Part #7 of my continuing series demonstrating that Feminists For Life are not feminists so much as a right wing front organization, using their email series “Pro-Woman Answers to Pro-Choice Questions”. Today’s email is basically a no-brainer: So you believe that a tiny speck—a zygote, blastocyst, embryo or fetus—has rights over a woman?
Well, obviously they do, at least in the sense that they think that zygote or blastocyst has more right to a woman’s body than the woman does. And since they’re cagey about contraception and much of their membership is against it, they clearly think that individual sperm have more right to a woman’s body for their mission in life than she has to it. But that’s not really the question they’re answering, I found out. The question they’re answering is much closer to: “Do you believe that all women are eager to have one baby after another, and that no women actually might sincerely not want to be having a baby right now or ever?” And the reason I say this is their answer starts like this:
Women aren’t stupid. We know it’s a baby that is growing just like we did in our mother’s wombs. That is why most women who feel they have emotional and financial support don’t have abortions.
It’s true. Women aren’t stupid and the reason they get abortions is because they know what’s growing inside them will turn into a baby one day. And they don’t want to have one, a possibility that FFL denies outright with their attempts to claim that abortions are primarily caused by lack of emotional or financial support. My feeling is they invoke the hazy notion of “emotional support” to explain away why so many women like me have the financial means to have a baby but simply won’t do it—the reasoning then would be that I don’t have the “emotional support”, i.e., if my man was more patriarchal and patronizingly took care of me in exchange for subservience, I would suddenly have a light go on in my head and want babies. But that’s just my guess. Maybe they’ll clarify this in future installments.
Back to the “why most women have abortions” thing, though. From ema, I found that there are actually statistics out there about why women get abortions, which means that if FFL is right and most women who get abortions would not do so if they had more support, then the statistics should reflect this. As ema says, that’s not really true:
For example, in a 2004 study (.pdf) [o]f the 1,160 women who gave at least one reason, 89% gave at least two and 72% gave at least three; the median number of reasons given was four, and some women gave as many as eight reasons out of a possible 13…. Looking just at the three most frequently mentioned reasons for having an abortion, in 44% of cases [Not ready for a(nother) child/timing is wrong (25%); Have completed my childbearing/have other people depending on me/children are grown (19%)] there’s no evidence that increasing economic support would have an effect. (It’s possible that more funds for more effective contraception, or improved access would have an impact on these groups, but that’s just speculation at this point.) By contrast, for the 23% of respondents who mentioned Can’t afford a baby now as a reason for their decision, increased economic support might be effective in reducing the abortion rate.
Here’s the charts from the study. On this first one, remember that the patients were allowed to check off as many as they felt were applicable.
To get a little more clarity, the patients also ranked their reasons, so here’s their highest ranked reason.
Ema’s quote above explains why the financial support reasons would then only reasonably be construed as 23% of abortions, give or take a few percentage points because of the multiple reasons factor. Lack of emotional support as a reason to abort would mean, I’d think, that we’re looking for the women who might keep a baby if their had a supportive relationship, and that’s only clocking in at less than 8.5% of the primary reasons. So this assertion that women would elect to have the baby most of the time if either of these factors had changed just doesn’t mesh well with the evidence.
Serrin Foster asserting that women know”= it’s a baby and therefore are clinging desperately to it comes from a very narrow view of “natural” gender roles. A reader Mark sent me this blog post about the FFL-esque reasoning that abortion bans somehow are “pro-woman” that found its way into the South Dakota Task Force that passed the abortion ban that the voters overturned. It’s critical to remember that this ban was dressed up in FFL clothing, pretending to be pro-woman while stripping rights. From the Task Force:
“It is simply unrealistic to expect that a pregnant mother is capable of being involved in the termination of the life of her own child without risk of suffering significant psychological trauma and distress. To do so is beyond the normal, natural, and healthy capability of a woman whose natural instincts are to protect and nurture her child.”
This is the sort of “feminism” Feminists for Life is peddling, the notion that all women have exactly the same desires to have children, and that any women who don’t share those desires (for instance, the over 55% of women in the 2nd chart who have reasons that boil down to having other priorities of self and/or no desire to have children now) are unnatural and need the law to force us into this narrow role for women for our own good. Advocating forcing women into narrow gender roles for our own good is a lot of things, but feminist ain’t one of them.
The rest of this email brings new meaning to the phrase “meaningless babble”.
Fetus is a Latin word meaning “young child� or “young one.� But in practice, fetus has become a clinical, dehumanized term for an unborn child.
Imagine if some group tried to deny medical care for gravidas. Once someone figured out that was the Latin word for pregnant women, the bewilderment would quickly shift to outrage.
Arguing from etymology, a new low in stupid. If Foster believes that the etymology of the word “fetus” should be the final word on what it is, then sure she believes that babies are born out of handbags and there’s no reason to interfere with a woman’s right to a medical procedure.
The good news is that Foster’s actually just lying again. “Fetus” actually seems to come from “fecund” and it used to describe the pregnancy itself, meaning roughly “bearing children”. Which means that if you want to use the etymology of the word “fetus” to argue for someone’s rights, by your own measure, it’s the bearer—the pregnant woman—who is the point of interest. And as you can see from my lovely charts above, the fecund ones, unlike the modern-meaning feti, have minds of their own and often want to terminate.
35 Responses to “Feminists For Life says: “No, we tell you how you feel about being pregnant””
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I’ve seen “pro-life” pamphlets that actually call the embryo a “baby”. The woman, if she’s mentioned at all, is called a “gravida”. The pamphlets did stir outrage in me, so that part’s correct at least. (Besides, the plural of gravida would be gravidae, I think.)
The “financial support” thing is, imo, pretty much a red herring because FFL and their cronies aren’t willing to offer real financial support to pregnant women (which would mean support for education, childcare and career-replacement that made Sweden and Norway look stingy). But I think that limiting the percentage of women who might consider another kid if more support were forthcoming to the 23% who clearly say they can’t afford it is a little narrow.
For instance, “it’s the wrong time” at least sometimes means “carrying this pregnancy to term would mean kissing my career goodbye, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in dead-end jobs.” In a society where women (and men) who wanted to mix strong involvement in their kids’ lives with work didn’t pay such a high price for doing so, some of the “it’s the wrong time” reasoning might not be so necessary.
Of course in a society like that we’d also all have self-cleaning ponies.
They say patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels. Perhaps politically. I, personally, believe the etymology is the last refuge of the intellectual scoundrel.
The etymological defense is so cravenly conservative, though. Of course those who harken back to “the imagined glory past that never existed” would believe a language so dead it doesn’t even have a tombstone anymore because it was paved over for a Starbucks has any relevance on our current society.
Also they might not want to Hark Back To Ye Glory Of Rome considering the standard method for controlling fertility was, um, infanticide.
Ahhh….here we are: “fetus, us, m. A bringing forth, bearing, hatching, producing: (bestiarum)in fetu labor–young, offspring, progency, brood: quae(bestiae) multiplicis fetus procreant…”
Also can be used in reference to fawns, fruit, produce, and grapes. Oh, and Germans. (”Germania quos horrida parturit Fetus” P. Ovidius Naso)
That’s the most ridiculous etymological goofup since William Safire argued that lesbians shouldn’t call themselves homosexuals, because the root of the word was the Latin homo, or “man.”
If he had bothered to open a dictionary he would have found that the actual root is the Greek homos, meaning “same,” as in same sex.
And this guy wrote a column called “On Language.” Yeesh.
What the fundies fail to realize is that all abortions are obtained for the exact same reason: because the woman chooses not to carry the pregnancy.
Everything else is merely a circumstance: a circumstance of conception (rape, incest, birth control failure); a circumstance of finances, future plans, relationship, personal health, family completion, etc; a circumstance of embryonic health/viability. A circumstance is merely a set of attendant conditions. Circumstances change, but the basic motivational driver does not: this particular pregnancy is simply not worth the risks and burdens.
In the charts above, I don’t see a category for “I don’t like kids.” Oh the horror. I don’t like kids. I’m not “Not ready for a(nother) child/the timing is wrong.” I’ll never be “ready.” The “timing” will always be wrong.
I also don’t see a category for “There are already too many damn kids on the planet.”
Wait, there’s no option for “Because I’m a dirty, baby-killing whore who just can’t keep her legs closed, and I routinely use abortion as birth control.” Because, you know, that’s usually the message I get from the forced-birth advocates. Kudos, FFL. Your slut-shaming is somewhat more subtle than what I’ve come to expect from your comrades in oppression.
Hey Amanda -
You should write some more about this new, somewhat creepy ‘woman-protective’ argument for restricting abortion that was floating around in South Dakota and is big in the FFL materials you describe. I think it deserves a few posts worth of trashing all its own.
A great article by law professor Reva Siegel about it is here (in TAP):
http://tinyurl.com/yygrrx.
The campaign goes way beyond FFL. The South Dakota legislature got into the act in a big way for this ban that was just defeated, and I think we’ll all be hearing more about this new line of attack in the future.
I guess the basic idea is: all abortions are coerced because women would NEVER ‘naturally’ choose to kill their babies. (And of course it has a little ring of truth because there IS a lot of coercion around abortion… it’s just that most of that coercion is the other way, from crisis pregnancy centers, pro-life family members, and other such right-wing zealots!)
Bitter Scribe: …whoa, seriously? Because like… Safire is supposed to be smart (though I just giggled when he wrote his column a while back on the meaning of “crunk.”) I mean… like… seriously?
I have to say in that case Safire was probably playing (with tongue planted firmly in cheek) Grumpy Linguistic Curmudgeon. Fun role to play–allows one to yelp at people not knowing what the plural of fetus is and make nasty comments about pronunciations of foreign words.
(I think we did manage for a while to convince everyone in the CS community that the plural of a VAX mainframe was vaxen.)
Reason #4232341 that I hate wingnuts.
That is why most women who feel they have emotional and financial support don’t have abortions.
Even were this true, it’s something that wingnuts react outrageously to.
Response by “squicky about abortion liberals”: “OK, so we should provide financial support to low-income mothers.”
Response by wingnuts: “No,that’d be expensive. We just have to make pregnant women feel as though they have financial support. Once the kid’s out they’re stuck, so we can move on to another pregnant woman.”
The charts above are from the Guttmacher Institute. I should have been more clear. My apologies. They’re a pro-choice organization who keeps such meticulous statistics that even the wingnuts grudgingly accept them.
I guess the basic idea is: all abortions are coerced because women would NEVER ‘naturally’ choose to kill their babies.
Or, even worse, be happy about it. Trust me, there’s even some who call themselves pro-choicers who will get uncomfortable if a woman is happy about getting an abortion. Many otherwise well-meaning people (*cough*hillaryclinton*cough*) will say that abortion is a “tragedy that no woman wants to experience.” No, it’s a twenty-minute surgical procedure* that saves someone from a lifetime of misery.
*Or two days, if one goes the medical route.
Even in the most generous European countries, with health care and child care and paid maternity leave and all that, still, 1/3rd of all pregnancies are aborted.
The only thing that really makes a difference is birth control (and birth control education). That way, women don’t have to get pregnant in the first place.
(Oh, but that doesn’t work for the American pro-lifers, who take offense at the very idea that women should be able to halt their childbearing. They want every woman and girl to accept every pregnancy as God’s will.)
Feminists for Life can’t accept the plain, obvious truth, that some women just don’t want (anymore) children, because their whole organization is based on the lie that all women want babies at all times.
In the charts above, I don’t see a category for “I don’t like kids.� Oh the horror. I don’t like kids. I’m not “Not ready for a(nother) child/the timing is wrong.� I’ll never be “ready.� The “timing� will always be wrong.
My thoughts exactly. But then women like us don’t exist anyway, I wonder how I’m able to type at all…
Maybe the “don’t want kids” contingent is underrepresented because we’re so paranoid about our birth control that we don’t have many unintended pregnancies.
Heh.
I’d be more inclined to say the “don’t want kids” contingent is underrepresented because it’s still not completely socially acceptable — especially, I would think, in the context of obtaining an abortion, with its emotional baggage attendant* — to say that in the first place.
Hands up anyone who has been told “You’ll change your mind.” The Pregnancy Police are every bit as out of control as the civil servant kind.
* When even well-meaning people seem intent on framing abortion as this horrible, horrible (yet necessary!) experience, I can understand why someone would be reluctant to admit to just not wanting kids when terminating an unwanted pregnancy.
Hell, even those of use who already have kids that we planned and adore get told that we’ll ‘change our minds’ when we say that we don’t want more. It’s plain infuriating. People (even family) actually believe that I must not love the kids I have (and had on purpose, at that) because I absolutely will not have another child and I’m quite open about it. I’ve even been told that ‘accidents happen and we’re sure you’ll love that one as well.’ Well, accidents may happen, but if something unplanned does, my husband will be driving me over to the clinic as soon as I see two lines on the stick. Because I will not have more.
The pregnancy police are after all of us, no matter what our inclination is towards children.
I’d be more inclined to say the “don’t want kids� contingent is underrepresented because it’s still not completely socially acceptable — especially, I would think, in the context of obtaining an abortion, with its emotional baggage attendant* — to say that in the first place.
I think you’re spot on there.
Hands up anyone who has been told “You’ll change your mind.�
*Raises hand*
It’s completely infuriating… No-one would ever consider bugging a man about that sort of thing.
This planet is overloaded with, among other things, people who can’t appreciate how much variation there is between one person and another. They want to believe everybody either feels the same way, or maybe everybody except for perverts — the good old normal vs. abnormal distinction. And they come up with these verbal summaries which encapsulate some truth only if you understand them correctly — which they don’t, they just “reason” from the formula. There are indeed SOME women who have abortions only reluctantly, because they don’t have the kind of support they would need — but ONE of the things types like FFL can’t wrap their ill-disciplined brains around is that in many cases that kind of support would have to go well beyond anything we would ever enact or even beyond what a far more generous society than ours could even possibly enact — to say nothing of all those other women under those other headings in the table above. [Bangs head on table.]
No-one would ever consider bugging a man about that sort of thing.
Scarlet, after I married my noble wife, Illocano Avenger, I was asked by her fellow Philipinos on various occasions, “When you gonna have a baby?”
So it does happen to men, just not American men, as a rule.
What is funny is that we both have relatives who have said that we were smart not to have children.
On her side, her sister who has to baby-sit her grandchildren at times complains how tiring it is to do so, and comments how wise we are to remain childless.
On my side, a Texas cousin tells me that if she had it to do over again, she wouldn’t have had any kids, and is glad I’ve evaded what seems to be a cross-cultural imperative.
No-one would ever consider bugging a man about that sort of thing.
Scarlet, after I married my noble wife, Illocano Avenger, I was asked by her fellow Philipinos on various occasions, “When you gonna have a baby?�
So it does happen to men, just not American men, as a rule.
Ditto, but we’re American. My grandmother bugs both of us. Six months after we were married, she sat us both down and said, “Well, I sure thought you’d walk into my house six months pregnant with a bundle of joy. I don’t know about your faith, but mine says “Be fruitful and multiply.” I want little children running all around me, but clearly you two don’t agree.” The comment was directed not just to me (a female) but to the husband as well. We’re dreading next week, which marks 2 years 6 months married, and still no baby, on the way or otherwise.
Six months after we were married, she sat us both down and said, “Well, I sure thought you’d walk into my house six months pregnant with a bundle of joy. I don’t know about your faith, but mine says “Be fruitful and multiply.� I want little children running all around me, but clearly you two don’t agree.�
Wow. That’s….blatant. Have you tried explaining that you and your husband have decided to make major life-altering decisions based on your OWN wishes, owing to it being your lives? She probably wouldn’t actually listen, but there’s always a slim chance. Or I suppose you could politely point out that if she wants little children running all around her, she is welcome to start a daycare or become a foster parent. I mean, either would be less selfish than demanding her grandchildren make major life decisions based on what makes them happy rather than what makes her happy.
Not to mention the part where grandchildren and great-grandchildren are a whole lot less work than children. If they’re not your kids, you can enjoy them running all around you all the more, because when they start getting tired and cranky, they go home with their parents and you don’t have to deal with them. I imagine your grandmother would be rather less eager to see you guys be fruitful and multiply if she were the one who had to deal with the physical strain of being pregnant, followed by 3 am feedings, colic, teething, and other joys of infancy. Other people’s kids are great. But if you’re the one doing the actual raising, there will be many, many times when the child will not be a bundle of joy.
I actually got somewhere with my own mom using a modified version of that argument. What with being the eldest, the pressure to procreate has fallen on me rather than my younger siblings (so far, anyway). The usual bromides about ‘you’ll change your mind’ and so forth were deployed on a regular basis. *Until* I said I’d be happy to give her a grandchild, as long as I could hand it over at birth and have her take 24/7 responsibility for the next eighteen years.
She didn’t like that idea at all. She’s been a whole heck of a lot quieter on the subject since then, as well. Although she’s also started buying cutesy raincoats for her dog, which may be her way of sublimating her desire for grandkids to dress up in cutesy outfits.
I might have missed it, but it looks to me like there’s no “I don’t want to have a baby” or “don’t want to go through pregnancy/childbirth” on that list. No “don’t want to create an unwanted baby.”
Ah, yes, much invokation and over-usage of the phrase “her own child.” I really wish they’d stop using this phrase. To me “her own child” implies a being that the woman in question has chosen to accept and love. For a child the woman has not chosen to accept and love, then phrases like “the child she bore” or “the child (if they insist on using “child” to describe a fetus) growing inside her.” It is trivializing the experiences and feelings of a great many women to superimpose feelings of love and acceptance over their real feelings.
I respond to “accidents happen” with either “that’s what abortions are for” or “deliberately spending several months knowing you’re pregnant and not getting an abortion is not an accident” or “getting pregnant can be an accident; staying pregnant? only if you live in El Salvador” depending on the perceived intelligence of the person who says it. Cases of not realizing you’re pregnant or being unable to obtain an abortion aside, nobody’s that slow on the uptake.
Wow. That’s….blatant. Have you tried explaining that you and your husband have decided to make major life-altering decisions based on your OWN wishes, owing to it being your lives? She probably wouldn’t actually listen, but there’s always a slim chance. Or I suppose you could politely point out that if she wants little children running all around her, she is welcome to start a daycare or become a foster parent. I mean, either would be less selfish than demanding her grandchildren make major life decisions based on what makes them happy rather than what makes her happy.
:-) Yes, she is quite blunt. I’ll keep your advice in mind next Thursday, hee hee.
Or, even worse, be happy about it. Trust me, there’s even some who call themselves pro-choicers who will get uncomfortable if a woman is happy about getting an abortion. Many otherwise well-meaning people (*cough*hillaryclinton*cough*) will say that abortion is a “tragedy that no woman wants to experience.� No, it’s a twenty-minute surgical procedure* that saves someone from a lifetime of misery.
*Or two days, if one goes the medical route.
Ack. While I’m no *sneeze*hillaryclinton*sneeze*, I do have to say that the going through the experience isn’t necessarily always a cause for popping the champagne. Again, qualifying myself as a staunch pro-choicer, it is nonetheless a cringeworthy thought to end an otherwise perfectly healthy life for the sheer joy of ending that life. I don’t know that “high fiving!” the occasion is an emotionally smart decision, either. That being said, being pro-choice means exactly that — and each woman has the right to make her own decisions. Hillary Clinton erred with her unfortunate word choice of “tragedy.” I would, however, agree with her that having to abort a life is something that no woman should want to “experience.”
Scarlet, after I married my noble wife, Illocano Avenger, I was asked by her fellow Philipinos on various occasions, “When you gonna have a baby?�
Yes, I was talking from my own experience as a Belgian. In other cultures, the pressure to have children is bigger (as is the case for Italian people I know, for instance). Same goes for people who are very religious (which is more frequent in the US than over here).
What is funny is that we both have relatives who have said that we were smart not to have children.
Same here. Thankfully, my mother and grandmother don’t bug me with that sort of thing. All the other people around me understood a long time ago that that sort of patronizing and irritating crap was NOT welcome.
Regardless of the “life” question, I just don’t want women to have to undergo surgery that could be prevented in many cases by a pill, piece of latex, etc. And that’s where “F”Fl shows their true colors, refusing to do anything to prevent pregnancies in the first place.
I’ve actually used the ‘that’s what abortions are for’ line with a few overly aggressive family members. They always get really quiet, look at me like I grew an extra head all of a sudden, and say, ‘oh, you’d never do something like that.’ Like they haven’t known my contrary ass for the last 30 years and don’t know that I don’t have a sentimental bone in my body and that I sure as hell would if I got pregnant again. I’m the relative that they don’t want to talk politics with over the family table. I don’t usually start the argument/discussion, but if someone else does, I don’t back away from it either.
I do have to say that the going through the experience isn’t necessarily always a cause for popping the champagne. Again, qualifying myself as a staunch pro-choicer, it is nonetheless a cringeworthy thought to end an otherwise perfectly healthy life for the sheer joy of ending that life. I don’t know that “high fiving!� the occasion is an emotionally smart decision, either.
Ignoring the “life” bit,* allow me to share my abortion story with you:
I got pregnant at 19, thanks to a broken rubber. When I walked out of that clinic after my abortion, it was one of the most relieved, happy and proud - yes, proud - moments of my life. Was I happy, relieved or proud that I had gotten pregnant in the first place? Of course not. Was I happy, relieved and proud that I had managed to make a truly horrible situation have a reasonably positive ending? Fuck yes I was.
I will always be proud that I chose not to bring an unwanted child, which I was not prepared to raise, into the world. I’ve had plenty of anti-choice people tell me that I’m a sick bitch for feeling that way, and I really don’t care; however, I grow weary of hearing obstensibly pro-choice people tell me that my experience with abortion should be one that I look back at with shame or discomfort.
*First of all, the notion that a fetus is a “life” is subject to opinion. Second of all, the notion that all aborted fetuses are “perfectly healthy” is totally false.
Was I happy, relieved or proud that I had gotten pregnant in the first place? Of course not. Was I happy, relieved and proud that I had managed to make a truly horrible situation have a reasonably positive ending? Fuck yes I was.
As you had every right to be. Some of these places are literal battle zones filled with whackjobs who care not one iota for the consequences of a woman being forced to continue a preganancy again her will. I guess what I was trying to express was that the choice — either way — is life-alteringly important. And intensely personal. Having had the experience of needing an abortion myself, I understand this completely.
First of all, the notion that a fetus is a “life� is subject to opinion. Second of all, the notion that all aborted fetuses are “perfectly healthy� is totally false.
The fact that a fetus is a life — and yes, an embryo, and even a four-celled zygote are technically lives — shouldn’t mean that it trumps a woman’s life. It’s a living thing like any other, except that the end product is a human. Not saying that you’re using this argument, but comparing a growing fetus to, say, having a diseased cyst needing removal is a disingenuous and kinda creepy analogy. A cyst never has the potential to a be a baby, so there’s a critical difference. And, yes, sperm are also key ingredients in the life equation, but have no more right to a woman’s body than does a cyst. The point being, the notion of the fetus actually being a life is not the real debate. It can still be a life while ensuring that a woman’s right to choose remains intact.
Obviously, not all aborted fetuses are “perfectly healthy.â€? I was expressing my distaste (personal) in the notion that one would be celebrating — even figuratively — the actual act of abortion itself. Having made the decision (really, there wasn’t any other sane choice) to abort a fetus with a severe chromosomal defect incompatible with life, it just affects me deeply. But I’m insanely proud of my decision, and immensely grateful that I actually had the choice to make.
But I’m insanely proud of my decision, and immensely grateful that I actually had the choice to make.
Here here.
I’ll throw my hat into the ring of disappointment that there’s no “I just don’t want kids, ever” option. I mean, I love kids, I could probably make it work financially, my boyfriend is a peach who would be as good a father as any, I’m not exactly “career driven” (I am happy to show up to a job I tolerate that I can leave without any “will this hurt my chances for advancement?” thoughts), I just don’t want all the damn responsibility, and I’d rush off to the clinic in a heartbeat if one of my pregnancy tests (that I bought in bulk, because I’m paranoid) shows up positive (and make those anti-choice fuckers pay for it, I
Awww, my (heart) symbol broke my comment
I’d rush off to the clinic in a heartbeat if one of my pregnancy tests showed up positive (and make those anti-choice fuckers pay for it, I *heart* U, MN!).
I’ll also raise my hand for the “you’ll change your mind” bit. I can’t even remember how many people have commented, upon hearing that I don’t want them, that I’m so GREAT with kids, and that I can find a baby to play with in any crowd, and how could *I* of all people not want a million little babies to play with everyday, and I should just wait and see, and not completely write the idea off. OMG does it drive me crazy.
It really bugs me when pro-choicers feel they have to concede that abortions are SO TERRIBLE. One of my least favorite abortion quotes is that it should be “safe, legal, and RARE”. I want abortions to be rare insomuch as I want heart surgery to be rare. I want them to be (mostly) unnecessary, because people who don’t want to be pregnant don’t get pregnant, not because there’s anything inherently wrong with abortions, which is always the impression I get from people who say that. It really rubs me the wrong way, and I can’t imagine how I’d feel if I had actually had an abortion, but I’m thinking it wouldn’t be pretty.
Even the PP stats show that 70% of women who seek abortions did not use any form of birth control. IMO, 70% of abortions should NEVER happen, because those women should have the basic common sense to use a freakin condom. Hence: safe, legal, and rare.
It’s hard for women who don’t want another child to get the surgery to ensure that they won’t have more kids and even harder for them to convince men to have vascetomies. Generally, women who have not carried ar pregnancy to cerm can’t get a tubal ligation, so women like me who never want kids are out of options. (Sadly, doctors won’t perform a t.l. in case we change our minds, but will perform abortions.) We’ll abort American babies, but people will go to China and South America to get newborns because they are so hard to get in America.
IMO, that is the very nature of anti-abortion, pro-woman agendas - to bring some sanity into women’s reproductive lives. There is room for pro-woman improvement that goes far beyond abortion on demand.