See the end of the post for out exciting conclusion!
On the last installment of me-dealing-with-Feminists for Lifes’s email series “Pro-Woman Answers to Pro-Choice Questions”, I pointed out that their basis for being “feminist” was a stated opposition to coercion, which sounds feminist until you realize that they’re only opposed to coercion if the final result—an abortion—is not what they want. They are happy to coerce women into having children against our will. They’ve spent the whole series trying to come up with reasons women have abortions, as if all women naturally want to have baby after baby and if they don’t, there must be something wrong with them. In a free society, there’s only one reason that counts as to why women have abortions: they are pregnant and don’t want to be. FFL has dealt, often through outright lies, with some of these reasons women might not want to be pregnant. If they were real feminists, though, they’d probably figure the reasons women might not want to turn their body over to pregnancy at any point in time are as diverse as women themselves.
Knowing that they have to deal with this to appear “feminist”, this week’s email is: What if she just doesn’t want it?
Sounds about right to me. Some of us just don’t want children or more children or children now. I’m one of those who doesn’t want them, period. Granted, I take the necessary precaution of using contraception, but FFL won’t address the effectiveness of contraception as an abortion-preventative. And anyway, sometimes contraception fails and you need abortion as a back-up plan. FFL might sound all soft and cozy invoking women who are poor and need financial assistance to have babies they do want, and that’s great if they’re sincere, but that doesn’t change the basic fact that they are out to get women like me who don’t want kids and don’t want the government choosing for us.
What say these “feminists” to me?
Guttmacher Institute statistics show that there are reasons, often financial or emotional, why a woman feels she must have an abortion. We must work toward the systematic elimination of the reasons that coerce women into an abortion.
Right off the bat, they refuse to answer their own question! I don’t want my desire not to have kids to be “eliminated”, because it’s not borne out of troubling circumstances but actually just a function of my personality, which is not up for discussion.
We oppose abortion in all cases because violence is a violation of basic feminist principles.
Which ones, they won’t say. The “feminist” principle that women must suffer for the sin of sex but not men? Or the “feminist” principle that women should be singled out by the government as amoral animals that don’t deserve all our rights? I suspect FFL has a little of both kinds of “feminism”. If these principles are “feminist”, then it seems like it’s “feminist” to tell women, “Hey if you don’t like being a second class citizen, grow a penis.”
Adoption is one way to affirm the early feminists’ position on voluntary motherhood. If a woman chooses not to parent, there are a variety of adoption options that she can explore (open or closed, direct or indirect updates with photos).
Dodging again. I for one don’t want to give a baby up for adoption or keep it. I just don’t want to have one. In case you didn’t know, it’s because it comes out of your fucking body. Women are not fucking vending machines. What say you “feminists” to me?
What if she has every resource and all the support and still doesn’t want it?
We don’t always know at the beginning how things will turn out. Many women report that their feelings change throughout the pregnancy.
Two-time Emmy award winner and FFL’s Honorary Chair Patricia Heaton said, “Women experiencing an unplanned pregnancy also deserve unplanned joy.â€?
Or like Heaton’s fellow Republican Clayton Williams said, “as long as it’s inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it.”
Of course, he was talking about rape, but same idea—once someone else has commandeered your reproductive organs for their own ends, your job as a woman is to smile and act like you love the abuse.
Feminism demands justice for all, especially those most vulnerable.
Point taken, and that’s why I’m writing post after post calling out these fake feminists who don’t want justice for women.
Women are capable of overcoming the unexpected, and making nonviolent choices.
It’s true—you don’t generally expect that condom to break, but you can nonviolently make your way to an abortion clinic, so long as no anti-choice protestors violently accost you.
Having dodged completely how they can be “pro-woman” while advocating the government forcing women to bear children against their wills, the next email promises to answer the question we’re all waiting for, which is how so-called “feminists” can claim to be pro-woman while thinking women have the moral capacity of moss. I’m not holding my breath that they’ll actually deal with the question, because it’s an even harder one to answer than why they think it’s perfectly all right for them to impose their dogma on my uterus with government force.
And in honor of Patricia Heaton, the celebrity face of FFL, I thought I’d do another little photoshop with a quote from the Jump the Shark forum on “Everybody Love Raymond”.
Somehow it seemed appropriate, considering the way that show promotes the sexual standoff/frosty bed method of contraception. So very “pro-woman” that idea is.
42 Responses to “Feminists for Life says: “You’ll get nothing and like it!””
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is it just me or does that last woman look a little creeped out by her suitor? i think she’s just smiling to be polite.
My husband and I were living in Austin when “Claty” said this, and cringed… Ann Richards, RIP ma’am.
Roula’s right, that’s a pretty nervous smile she’s got going there. Although I’d also accept theories about how careful you have to be with your expressions when you’ve precision slathered your lipstick on like that. That shit looks like a feathering nightmare.
Women are not fucking vending machines.
Bwah! I mean, sad that you have to point this out, but way to bring the funny.
Says who?
This post reminded me again of a thought I’ve had several times before on this subject…
The FFL-ites and their looney talk under the guise of being feminists make me think of the Cult Awareness Network and the Scientologists.
Apparently CAN lumped Scientology with cults, and were actively discouraging people from following Scientology. The Church of Scientology was not happy with this state of affairs and decided to do something to stop CAN.
The solution was to buy CAN, and co-opt its efforts to eliminate any negative mention of Scientology.
The CAN site still exists, pissing on all other cults/religions, but not Scientology…
The FFL would seem to function in a similar way as the “New CAN”, using their profile and co-opting feminist language to make people think they are a real feminist group, instead of a cynical front for the same old patriarchal bullshit that the Reichwingers want to impose on everyone…
Patricia Heaton said, “Women experiencing an unplanned pregnancy also deserve unplanned joy.�
Why do they keep posting this horrid quote like it’s clever or something? It’s not as though my heart can bear any more disgust for Patricia Heaton.
Junk Science:
Well, it *is* clever, if you’re already pro-life and unable to conceive of the pro-choice point of view. It’s one of the dangers of assuming your own conclusions.
I hear that Masculinists For Life are now offering free castrations, everyone!
Biologically speaking, castration does prolong the lifespan, so there is more logic to the above than the FFL display in their propaganda.
I agree about the vibes of the woman in the last picture, and in my turn ask, is it just me or does the phrase “unplanned joy” sort of resonate with the old Nazi slogan that translates as “Strength Through Joy”? (Durch nach Freude or something like that.)
Makes sense that the Nazi-American Style, Bushite, second-time-as-farce types would be preaching Strength through unplanned joy…
I think we really need to call it “unpranned” joy, since it is all about surrender.
Followed by the unplanned joy of post-partum depression.
Patricia Heaton said, “Women experiencing an unplanned pregnancy also deserve unplanned joy.�
Yes. The unplanned joy of free health care through government sponsored abortion.
That quote almost out-dumbs the one my sister attaches to all her emails: “Have you ever noticed that those who promote abortion are those that have already been born?”
Which is why the FFL is also working hard to ban hunting, fishing, slaughterhouses, boxing, hockey matches, and pest extermination.
Right?
No?
Hm.
Strength through unplanned joy…
Kraft durch ungeplante Freude.
Yeah, it still works.
Oh…sweet…Jesus. Please tell me that didn’t really happen? Between him and Heaton, my head has just exploded.
A the smiley red lipstick woman’s eye looks like it’s in mid-twitch.
aha! kim, THAT’s why she looks creeped out. i was wondering how her smile alone could do that, but it’s in the eyes too. for sure.
Didn’t you all know that women are hard-wired to enjoy babies and lavish attention on them? There’s a wonderful film, “Rosemary’s Baby”, in which a woman who is a rape victim struggles with the desire to end her pregnancy and kill the baby. But she eventually brings it to term and when she lays eyes upon it in the crib, she can’t help but fall deeply in love with it! It’s a very heartwarming and life-affirming movie. You should all watch it before posting on abortion. It proves Ms. Heaton’s statement about unplanned joy.
The FFL simply think that women are stupid and incapable of making their own choices. I guess we know where all of those false-consciousness-blaming feminists ended up.
FFL are mostly a bunch of Jesus freaks. Can a Jesus freak be a feminist? I don’t know, i’m asking.
I’ve asked it before, I’ll ask it again: What, exactly, is “feminist” about these people?
If you use the word “feminist” in your name, you’re a feminist, right? No one would ever lie about something like that…
What if she just doesn’t want it?
This is the concept around which the antis simply cannot wrap their narrow little minds–that there are women who simply do not want to be pregnant at that time or ever. Apparently it makes the baby Jesus’ head explode and they can’t have that.
Other favorite FFL lines are “abortion hurts women” and “abortion–one dead, one wounded” (I saw the latter on a bumper sticker once and had to fight the urge to throw eggs at the car). Because if you don’t feel bad about having an abortion there’s obviously something wrong with you.
My MOM looked a lot like final photograph woman when she was young, and she had that same expression because she was TERIIFIED of MEN, unsure of herself, and was desperately trying to live up to societal expectations that had NOTHING to do with her actual dreams or desires.
THat’s why MY MOM looked exactly like that.
Now that I think about it, I’d be jittery too if I lived in a universe where men kept grabbing at my hair.
The FFL terrify the heck out of me. Look, I have two kids - the second one semi-hemi-demi unplanned - we love ‘em, blahblah, all that. Younger one has been in preschool since last fall (no, not continuously, though it’s a thought), and I literally do not know what I’d do if I had to have another baby. There’s a very real chance that having to go back to the round-the-clock baby care, sleep deprivation, baby baby all the time baby routine would lead to either insanity or homicide (choose any one of four possible victims). Why will these freaking idiots not realize that, yes, some of us do have limits, and, no, love will not overcome all difficulties? And I don’t want to hear about adoption. There’s no way in hell I’d traumatize my existing children by having another and giving it away, not to mention that the last pregnancy - otherwise uneventful - was exhausting, and that was four years ago.
This sort of smug disregard for the individual circumstances of others makes me want to knock heads together. Freaking moron idiot jerkbags.
Kim, not only did Clayton Williams in 1990 REALLY SAY THAT to reporters (he was making a bad joke of comparing bad weather to rape, and what to do when both were “inevitable”), but he also spoke about going “down to Mexico to get serviced” by prostitutes. Ann Richards, who made a quote at the 1988 Democratic Convention of “Poor George (HW Bush) … he was born with a silver FOOT in his mouth!”, went on to win the Texas gubernatorial race, only to be replaced in 1994 by Dubya.
Feminism is inherently nonviolent?
Well, what about, say, efforts to allow women to serve in the Army on equal footing with men? The Military is an inherently violent orgnisation, yet very few feminists would call women who choose to serve non-feminists.
Second, isn’t Heaton’s quote the very essence of the coercive mentality?
I mean, for joy to be “unplanned” it has to come without the woman’s knowledge. Essentially, she’s saying that we should force women not to have abortions because we know what they’ll like better then they themselves do.
These FFL newsletters are just so poorly thought out, and it drives me up the wall.
I mean, they’re supposed to specifically be an answer to pro-choice types, but they show no knowledge at all of pro-choice positions.
And it’s not like this stuff is hard to find out; I learned enough to blow these FFL arguments out of the water just by reading blogs like this in my free time. Anybody who was actually expending effort to learn about the pro-choice movement and philosophy would find it essentially impossible to write things like this missive.
Can a Jesus freak be a feminist?
Why not? Jesus had at least one woman among his followers, protected an adulterous woman from murdering slut-shamers, and had some harsh things to say about men who did not do right by their wives.
Oh, and as long as FFL is against violence, they surely work to end domestic violence and rape, right?
Wait, Feminists are Jainists now? When did that happen?
I guess this means that fighting off your rapist is out too. I mean, violence is violence, right?
Fixed.
Patricia Heaton isn’t too much of a feminist to get herself some nice fake boobies:
http://extremecatholic.blogspot.com/2003_01_12_extremecatholic_archive.html
Apparently she’s just a pro-life Catholic wolf in feminist sheep’s clothing…er, well, not even that.
In Patricia Heaton’s world, I would have to be completely celibate for my entire life, since not only do I not want kids, but I’m pretty sure having one would do very bad things to my health, as in, possibly lethal things. I don’t want to live in that world, and I certainly wouldn’t want to be forced to live there, either.
Since I’m an adoptee and I know some of the circumstances under which I came to be (one), I shudder every time I read something like what Heaton said. FFL = objectively pro-forced childbirth.
““Women experiencing an unplanned pregnancy also deserve unplanned joy.â€?”
Into every life a little sperm must fall . . .
You know, I suspect there are fairly few prolifers at the their local social service agencies that deal specifically with child abuse and neglect. Not for long, anyway, one way or the other.
but I’m pretty sure having one would do very bad things to my health, as in, possibly lethal things
In the FFL universe, you should marry a nice widower and raise his children, or you should at least marry and adopt. There’s no such thing as not wanting kids, and even those poor things who can’t breed their own ought to be mommies.
Has anybody heard the recording “Diary of An Unborn Child” by Lil’ Markie? I only just heard it today, though apparently it’s been around for some time now.
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeforum/2005/10/the_secret_l.html
I give you fair warning before clicking on the audio link-if you have a wak stomach, DON’T LISTEN to it.
Oops. Sorry. I obviously copied that incorrectly. You’ll just have to take my word for it.
I’ve heard it. The baby voice sounds like Meatwad from Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
Ooookay. So . . . violence in defending ourselves is a no-no? Accepting oppression is more feminist than fighting it?
I don’t think so.
(Very convenient, as well, that they spend all their effort harping on the “violence” we do ourselves, in our avoidance of oppression, rather than doing anything about the violence perpetuated against us.)
And, on a deeper philosophical note, what is it about violence that makes it wrong, if not that it causes pain/suffering/destruction. Yet they deliberately say “violence,” not “causing pain/suffering/destruction,” because that way the pain and suffering and destruction (and various other things) caused to a woman by forcing her to create, carry and bear a child against her will, is eliminated from the equation, because people don’t think of the pain and ravages of pregnancy and childbirth as “violence” in the same way they think of abortion as “violence.” But it has the same result as the defining effect of violence that makes violence “wrong:” that it causes suffering and injury, this time on a being that can feel that pain, can comprehend that destruction, can experience that suffering—and is not living off things she has no right to access.
OH GOD. I was starting to think I was the only one whose stock-standard reaction to that show was wanting to punch something until my hand broke. YAY IM NOT ALONE IN THINKING THE ‘LOLS OBEY YUR WIFE OR SHE’LL WITHOLD SEX COS IT’S ONLY A REWARD FOR THE HUSBAND, LOL IM SO FUNNIES’ IS GROUNDS FOR LOTS OF ANGRY ANGRY YELLING. LOTS.
:x
Kyra, that reminds me of a quote by Gandhi: “It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence.”
“Into every life a little sperm must fall.” Oh God, Dan S., that’s fuckin’ brilliant. It needs to be on a bumper sticker with the FFL logo or possibly some even more recognisable logo.
That is all. You-all have pretty much said it all, besides that.