And why does Feminists for Life think rape victims need punishing anway?
As I noted last week, I signed up for Feminists for Life’s “Pro-Woman Answers to Pro-Choice Questions” weekly email. Unfortunately, they didn’t give me an opportunity to ask the question I wanted, which is, “If you’re pro-woman but anti-abortion, what efforts are you taking to help eliminate the number one cause of abortion, which is unplanned pregnancy?”* Their first email had no information about what I really wanted to know, but I figured that maybe their second one would.
The email doesn’t mention sex education or contraception up front, but the question does open up room for regular feminists and these mysterious “pro-life feminists” to collaborate on a truly pro-woman goal.
What about rape? What if it was your daughter who was raped?
In the past, this might be a more tense question, but in the present, there’s actually a stop-gap measure to help rape victims not get pregnant in the first place, which is to give them emergency contraception. Surely a “feminist” group will mention their efforts to get these contraceptive pills into the mouths of every rape victim, thereby reducing the number of rape-caused pregnancies and thereby abortions. Right?
Well, no. This “feminist” organization is unconcerned with empowering rape victims to avoid getting pregnant in the first place.
Out of our desire to save someone from suffering, it is normal to wish we could erase a painful memory such as rape. Unfortunately, the hard truth is that as much as we want to, we can’t.
Abortion doesn’t erase a memory. Think about it. Could anything ever erase your memory of September 11, 2001?
Abortion doesn’t erase the memory of rape, it just reduces the misery after the fact. However, to FFL, any attempt to reduce misery is nothing but an exercise in self-delusion. So, by their own measure, the FDNY shouldn’t have bothered to rescue anyone in the WTC because saving lives wouldn’t have done much to erase the memory.
It gets better. According to these feminists, rapists may suck, but you’re the greater danger to society and yourself than a man who rapes you.
At my lecture at Vanderbilt University, a medical student told other students that abortion is a second act of violence against a woman who is raped, and said her “abortion was worse than the rape.�
Women’s free choices are more damaging to them than having men violently force themselves upon them.
Pregnancy can be punishing, but a child is not a punishment. When Julie Makimaa was reunited with her birthmother, Lee Ezell (”Victory Over Violence,” The American Feminist, vol. 5, no. 3), Julie asked her if it would have been better for Lee if Julie was never born at all.
Ah yes, the “what if you were never born” canard. In this particular case, if the man involved hadn’t raped Lee, Julie wouldn’t have been born. Again, by their very own logic, rape then is something to be grateful for, because without it, we would be deprived of some many precious babies. Well, this explains their silence on the subject of emergency contraception, at least.
When someone asks about exceptions for rape and incest, we must also consider how that makes those feel who were conceived through sexual assault.
Well-meaning statements can hurt. As one UC-Berkeley grad student said to her pro-choice peers, “I have a right to be here.�
They responded, “We didn’t mean you!â€? She asked, “Who did you think you meant?
Again, I don’t see why stop at abortion. If you’re at a Take Back the Night rally, the very same logic would apply. This young woman could stand up and cry that protesting rape is a personal slight on her, because without the lovely gift of violent, misogynist forced sex, she’d never have been born. If her existence is proof that abortion is wrong, it’s also proof that rape is right.
It gets confusing after this, though, because for some reason, FFL wants to punish rapists, even though they are productive baby-making members of society.
FFL’s priority is keeping women safe. Incarcerated sexual offenders should not be allowed pornography, barbells, and early release. We need harsh sentences for sexual assault without possibility of parole.
That seems to be self-defeating, though. Without being able to get out of jail quickly with newly developed muscles, these men won’t be able to rape more women and cause more pregnancies. By FFL’s own logic, therefore, they hate all children conceived by rape, because they want to prevent known rapists from making more babies.
It goes on and on in this vein, but the idea is pretty clear. They do take a half-assed stab at something resembling a feminist idea, by saying that defining women by men is patriarchal, which is true, but has no bearing on the subject at hand, which is how wrong it is for men to force women to have children against our will, which is basically one of the fundamentals of patriarchy.
FFL’s front page has the quote: “Women who are experiencing an unplanned pregnancy also deserve unplanned joy.” Part of that, apparently, is the idea that women who are experiencing a violent, traumatizing crime also should have to suffer from unwanted childbirth.
*In no, way, shape or form does asking this question mean that I think that abortion rights should hinge on contraceptive access. It’s just that a truly pro-woman/anti-abortion stance would take into consideration that we could reduce the abortion rate nearly in half by empowering women by improving access to contraception. Real feminists would not oppose increasing women’s freedom as the first priority.
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“When someone asks about exceptions for rape and incest, we must also consider how that makes those feel who were conceived through sexual assault.
Well-meaning statements can hurt. As one UC-Berkeley grad student said to her pro-choice peers, “I have a right to be here.�
They responded, “We didn’t mean you!â€? She asked, “Who did you think you meant?”"
I would’ve meant her. Seriously. That whole “I have a right to be here” argument icks me out. Nobody has a “right” to have had a woman be forcibly impregnated and then forced to carry to term and deliver so that he or she can exist. I wonder how charmed I’d be by my child marching up to me and saying, “I’m glad you were forcibly impregnated with me and then forced to carry me to term and bear me, because I have a right to be here!” Whenever pro-lifers have asked me, “How would you have felt if your mother had wanted to abort you? Aren’t you glad she didn’t?” Well, happily, I squeaked into the era of legal abortion, so if she had wanted to abort me she could have and honestly, I’d be totally fine with that. (exactly how at this instant would I be upset or suffering in any way if she *had* aborted me..? lemme guess: aborted babies go to hell to burn for eternity! no, wait, it’s limbo…no it isn’t…never mind) Situation that would make me the most miserable: if Mom had been raped, conceived me and forced to carry me to term. A debt it is quite impossible to repay and probable lifelong emotional damage for both of us. umm…yeah, how appealing.
It’s abortion’s fault I was never born!
Interesting. In my early pro-life Catholic School brainwashing, I was told (repeatedly) that women just didn’t get pregnant from rape. See, the stress prevents ovulation, and the statistics show that pregnancy from treated rape cases is very rare. (Of course, they neglect to mention that the occurrance is so low because EC is part of standard rape treatment…)
But now they’re not even trying that line anymore? They just say “babies good => rape good”?
Insane.
Ooh, then you can resolve the mystery!! so where are you…limbo or what…?
Argh– the proper answer to the UC grad student is “We’re not talking about you — we’re talking about your mother. And aren’t you saying you’re afraid of what your mother would have done if she’d had a choice about it? Because all we’re talking about is the choices available to her. We’re not talking about some other agent or agency coming in and making the decision for her. Why does the idea of taking your mother’s options away appeal to you?”
The grad student’s querulous question is one I’ve run into time and again from people who oppose abortion access, regardless of their patrimony. Let them go on long enough, and eventually they’ll ask, “well, what if I was aborted?” or “what if YOU were aborted?” And the proper answer is, “why does the idea that your mom had a choice scare you?”
….if a sperm is wasted, god gets quite irate…..
If I had been aborted I wouldn’t be suffering through this fucking dissertation. Thanks, mom.
I wouldn’t want to take away the memory (well, possibly I would, but that’s not what I’d want EC for). I want to take away the fucking pregnancy. That’s what ‘contraception’ means….
And, yes, the proper answer to, ‘Don’t I deserve to live?’ is, ‘At the time, no. You don’t have the right, as an embryo and fetus, to an accomodating womb. Often, you get one anyway, ‘cause women are nice like that. But, no, no legally enforceable right to a womb. No forced pregnancy.’
“I would’ve meant her. Seriously. That whole “I have a right to be hereâ€? argument icks me out.”
It’s right up there with, “these bitches are aborting babies we want to adopt.”
“No forced pregnancy.”
NBarnes sez it better than me.
“If my mother had gotten an abortion, I wouldn’t be here.”
OK. And if my thrice great grand aunt hadn’t died of typhus, then my thrice great grandfather wouldn’t have been widowed, and he wouldn’t have married her sister, (who became my thrice great grandmother) so I wouldn’t be here. I guess that means fatal typhus is a good thing, eh?
Nothing can erase a memory
No. For that, you have Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Human Mind. (whose title was taken from a poem about Vestal Virgins.
Amazing. Is there any part of the Republican platform that mentioning September 11th doesn’t justify?
Let’s see…
1) As someone who knows the types of emotional and psychological scarring that having a relinquishing mother (ie a woman who reliquished a child for adoption) in the family can cause, I’d say that taking away choices (any choices) is a bad move. A very bad move.
2) As someone who is the child of two depressed parents, and who has depression herself, sometimes I did wish I’d never been born. I think it might have been a better idea for my mother, as well. This is part of the reason I remain childfree by choice: I don’t think it’s fair on any child of mine to have to deal with a depressed mother.
3) As someone who hasn’t been raped herself, but who spent a lot of her early years with a paranoid fear of it, I’d argue that abortion and emergency contraception are two very useful tools in helping a rape victim adjust to the whole circumstance. After all, it is bad enough having to worry about which STD you might have been infected with (let’s not forget those), and having to take AIDS tests (let’s not forget that!) and also having to keep the incident reasonably fresh in your mind so that you can successfully press charges (and let’s never forget that one). Having to cope with pregnancy and then either the trauma of relinquishing the child (particularly if the relinquishment is involuntary…) or actually raising a child while you’re still traumatised yourself… no.
Or in other words, what NBarnes said.
“I have a right to be here”
Why?
So much wrong with this. Mind boggles.
No, in this case, technically, it’s collateral damage or friendly fire or some such shit. The “We don’t think you deserve to suffer (the way sluts do), but your suffering is an unavoidable consequence so we get what’s important to us . . . well, not completely unavoidable, but we really can’t be bothered to give enough of a damn to help you prevent it” justification, rather than the “you fucked, take the consequences, whore” type. Which actually makes it even worse, when even those women who pay the price of staying abstinent to avoid pregnancy aren’t guaranteed to avoid it.
No, but it can prevent that memory from expanding into more awful memories—not to mention the experiences that create those memories. It won’t take away the rape, but it’ll get rid of the pregnancy and the giving birth and the nine months of suffering the consequences of that rape and being reminded of it every time you notice your abdomen and the physical issues that remain after childbirth and the various havoc having a baby wreaks with your life and your emotions regardless of what you do with it.
Giving birth doesn’t erase a memory, either. So the implication that abortion’s inability to erase a memory makes it the inferior choice is completely without merit.
They mean the ones that are profitting from current oppression of others. Getting rid of this Berkeley grad wouldn’t do anything for her mother (just like neither abortion nor childbirth erases the rape, that wouldn’t erase her mother’s pregnancy and childbirth and is therefore pointless to do for that purpose). She may have some right to be here now, but that’s because she’s not leeching on someone in order to survive anymore. She gained that right to be here when the umbilical cord was cut. She didn’t have the right before that; she managed to get by on sheer luck. And if she hadn’t, she would hardly be able to appreciate the loss.
Unplanned joy, by definition, has to be something one enjoys. There’s something so utterly perverse about using the image of entitlement to a good thing to describe being burdened with a bad thing, I can’t even describe it properly.
Huh. And here one of th e reasons I’m pro-choice is because my great-grandmother desperately wanted to abort my grandfather, and made his life a living hell for decades. She pretty much tried to KILL him when he was a baby. And she made damn sure he knew he wasn’t wanted, and was completely worthless to her. And lo and behold, while neither of my grandfather’s older siblings became an alcoholic or a wifebeater or an abusive parent, he became all three.
And my dad became an alcoholic abuser too because that was what he grew up with (as did both his brothers), and my siblings and I are really fucking lucky our mom was able to divorce him and thus get her kids away. That’s multiple generations of abuse and unhappiness right there, all because my great-grandfather threatened to have his wife committed when he found out she was trying to get an abortion.
And yes, I exist, and I’m perfectly happy about that (I’d be happier with lower mortgage payments, but I digress), but since I don’t have a time machine it’s academic. I will say that, academic question or no, there’s no denying a lot of people suffered terribly because she couldn’t get that abortion. I don’t know why she wanted it. I don’t know how she managed to be an adequate parent to her two older children while being actively cruel to her youngest, but he was a desperately unhappy person.
He hated himself, and he continually took it out on his wife and his three sons, which could be why all three became completely fucked up. And by the way, my dad and my uncles are still alive, and they’re pretty fucking miserable, emotionally stunted people, too. Also, one of my uncles served time in prison for permanently maiming a man who later committed suicide, which means someone entirely unrelated to my family got their life fucked up because my grandfather was an actively vicious parent.
My siblings and I got out because of good luck, nothing more. And if I had to choose between not existing, and my parents never getting divorced, I would choose not existing in a heartbeat. There are much worse things in this world than never having been born. Like the fact that my grandfather died when I was 16 and in all those years I never saw seen him happy. Pleased when he got the better of someone in an argument, yes. Happy, no. That’s no way to live.
Raincity, your story reminds me of Malcolm X’s stories about how his mother was mean and ambivalent to him because he was light-skinned and red-headed, which he thinks means she couldn’t look at him without thinking about the long history of rape of black women that led to those features. The tentacles of misery from this sort of thing show themselves in many ways.
The only reason I was born is because the buy that should have been born 6 months before me was aborted ( serious deformities of the heart. As such, ABORTION IS GOOD OR I WOULDN’T BE HERE!!
lol
Easy answer: My mother couldn’t have possibly aborted ME because I didn’t exist during the period of her pregnancy when abortion was possible.
“Feminists” for Life, like most Christian groups, depend on fatuous arguments to propel their cause. In this case, they believe that foetuses have souls. By their logic: miscarriages would be manslaughter; and sex during pregnancy would be child molestation.
Foetuses do not have souls.
I have sometimes thought that my mother should have aborted me, because doing so might have saved her own life. She discovered that her breast cancer had recurred while she was pregnant with me and was advised by her oncologist to have an abortion so she could have more chemotherapy.
And you know what? She CHOSE to continue the pregnancy. Of her own free will, after considering all of the options, she made the decision that was best for her. As a consequence, she died of cancer when I was seven years old.
Are these bitches at “Feminists” for “Life” telling me that my mother should not have been allowed to make that decision but should have had it forced on her instead because they know better?
If fetuses had souls, would it really be hurting them to send them straight to heaven/reincarnation/whatever? Unless you believe that the whatever is some version of hell, in which case your religion has some reeeally serious issues.
Perhaps that’s what really bothers these people—some of them, anyway. They don’t believe in a particularly merciful God, from what I can tell. Maybe they suspect him of being even more vindinctive and evil than they let on.
Irene
Terminology issue: Fetuses aren’t aborted, pregnancies are. This isn’t just spin; you can abort a pregnancy where the fetus is already dead. You can abort a pregnancy that doesn’t have a fetus, like if you get a very early term one.
Ha!! MAJeff, truer words were never spoken.
“Tentacles of misery” is an excellent phrase. This shit is multi-generational. One woman who desperately wants an abortion (whether because she was raped or for other reasons) and is forced to carry to term, it’s not just her who suffers. And it’s not just the child, either. There are longterm, unforeseeable consequences when somebody decides they know better than the pregnant woman what she can handle.
Yes, there are women who were raped and chose to carry to term, and that was the best decision for them. And you’ll notice how the availability of legal emergency contraception and abortion meant they could DECIDE whether or not to use them. No pro-choicers are trying to strap a pregnant rape survivor to a gurney and force her to abort. But there are also women who were raped, and desperately wanted to abort but were prevented from doing so. Some of them ended up infertile or even dead from botched home abortions. And some of them carried to term and never forgave their children for having been born.
As for people who say “well, if my mother hadn’t been raped and carried her pregnancy to term, I wouldn’t exist,” how fucking self-absorbed is that? As others have already pointed out, no, you wouldn’t exist, but you wouldn’t know about it either. Would that person, if given a time machine and the ability to go back to the time and place where the rape took place, stand back and just let it happen? Are they so convinced the entire world revolves around their existence that they’d sit on their hands and refuse to help a woman who’s about to be raped right in front of them?
Again, academic question, because time machines don’t exist outside of Doctor Who. But possibly a valid question. I wasn’t conceived in rape. In fact, I was conceived very early on in my parents’ marriage, before my mom even realised what kind of man she’d married. The circumstances of my conception are entirely unobjectionable. However, I can still see the emotional scars my mom carries from her years with an abusive husband. She got out, and she made a good life for herself and her kids, but she wasn’t unscathed. And if I could go back in time and prevent her from meeting my father, I would absolutely do it. Because I am completely convinced that my mother would’ve been much happier if she’d never laid eyes on him.
If she’d married some other guy or never married at all, I wouldn’t exist. But what the fuck would that matter if I had the opportunity to prevent her from marrying him? Keeping him out of her life would have been an objectively good thing, and definitely worthwhile. And that doesn’t make me suicidal, or self-hating, or even unhappy. It just makes me someone who isn’t so arrogant as to believe the world would stop turning if I didn’t exist. And it makes me someone who loves my mom enough to want to spare her pain. I can’t go back and fix the past for her, but if I could, I sure as hell wouldn’t be stopped by the idea that me being born is so crucial that the preventable suffering of a good person must not be prevented.
You are absolutely correct. My appologies.
It’s abortion’s fault I was never born!
I just came up with a hilarious idea. If someone questions my position on abortion asking “How woudl you feel if your mother aborted you?”, I’d break out a sob story of how my mother did abort me, and how I had to gain sustanance by absorbing nutrients in a dumpster behind a Little Caesars (not to mention how I came to learn the true meaning of friendship from that experience). Macabre, perhaps, but it would be worth it just to see the looks on their faces.
Amazing. Is there any part of the Republican platform that mentioning September 11th doesn’t justify?
It’s Godwin’s law for the 21st century.
Pregnancy and childbirth can also be fatal. But I guess that doesn’t count as “violence”.
Anyone else think the unnamed UC Berkely grad student in their story doesn’t exist?
mythago — yes. i did think that. i was surprised when someone in the thread said they’ve heard this before.
central content publisher — another correction, or at least a wtf. sex during pregnancy is..child molestation, you said? um, unless a woman’s already starting in on labor and her cervix is dilating, not even the most impressive dong is going to be touching the fetus, ensouled or not. hahah.
It’s definitely a self-absorbed argument, and it’s telling that self-absorbtion is such a fundie phenomenon. The anxiety behind the “what if you were never born” argument is the anxiety that you personally are not important in the grand scheme of things; it’s probably a subconscious fear of death, because the truth is most of us will die and eventually be forgotten. In the grand scheme of things, we may have not existed at all.
The fear of admitting the arbitrary nature of life underlies a lot of fundie thought. It’s certainly the source of their anxiety about evolutionary theory.
No, you don’t. Neither do I.
over and over again i see that “what if YOU were aborted” (excuse for an) argument.
every time i wonder what, exactly, is the deal with these people. have they literally never actually given that question any thought? if you were aborted, YOU WOULDN’T KNOW ABOUT IT. there wouldn’t be any *you*, so “you” wouldn’t have any way to care. i’m sure everybody here realizes this, there’s no reason for me to be going on about this, but. seriously. every time i see this i want to bang my head on the keyboard.
i know that a lot of conservative religious folks have a hard time dealing with the idea of death and that possibly you simply don’t exist afterwards. i’ve always thought that that would be way preferable to there being a hell, because how can non-existence suck if you don’t even have a consciousness to realize that? but i know that it’s also sort of a scary thought, that you might just get blown out like a flame and that’s that, and so i sort of get why people adhere to this heaven-and-hell stuff.
but to have a problem with the idea that you could have been aborted, you’d have to also think that “unborn baby souls” go to hell, too, and ZOMG your mother could have consigned you to hell if she’d had the choice!
or something.
I’ll ignore my suspicion that this is a fictional exchange on some level.
The freedom to have an abortion is not the requirement to have one. Unless she was born before Roe vs. Wade, in a state that outlawed abortion, her mom had a choice, made the choice, and decided to bring her into the world. That’s wonderful.
But when she was a cluster of cells, she did not have more right to force her mom to carry her in her womb, than her mom had to refuse to do so.
The answer to “I have a right to be here!” is “Yes, because your mom chose to bear you.”
Let her accuse her mom of hypothetical murder. Don’t let her lay that trip on you.
That whole “I have a right to be here” argument is so loony. What about that night the month before you were conceived when your mother had a headache? What about the times after you were ceonceived that she had sex but wasn’t ovulating because she was pregnant or lactating, to say nothing of not having sex because she was too damn busy taking care of a baby? Didn’t't any of those potential infants have just as much right to exist before you foreclosed their possibilities? By this logic every one of us is a mass murderer.
An anthropologist once told me about how some devout mormon women who take birth control pills or otherwise avoid conception have “visions” where they’re haunted by the spirits of the children they’ve avoided bearing. FFL would certainly be down with that.
One thing you have to say about the “enforce pregnancy via rape” crowd: At least they’re consistent.
Now, if only they would go the whole way and advocate putting all women who have abortions in the electric chair. Or are there certain portions of their agenda they’re keeping out of sight?
A few things to note:
This is the kind of question that isn’t really aimed at women, but at men. The question should be “what if it was you were raped?”
Also note that conservatives argue that slavery was ultimately a good thing for blacks, because if they weren’t dragged across the sea then their descendents wouldn’t ever have been able to enjoy all the wonderful things in America now that whitey has deigned to give them equal rights.
“Nothing can erase a memory”
Clearly these people haven’t been smoking the same skunk I have.
Anyone else think the unnamed UC Berkely grad student in their story doesn’t exist?
I went to UC Berkeley, some of the most ditzy people I’ve ever met were philosopy majors there, and I agree that those grad students are probably straw-pro-choicers. “What would have happened to you if you hadn’t been born” arguments are freshman-level existentialism at best, and I was an undergrad in a completly different department.
I really have a problem with conservatives erecting straw-Berkeleyans.
Especially straw-Berkeleyans who just happen to mouth conservative talking points.
“What would have happened to you if you hadn’t been born� arguments are freshman-level existentialism at best, and I was an undergrad in a completly different department.
I think the greatest part of the Straw-Berekeleyans is that you couldn’t get away with that in a 100 level philosophy course paper.
I swear, it’s like everyone thinks because they can make up obviously stupid quotes by nonexistant people, they’re Socrates.
although I could see that quote actually taking place. when someone says “I would have been aborted if abortion was legal, so it’s bad” they’re plainly narcissistic to the point that conversation isn’t going to work, so you just want them to leave.
as “the law is not to be structured based solely on what would be good or bad for you personally, you jerk” or “and if World War 1 lasted a little longer, I might be the Kaiser. I conceed the point, if things were different, they wouldn’t be the same. that has no bearing on what our future conduct should be.” are not likely to be very illuminating for those types.
I think the argument that rape can’t be so bad because it led to their own existence is actually a very solid argument for some wingnuts. Egocentrism is their major source of moral guidance.
It’s a very blanket hatred of women which leads to the notion that whatever happens to them is about on the same level. Pregnancy as a result of a loving relationship and pregnancy as a result of rape are seen to be about the same. Why is that? I think there is a cynical view that there is really no such thing as a loving relationship, that all sex is dirty, and that all women are unworthy types of human beings. That is why the different contexts of pregnancy are not understood.
Women are HUMAN BEINGS?
So much good stuff in these comments. I find the whole “what if I never existed???!!” argument utterly baffling because it doesn’t actually MEAN anything.
There are billions upon billions of people who don’t exist - there’s an infinite number of people who don’t exist, who never existed, and never will exist. And it is precisely BECAUSE they don’t exist that they do not come into the argument: they have no qualities, no preferences, no nothing. They don’t want to exist - they don’t want anything, because they can’t want anything; and nobody wants them to exist - they can’t, because there’s nothing to want. How can anyone want something that does not exist on any level? It’s completely ridiculous. The people who espouse this line of argument lack the imagination or the basic intelligence to conceive of a situation in which they literally never existed - it’s simply beyond them.
And this, by Meg Thornton, just hit the nail on the head for me:
“As someone who is the child of two depressed parents, and who has depression herself, sometimes I did wish I’d never been born. I think it might have been a better idea for my mother, as well. This is part of the reason I remain childfree by choice: I don’t think it’s fair on any child of mine to have to deal with a depressed mother.”
What difference would it have made to me if I had never been born? None - but it would have made one hell of a difference to my mother. I have no intention of making the same mistakes as she did. If aborting a non-sentient foetus is cruel, then how much crueller is it to deliberately create a sentient human being when you KNOW that its life is going to be painfully unhappy?
My mom didn’t get raped, but she did get accidentally pregnant at 18, less than a year before abortion was legalized. Even though she never as much gave me an accusing glance, I’ve felt guilty about “wrecking” my parents’ lives ever since I was old enough to count backwards from 9 months and realize how much further back that was from their anniversary. It’s taken a lot of therapy to deal with, in fact, and realize I’m not responsible for all the ills in the world. I wish abortion had been legal; if she had decided on that, I wouldn’t know the difference, and if not, I would know for sure that she chose to have me and wanted me.
“Feminists” for “Life”: Abortion doesn’t erase a memory. Think about it. Could anything ever erase your memory of September 11, 2001?
Actually, yes. You people can, with your war terror porn, involuntarily cranking the adrenal glands. But it’s like (in reverse) looking at that photo of a beautiful, sexually desirable woman the guard taped up on the wall outside my cell. At first my pupils got so big, I was all turned on, like she was there in person, breathing in perfume. After I stared for a while, I saw a pose. A long while later, I saw a piece of paper. Finally I see nothing at all, nothing.
Yeah, you guys just keep on clubbing and clubbing and clubbing us with September 11, 2001. The ideal simile for each and every event or occasion, 9-11, 9-11, 9-11, 9-11, 9-11, 9-11, 9-11, 9-11, 9-11, 9-11, 9-11, 9-11, 9-11. Flog us like crazy, I know you wanna. Just keep wailing away.
I have never understood the “What if your mother had aborted you?” argument.
Like most people, I love my mom and find it highly distressing when bad things happen to her.
Now, let’s assume for the sake of the argument that my mother was in a position in which aborting me would possibly be desirable to her, and look at the consequences that come from aborting me and from not aborting me:
A: I am aborted
Worst-Case Scenario: I experience intense, but short-lived, physical pain (This is in the worst case scenario of a later-term abortion when I’m a fairly well-developed fetus. In an earlier abortion, I wouldn’t even have the mechanics to experience the pain).
B: I am carried to term
Worst-Case Scenario: Raincitygirl’s story, where intense psychological and physical pain lingers for generations.
Given that, as others have stated, you can’t commit crimes against potential people, the question is essentially “Would you endure pain in order to spare your mother from having to endure it?”
And while I don’t know if I’m a good enough son to throw myself in front of a bullet for my mom, I sure wouldn’t begrudge her if she hid behind me during a firefight.
Speaking of college, this is clearly the 100 level set of answers, meant for people who haven’t really thought much about abortion.
I want to know where the more advanced Feminists for Life email is, the one that answers this question:
“One of the cornerstones of the pro-choice philosophy is the idea that nobody should be able to force you to give your womb to entities you don’t want to be inside it. The reasoning goes like this: nobody can force you to donate a kidney. Even if a person somewhere will die without a kidney, and you have a kidney he could use, you are not legally obligated to donate yours.
In the same way, you should not be obligated to donate your physical body to another being, no matter how much that other being might need it to survive.
The common Anti-Abortion respone goes as follows: In the example of the kidney patient, you did not create his need for a kidney, and therefore have no obligation to see that his need is filled. However, in the case of an unborn human, you yourself created the need for said being to use your womb; had you not had sex, you would not have concieved, and there would be no being who needed to take sustenance from you.
Because you personally created the need, the reasoning goes, it is your responsibility to fill it.
However, in the case of rape, the woman by definition did not intend the creation of any kind of being.
Given this, doesn’t the analogy of kidney donation become germaine again? In other words, doesn’t the fact that the woman did not create the need for her womb mean that she has no obligation to doante it to any foreign beings?”
I mean, everybody here has already moved beyond the level of the e-mail Amanda savaged. I think my question (though a bit clumsily worded) would be a useful one for them to address, so that they could serve people at all levels of the abortion debate.
NOTHING! Nothing will erase the awful memory of that day when Saddam Hussein’s evil minions murdered 3,000 Americans. Thank God we had a president with the guts and resolve and intelligence the bring this heinous assassin to justice. Vengeance is ours. God bless the USA!
The “erase a memory” argument makes perfect sense if you assume there’s no such thing as pregnancy — an easy assumption to make if you don’t regard women as people.
Kyra brought up that rape victims who get pregnant are often not at a place in their lives where having a baby is really feasible. I wonder if a significant subset of anti-choice types are still envisioning women simply not leading lifestyles in which having a baby is ever officially unfeasible, which is why they natter on about even rape victims deserve the joys of motherhood etc.
mythago:
Anyone else think the unnamed UC Berkely grad student in their story doesn’t exist?
I believe she does, although I doubt the rest of the group replied with one voice. The story isn’t implausible, and it’s just this side of too pat. I doubt it was a central incident of the rally/discussion/whatever, though. I can believe an exchange occurred that was similar in substance, although probably not as good rhetorically.
While I understand and completely stand by the goal that every pregnancy be voluntary, and am completely pro-choice, I have a hard time verbalizing this sometimes when I’m speaking to someone very close to me who was adopted. In the specifics of the situation, the mother didn’t want to raise a child and certainly did not want to raise the child of the troubled father, and gave the baby up for adoption. When I or anyone else says something about how in an ideal world every baby would be wanted, or something similar, I think he interprets this as, “in an ideal world you wouldn’t exist.” We’ve discussed women’s rights many times and he’s totally receptive except when it comes to this - while he’ll call himself pro-choice he’s deeply uncomfortable with the subject. When the subject comes up I’m sort of at a loss on how to negotiate it..
The “what if I were never born” argument really annoys. My grandfather was part of the marine division that was assigned to be a part of the first wave during the planned invasion of the Japanese homeland. This invasion was expected to suffer massive casualties. It never happened because of the Japanese surrendered after we incinerated two cities. Am I glad we did it because I’m probably here today because of it (my father was born in 1947)? Fuck. No.
I’m with the others here on this line; No, you don’t.
Leaving aside my feelings that this is most probably pulled out of FFL’s collective arses, NOONE has a RIGHT to “be here” when it comes to forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy to term. I didn’t have that right, we don’t have that right, no one has that right.
You know what this translates as? This means, effectively, that they are saying that a clump of undifferentiated cells has more rights than the woman who carries them. And this is PRECISELY the same language as the anti-feminist anti-choice crowd.
You know what this means, don’t you FFL? That you’re not actually feminists.
Big whooping surprise there, eh?
Actually, I think denying that women have any meaningful moral agency may be more important for many in the anti-choice camp than punishing women who abort pregnancies as murderers. Claiming that women who obtain abortions are entirely victims is part and parcel of infantilizing them and presenting them as literally incapable of choice. Not giving women who abort their pregnancies the chair is a small price to pay for turning all women into chattel.
Hmm. Childbirth tends to last for hours, is usually painful, and sometimes life-threatening. If someone really did feel the abortion they chose to have was worse than the rape, what would make them think the experience of childbirth wouldn’t be worse than the abortion?
And, of course, Steven Levitt has demonstrated that legalizing abortion reduces the murder rate. It probably reduces the rape rate also, and we can’t have that….
Wow. That’s probably one of the most interesting — and definitely the most painful — pro-legal-abortion arguments I’ve ever encountered.
As to the “what if such and such child of rape were never born” argument … well, what if the rapist’s mother had had an abortion? Those types of arguments can regress infinitely, and are essentially meaningless in any discussion. They just score rhetorical points, which I guess is why the anti-abortion cadre uses them so often.
I tend to agree with the tone that the crux of the argument is narcissism. “Imagine how bad the world would be if I weren’t in it! Think of all the things I’d be missing out on!” Yeah … but how would you know? I suppose, in this way, It’s a Wonderful Life did the world a disservice.
Is there even such a thing as the “right” to existence? If there is, does it apply to things that do not exist?
Is there a line of hypothetical children of mine waiting (in vain, I assure you) to be gotten on someone and born. How many are there? If my wife were perpetually pregnant and birthing from now until menopause (or death via complications) would there still be a line of frustrated souls cursing me for waiting 19 years since my first ejaculation to start spreading around my sperm to effect? How many pregnancies would I have to cause to exhaust this queue of ghostly hypothetical li’l watermelontails, anyway?
Pardon the pun, but what a load.
Claiming that women who obtain abortions are entirely victims is part and parcel of infantilizing them and presenting them as literally incapable of choice. Not giving women who abort their pregnancies the chair is a small price to pay for turning all women into chattel.
Precisely; which, again, gives the lie to the idea that pro-lifers are all about the babies.
The whole “deserves unplanned joy” bit reflects the belief that women are happy with babies, that childrearing fills some need in them. I’d just as soon have a cat, thank you, than get a whole “But you’re supposed to really enjoy it!” forced down my throat. As a man, I’m also supposed to want to go blow some innocent forest creature away, lop off its head, and mount it on my wall. That’s the same kind of preconception as “women like raising babies” or “black people eat fried chicken and watermelon.”
Chan
For the “What if you were aborted?” argument:
My mother had uterine cancer when she carried me; a tumor the size of a grapefruit (she says) was pressing down on my head. It was dicey whether she could carry me to term, whether I’d be brain damaged, etc. As devout Catholics, my parents would never consider abortion, even a medically necessary one. Combined with my early pro-life brainwashing, yes, I held the position that “I’m against abortion because my mother probably would have aborted me if it had been legal and OK. And then I wouldn’t be here, blah, blah.”
Of course, I was 12 at the time this realization struck me. I grew out of it once I passed the self-centered adolescent stage of life.
So here’s my response to Straw-Berkely Chick: Grow up. You don’t have a “right” to exist any more than I do. Stop whining your self-absorbed existential entitlement and write your mother right now to thank her for her amazing courage and difficult decision. How dare you cheapen her personal sacrifice by declaring it “your right”? Your mother “deserves” a grateful child more than a small cluster of cells “deserves” to exist.
Except, in creating the need for the womb, you also created the life that’s so important to these people—it’s not as though this random baby was already peacefully existing when BAM! some slut had sex and that took away the baby’s ability to survive on its own. For the above argument to be valid, life would need to have no value when given, and great value when taken away. This makes no sense—if it is of no value to the “baby” to gain life, how can it be such a terrible thing to lose it?
Due to circumstances beyond our control, life and temporary-need-for-support come as a package deal. In the kidney-failure analogy, the equivalent would be either saving his life, or giving him life in the first place, but being unable to establish/restore kidney function. So we need to consider the value of life in comparison to the value of personal sustainability.
One of three things must be true:
a) Life has enough value to be worth the dependency—>fetus has a net profit while it’s alive. Abortion ends said profit, but fetus has had more of a good thing than a baby never conceived. After all, it had LIFE for a little while, which the poor unconceived babies never get!
b) Life does not have enough value to be worth the consequences—>in which case complaining about abortion is like paying far too much for something and then complaining when you get your money back and have it taken away. Abortion removes that dependency that they’re complaining about, at the cost of the side effect (life) that the anti-abortionists didn’t think was worth mentioning.
c) Life and its temporary trade-off are of equal value—>Fetus is “breaking even” until the point at which said temporary trade-off is removed from the equation, specifically birth.
Any way you look at it, abortion costs the fetus nothing that it had in the first place, and cheats it out of nothing that it’s entitled to at that point in time.
Either giving that “baby” LIFE is worth enough to overcome the fact that you also gave it a need for external sustenence, in which case your “debt” to it is paid, or it’s exactly equal, in which case it’s a perfect trade-off, or it’s not worth it, in which case what are they complaining about—by abortion, you’re taking away its need for sustenence (as well as the side effect of life, but that wasn’t worth taking into consideration in the beginning, was it?)
This is an interesting argument. Certainly we should accept everyone who is born into the human family. But that doesn’t mean we endorse how they got here. Do anti-abortion advocates think that disparaging out of wedlock births is a rejection of all those so born?
Or more radically: Since our flourishing on this continent is a product of the genocide of the autochthonous peoples, can I answer the charge of genocide by saying “I have a right to be here?” I don’t think so.
And I proudly join the ranks of those who are here because their mothers wanted them. I was not forced on her in any way, and I’m damned grateful for that.
My mother had a very difficult first pregnancy. Before she got pregnant the second time (with the fetus that developed into me) she made sure that her doctor agreed that if the problem recurred, especially if it were worse than the first time, she could get an abortion for medical reasons (this was pre-Roe). I wouldn’t have been willing to risk a pregnancy either if abortion weren’t legal, partly for medical reasons, partly because I hate being forced into things. So, if it weren’t for abortion, neither I nor my daughter would exist. Don’t we have a right to be here? (Yeah, I know, the answer is “no, not really” for all the reasons listed above. But I’d claim we have as good a right as Ms Strawberkley.)
Another way to look at it…A friend of mine who I shall not identify further because I don’t want to accidently make her individually identifiable, was born in France during the Nazi occupation. Her parents met only because they were both Jews who were forced underground (and therefore together). So, if it weren’t for the Holocaust, she would never have been born. Does that make the Holocaust a good thing? It does by the FFL “logic.”
I’m with Kyra on this one, when I was born back in New Zealand, abortion had been legal for a long time, so I was a wanted child. I know this because she didn’t have to have me.
Course, what my parents did a decade and a half later kinda negated that, but still
Similarly, your rapist has a right to move into your house after he rapes you. Why would you try to stop him? It’s not like not letting him live with you will erase the memory of being raped.
Wait. Where have I heard that discussed already?
NOTHING! Nothing will erase the awful memory of that day when Saddam Hussein’s evil minions murdered 3,000 Americans.
AMURKANS! You stinking commie with your stinking commie french surrender monkey spellings. Saddam butchered 3,000 baby Amurkans on that day - and just remember that it would have been even more if Bush hadn’t run away and hid under his desk - so thank gawd that he did.
In the example of the kidney patient, you did not create his need for a kidney, and therefore have no obligation to see that his need is filled. However, in the case of an unborn human, you yourself created the need for said being to use your womb
I didn’t create the need, I blame God, and if God didn’t want me to abort It’d fucking well do something about it.
Well, the “unplanned joy” line of argument is part of the anti-choice/radical right’s magical thinking about children and their transformative effect on women. Children can redeem women who were whores, by turning them into mothers. Therefore, a woman who was raped, instead of being a ruined victim, sacrifices herself for her child, and through childbirth has both herself and her vagina washed clean, sanctifying herself by becoming a “real woman.” If she could die during childbirth, no doubt she’d be revered as a saint.
**When I or anyone else says something about how in an ideal world every baby would be wanted, or something similar, I think he interprets this as, “in an ideal world you wouldn’t exist.�**
But wouldn’t this be true if rape were effectively prevented and birth control effectively used? This interpretation insinuates that rape should continue and that birth control’s spotty usage should continue as spottily as it does now. In an ideal world, people like him wouldn’t exist, no, but that should be okay, because in an ideal world other people would exist — his adoptive parents, for example, could have had a wanted child of their own through a surrogate using a donated egg and sperm. The only difference between the world we’re in that produces a life story like your friend’s and the ideal world is that in the ideal world the woman who carries the child is purposefully pregnant. That should not be a threat.
And the “What if I’d been aborted” line is a question that every child could ask. My mother wanted three children — and had them by the fourth year she was married (good Catholic she was and is). My brother and I came later, both unplanned due to the limitations of the “rhythm method.” There are times when my mother talks about not having wanted so many kids, and how it was really hard to make ends meet with all of us. She will, of course, wildly overcompensate for saying this perfectly reasonable thing, figuring that I’m worried she has regretted my existence. Nothing could be further from the truth, as I could not have asked for a more loving mother. Sure, had she not been a participant in a patriarchal and limiting religion, and had she felt more dominion over her reproductive choices, I might never have been conceived, and — had I been conceived — I might have been aborted. But had it turned out that way, I wouldn’t be here to analyze it. I simply wouldn’t have been. Only the very insecure or the very egotistical see tragedy in that alternate reality in which they did not exist, the insecure because they fear others would prefer that alternate reality and the egotistical because they believe that their own preferences of the current reality should dominate any other possibility.
I had the straw-Berkeley argument laid on me in college. “What if your mother believed in abortion?”
My answer was “My mom did believe in abortion. And still does.
“More to the point, what if Ted Bundy’s mom believed in abortion? Maybe the only reason I’m still here is because the murderer who would have killed me was aborted.”
They didn’t have an answer for that one.
This line of thinking is also wildly deterministic. Anti-choicers have latched onto the idea of genetics, only to the extent that they can tell you your z/e/f has “46 chromosomes” and “their eye color is already determined” etc., in an effort to get you not to have an abortion.
Nevermind that *I*, as the person I am, could never be aborted. I am the process of not just gestation, but my whole upbringing, the sum of my experiences as well as any possible inbuilt quirks of personality. I was not determined to be the person I am now, unless you subscribe to some sort of magical thinking.
Which precisely is FFL’s problem.
Legal abortion very obviously does not mean that there would be no adoption. Only that women would CHOOSE to go the birth/adoption route rather than having an abortion.
In reality, even when abortion was illegal women aborted their pregnancies either by themselves at home or in back alley clinics. So your entire argument is just plain wrong, and like a few others have said, your friend needs to grow up and get off the self-centered, narcissistic “what if I’d never been born” thing (which in itself makes me think he was born after Roe, but that’s beside the point). Giving women the right to choose the route they take when confronted with pregnancy is always the right choice.
Mildred:
God bless Amerikkastan. Where is Borat when we need him?
I was born two years before Roe, to a young teenage girl (14) who’d been raped, in a state where abortion was illegal. To further complicate things, I understand she was a devout Catholic. I was told by my adopted mother that a group of nuns took her in when her family kicked her out, and sheltered her until I was born, and I was immediately taken away and given to my adopted parents. Within the bounds of legality at that point, and within the bounds of her own personal morality, I believe my birth mother was cared for and protected as best she could be. I have to admit that when I think of her now, and as a mother empathise with the agonizing position she would be in (my daughter will be fertile very soon), I ache for her pain. It bothers me on a very real level to be a living emblem of one man’s brutality visited on a child. And yes, it bothers me enough that if she had aborted me (and I had any consideration or thought regarding it at all) I would not have blamed her in the slightest bit. I don’t have a right to exist compared to her right to finish out her childhood safe and unharmed. It’s really that simple.
“I had the straw-Berkeley argument laid on me in college. “What if your mother believed in abortion?â€?
My answer was “My mom did believe in abortion. And still does.”
I like this argument, and the one from much earlier “Why don’t you want your mom to have had choices?” It gets to the question of choice v. the strawwoman of forced abortions. Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean that everyone will do it. Do you trust your mother enough to make that choice? A lot of women will of course still have the baby regardless of how, or when, or the inconvenience of, its conception. Some won’t. But why wouldn’t you give them the option to make that decision? It doesn’t mean that women who want to give birth will be dragged screaming to abortion asylums, for christ’s sake.
I actually think that anyone who wants to outlaw abortions but make an exception for rape or incest is deeply hypocritical. If someone believes a blastomere or a fetus is a human being, then the circumstances of its conception should be irrelevant. Once you start to say that the rights of the gestator trump the hypothetical rights of the gestatee in any circumstances, the intellectual bankruptcy of suggesting that the hypothetical rights of the gestatee should EVER be seen as paramount (or even be presumed to exist) seems blindingly obvious to me.
Of course, I am completely mystified as to why anyone would want to outlaw abortions in the first place. It’s not like they’re mandatory for anyone (at least, as long as the “eugenics movement” doesn’t claw its way back to the top of the slag-heap). People who don’t believe in abortion have no obligation to have one, ever.
“And yes, it bothers me enough that if she had aborted me (and I had any consideration or thought regarding it at all) I would not have blamed her in the slightest bit. I don’t have a right to exist compared to her right to finish out her childhood safe and unharmed. It’s really that simple.”
Yeah. I don’t think some of these guys can wrap their heads around this, but I actually wish my mom did abort me. It’s not like I don’t want to be here, but looking at the circumstances she was in, I think it would have been a better choice all around for her and things would be very different and probably better for her and for everyone else involved in the equation. But ultimately, the choice was hers and she made it, and regardless of the hypotheticals, here we are.
The interesting thing about “Plan B” (the morning after pill) is that it works by preventing ovulation,not by preventing a fertilized egg from implanting.(as it once was thought to work) So no conception even takes place.
Killing an unbirn baby conceived by rape is no different, in terms of ethics, than killing an enemy soldier participating in an invasion. What is rape if not an invasion?
There is a book currently on sale written by a woman whose parents met in a Nazi death camp.
I wonder if anyone wants to argue that the Holocaust was justified.
In the specifics of the situation, the mother didn’t want to raise a child and certainly did not want to raise the child of the troubled father, and gave the baby up for adoption. When I or anyone else says something about how in an ideal world every baby would be wanted, or something similar, I think he interprets this as, “in an ideal world you wouldn’t exist.�
In an ideal world your friend’s biological mother wouldn’t have had an unplanned pregnancy, yeah. But how is it a personal slight on him to say that? He doesn’t have any more or less right than anyone else to exist… it fits with all the other stuff in this thread. His biological mother didn’t have to allow him wombroom. Nobody’s mother has to allow them wombroom. Saying that a particular woman should have had a particular choice has nothing to do with any judgment on the child who is born if she chooses to carry to term. Would he have preferred to force an unplanned pregnancy on her, if he had the option to?
I know I’m late to the game, but I just found this post, and I’m impressed that they’re FINALLY addressing this topic. I emailed them over a year ago to ask what their position was on this issue (abortion in the case of rape and incest) and they said that they did not have a finished policy on it yet, and that when they did, they would get back to me.
They are internally consistent with this, although I can’t imagine that the famous faces associated with the group are having an easy time answering this question when it comes up.
I’m very torn on the subject of pro-life and pro - choice. My mother had 4 abortions before, between and after my brother and I and although she and my father were so in love, they just couldnt have coped through the hard times with 6 or so kids! Mum has grown up constantly being told she was not wanted, had been a thorn in my granparents side and forced to watch as her 3 younger brothers were given love and affection because they were wanted and planned. I turn I grew up without affection and closeness to my mother (thankfully my father was very loving)
I have a daughter to a violent, nasty abusive man who believes he is a result of his violent, abusive father raping his mother (I dont think its true but…) I had an abortion to him when my daughter was 18 months old. I wouldnt have loved this child like he or she deserved. Do FFL know how heartbreaking it is to see my little daughter crying on the front step when her father and I are yelling at eachother? Missing out on spending time with Mummy because she’s working 3 jobs to support her cos her deadbeat Daddy won’t? Imagine if there were two of them? Imagine if my son, if I didnt abort him, repeating the cycle of abuse and beating his wife because some idiot said he had a “right to life?”
And about this so called “unexpected joy?” what crap. I adore my daughter. I love her more than anything and wouldnt take her back for anything. But this so called “joy” is only a little ray sunshine on an otherise stormy day. I dont know one person who is a single mother (or in a bad relationship) who is totally elated at having a child. The ones who have adopted their children out are struggling to move on having no idea who is raising their kid and whether they are being loved and cared for as promised, with a huge void in their life. The single mothers are living below the poverty line and missing out on so many dreams, and their children although loved, are missing out on a right to a happy home, both parents and to feel wanted.
I love my mother but she has never made me feel wanted, and that makes me feel worthless. I am greatful though that they had me. My daughter was wanted by me regardless of circumstance and I’ll make sure she knows that.
As one UC-Berkeley grad student said to her pro-choice peers, “I have a right to be here.�
No, you dont. Life is a privelage (SP check) not a right. So are children. You cant miss what you never had.