schaivo was still alive. I don’t want to have to fight with an insurance company _and a priest_ that my wife or daughter is not faking an “ectopic pregnancy”:http://kidshealth.org/parent/pregnancy_newborn/pregnancy/ectopic.html .
And I don’t want Bill Napoli deciding if my daughter is religious enough or victimized enough to allow her an abortion:
bq. A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life. [ "PBS Newshour":http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/jan-june06/abortion_3-03.html ]
Look. You can be opposed to abortion for any number of reasons. You can think it’s wrong, you can think it’s a great evil even. That’s why it’s a _choice_. You can choose to do what you think is right. You and I can get on just fine; we all have to make complicated decisions for ourselves.
But mostly, I’ve taken the hard line on this because the ban-abortion crowd is not simply anti-choice, “they’re anti-sex”:http://www.thudfactor.com/textpattern/1283/the-conservative-agenda-slowly-exposed. I expected a fight on birth control to come after Roe was overturned, but the Christian Right have gone after birth control methods much faster and much harder than I anticipated. Beyond “opposing the HPV vaccination”:http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050530/pollitt, to “targeting birth control pills”:http://www.abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=1046952&page=1, to “protecting the rights of pharmacists not to do their jobs”:http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/local/14086547.htm, to an “outright ban on state funding of birth control methods”:http://www.columbiatribune.com/2006/Mar/20060316News030.asp…
bq. An attempt to resume state spending on birth control was shot down yesterday by House members who argued it would have amounted to an endorsement of promiscuous lifestyles.
…the radical right has been enthusiastic about making sex as economically disastrous, dangerous, and deadly as possible. They want to keep our children ignorant of sex and how to prevent contraception. They want to keep us from deciding when and how large we build our families.
Having (mostly) conquered the natural consequences of sex the way we have climate (by housing), distance (by transportation), and communicable disease (by vaccination), the right-wingers want to _criminalize_ it so we can’t control how and when babies are made. They’ve got a beef about sex, and see birth control as permission to have sex.
It is sex, not abortion, that they abhor, and they want to use thousands and thousands of children to punish those who have sex. Regardless of marital status. They want a priest or a preacher to decide you the liberal Christian, you the pagan, you the atheist or agnostic — have to have a kid because you broke the Christian God’s law by having fun having sex.
How fucked up is that? It’s fucked up sideways, that’s what it is.
For my entire life I’ve taken birth control as a given. Now a handful of hysterical, evangelical Christians want to take it away from me? _I don’t even believe in their god_. What right do they have?
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March 22nd, 2006 at 4:36 am
What wise words you write. Yes it is all about a group who happens to be in power having severly repressed sexual tendancies.
Save the fetus, sacrifice the child.
Do these people not realize we already have enough humans on this planet and are running out of food, water and land for them?
March 22nd, 2006 at 10:01 am
To be blunt, I’m really don’t believe that all life is sacred. People die. I’m pro-death penalty and I accept that in a “just” (NOT Iraq-Iraq isn’t a war and it isn’t “just”) war, people, including innocents, will die. That’s just life.
I agree that the fetus is a form of life, but that doesn’t mean that its existence trumps the rights of the woman carrying it.
Until the Right shows a genuine concern for their fellow human (those already born), a concern that goes beyond saving their souls, I remain convinced that their opposition to abortion is just a means of punishing women for sex.
March 22nd, 2006 at 10:09 am
A baby is always a choice. Being pro-choice is about letting the mother (and the interested father) decide. People love babies. Governments don’t love anybody. How can we even think of giving this most personal and human choice to a disinterested government agency?
Our government is not pro-life. The religious right is not pro-life. As John has pointed out, they are just pro-control. They have used this emotional issue to manipulate people, to generate distrust and division.
I have asked militant pro-life people to name one woman that they knew personally whom they would not trust to make good decisions regarding the welfare of children. Nobody distrusts any particular woman that they know. It is all of those “other women” who are “murdering children” without thought or conscience.
Pro-choice is the only rational stance of law. Our legislators who use anit-abortion language in their campaigns are using that emotional issue to avoid addressing the legitimate obligations of government that are well stated in the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States.
March 22nd, 2006 at 12:11 pm
I’m for choice too! I think every state ought to be able to decide whether or not abortion should be legal. I don’t think it’s right that the people force their moral values down onto all fifty states! Yes! States rights!
March 22nd, 2006 at 1:32 pm
Jeff, don’t think your cunning turn of phrase disguises the fact that what you are really in favor of is less, not more, freedom. You want to use the authority of State government to impose your ideals on people you’ll never meet and who’s lives will never affect yours.
Don’t pretend it’s freedom you’re fighting for. Own up honestly to wanting to be in control.
March 22nd, 2006 at 5:00 pm
I’ve always been solidly pro-choice. I’ve only ever run into one so-called “pro-lifer” that could rationally discuss the issue: he was from Planned Parenthood in BC, Canada. It was nice to be able to hear rational reasons. It was basically summed up as it’s better to be responsible with your actions than not, but he said he was not against it at all, just preferred exploring other options.
Myself, I’ve found myself examining this issue again recently. Talking to one woman who so callously said “I was stupid and got myself pregnant, had to get that damn thing out of me”. I can’t stand that kind of attitude. Mistakes happen but … this was just disgusting. Birth control is the way to go—be responsible!
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:57 pm
Okay, you insist that I’m about taking away people’s freedom and you are for it…right?
So now I can expect you to fight for people’s right to choose to wear a seatbelt without getting a ticket right?
How about the helmut law? Opposed to it? It’s a choice right?
What about people choosing to smoke cigerettes? It’s their choice right?
How about people driving SUV’s, it’s their choice right, no problem with that?
How about Prostitution? Shouldn’t that be legal? It’s their choice right? Gun ownership? It’s a personal choice right?
Shouldn’t any and all drugs be legal? It’s their choice right?
Funny thing with “liberals” “progressives” and so called “moderates”, the only freedom they are concerned about is the right to deny a cluster of cells the right to life, the most basic concept laid out.
Further more, you wouldn’t have me tell a woman that she shouldn’t get an abortion, even though I think it’s wrong. It’s her body and it’s her choice and I am a man, I shouldn’t tell a woman what to do with her body.
Is that correct?
So it’s safe to assume that if I see a young woman who wants to commit suicide, I should tell her, “well, who am I to tell you what to do with your body? Go ahead, kill yourself, if that’s what will make you feel good?”
No, you wouldn’t have me do that, in fact, YOU’D expect just the opposite. You would not complain on single iota that I was forcing my moral values down her throat, would you?
Maybe you would.
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:51 pm
Ah, the ancient “throw a bunch of crap at the wall and see what sticks” technique. It is strong in you! The fact remains that you’re trying to cloak the restriction of choice as an “increase” in freedom. You have to disguise your opinion as something it’s not to get people to agree with you, and that’s pretty damn pathetic.
And now here you are comparing forced childbirth to having to put on a seatbelt when you get in the car. Regardless of what I think about that law, is it any wonder people think you’re not even trying to understand the issue at stake? Is it any wonder people don’t think people like you are even qualified to have an opinion on the issue?
The issue is not whether or not the government can regulate, period. I believe the government should regulate, needs to regulate. But they do not have a right to make this decision for anyone. It is too personal, it is too complicated, and it is too private.
Asking someone to reconsider suicide? Hell yeah. Go for it, brother. Express your opinion! Offer your hand in support. Help him or her find help. But it’s not the State’s business—not unless they’re putting other lives at risk at the same time.
Likewise, if you want to have a reasonable discussion with someone considering abortion and try to convince her not to do it, I wouldn’t say “boo” to you. But bringing the State down on people you’ll never meet? Wrong, wrong, wrong.
March 24th, 2006 at 1:00 pm
Well said! :::applause::: It’s good to know that there are some enlightened men in this world!
March 24th, 2006 at 9:46 pm
Absolutely pro-choice for one reason and one reason only.
I believe that children should not be brought into the world if we are not ready for them. They end up suffering in the end.
A lot of things are inherently bad for us such as high sugar, high calorie coca cola, eating at McDonalds, dating dumb people, or smoking while pregnant. In the end, we only give dirty looks to these people, but we don’t try to bomb their homes or cars. Why, because we say that it is their choice.
How silly that we can’t choose whether to have abortion or not. If someone made a mistake and want to have a baby when the timing is right, just let it be.
If you are anti-abortion, practice that in your own life, and don’t worry about anyone else’s or try to change anyone else’s views. Yep, just worry about your own.
March 25th, 2006 at 2:09 pm
My friend pointed out that until prolifers are willing to take poor single pregnant women and/or women with children into their homes and support them financially and emotionally then they should keep their mouths shut on the subject.
I have to agree.
March 27th, 2006 at 4:35 am
RIGHT ON!!!
Glad to see you’ve come to the right (well, left, but I digress..) side of things.
Love the blog.
March 28th, 2006 at 9:08 pm
When I read these comments I notice a couple things – virtually hate against anyone who would appose abortion. 2nd a lotal lack of understanding of the pro life crowd. They are protrayed as people who hate that a woman should have a choice. When in reality they are mostly people who believe that life is truly special and that everyone should have a chance at life – what gives anyone the right to decide if someone else has the right to life or not.
Here’s what I have a hard time understanding – if someone purposely shoots a pregnant women in the stomach and kills the unborn baby he could be tried for murder or at the very least manslaughter. However, if a woman chooses to abort her own baby that’s perfectly okay – even though the result for the baby is the same.
When we as a society start determing whether something is right or not based upon simply what one person thinks instead of another we are in trouble indeed.
March 29th, 2006 at 4:12 am
Jim, probably why you see so much anger in this is because the anti-choice crowd is inserting itself in decisions about which it has no right, based on a religious basis which is unconstitutional, and passing moral judgements on people without understanding the circumstances.
And, as I think I pointed out clearly and have well-documented, the anti-choice movement has enthusiastically pursued policy that actually increases the likelyhood of unintended pregnancies: the restriction of education and the restriction of birth control.
And I have yet to hear anyone explain to me why anyone’s life should be threatened by a dangerous pregnancy because she has to get clearance from a morality cop first. Can you explain to me why America really needs religious police (again)?
March 30th, 2006 at 11:36 am
I think perhaps I have a minority view here. You see, I am most definitely pro-life. But I also believe women have the right to choose. I don’t necessarily agree with their choice, but human beings have a divine right to choose how to live their lives—it’s called free will. And no one, from religious fundamentalists to the athiest or agnostic has the right to take away a person’s choice.
March 30th, 2006 at 9:46 pm
Bravo! We all have to stand up and be counted on this issue. If we go ‘soft’ as you put it, or let it slide – women will die. So I applaud you. You are willing to put your truth on the line. Again I say – Bravo!