So I get this weird trackback suggesting that I enjoy getting abortions, which is something I can’t attest to, not ever having had one. Apparently the wingnuts are going crazy because I suggested women who get abortions shouldn’t be ashamed. I’m not sure why they continue to be surprised that I don’t hate women. I guess they think women’s suckiness is self-evident, but I disagree.
But anyway, Melissa Clouthier has concluded that I think abortion is great (her words) because I wrote this:
For me, “I had an abortion” should be as morally loaded as “I had a Pap smear”.
There is only one thing to conclude from this.
Melissa Clouthier enjoys getting a Pap smear.
Honestly, if they were less anxious about sex, they could do it like normal people and quit having to find bizarre and frankly perverse ways to enjoy the touch of another human being.
94 Responses to “Medical procedures don’t have to be enjoyable in order to be a social good”
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When pigs fly. There is hope, with genetic engineering, but it’s a long shot.
Being so laser sharp focused in teh gays and abortion can’t be healthy. Well and that explains a lot too…
I’m reading ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ and wow. We are in for a world of hurt of they get control.
Whoa Pinky, where have you been for the last 8 years? They ARE in control! Great post again, Amanda. God, fundies are so depressing. This woman is a DOCTOR? Of what - no, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.
Back in high school I thought the words “pap smear” meant that your face flushes really easy, and so I began calling this one girl I knew “pap smear” all the time. It wasn’t until about senior year when another girl told me “that’s so mean!” after hearing me call her that when I realized what the phrase really meant.
Well, yeah. I mean, all this hand-wringing about abortion is just going to get transferred to other medical interventions that involve women’s ladyparts if abortion is banned. In fact, for organized anti-choicers, it has. Every major anti-choice group in the U.S. is against contraception, and of course preventing HPV through the vaccine was a source of misery, because death by cervical cancer was one of their favorite “consequences” for women who have sex. Now you have those doctors in Canada who are refusing to do Pap smears for unmarried women. And while midwifery started as a hippie feminist thing to do (and still is), it’s been adopted by fundamentalists who believe medical intervention is fine for men’s health, but wax poetic about “nature” when it’s comes to women’s health.* The logic that feeds this, if not constrained by feminists, leads directly to the Taliban, where women die in childbirth because it’s considered immodest to have anyone, oh, deliver the fucking baby.
*None of this is to say that I’m against midwifery or think that a woman shouldn’t have the right to go that way. But I am suspicious of the fundie devotion to it.
I don’t know about her, but I certainly never enjoyed a pap smear. Maybe her GYN bought her roses and a bottle of wine first, who knows.
I love how when you write “morally loaded” they jump straight to the feels good/bad issues. Because if it feels good it must be bad. Wait….
The irony of characterizing my feelings towards any medical procedure as “great” (at least, devoid of context) is unintended but fucking hilarious. I am not fond of going to the doctor. I am really squeamish. There’s a lot of careers out there I think are interesting (like being a biologist, homicide detective, forensic pathologist) but could never ever do, because I’m so squeamish. The blase way that nurses have of taking blood or giving shots never fails to impress me, since I’m usually about to faint when the needle comes out.
But yes, in the abstract, I think modern medicine is great. It saves lives and improves lives. Modern abortion techniques are just one small gradient of all the various ways that modern medicine has made life better for people.
Clothier shows her colors by bolding your outrageous assertion that women should feel ashamed. That threatens thumpers, the notion that women shouldn’t feel shame.
Shame (”A painful emotion caused by a strong sense of guilt, embarrassment, unworthiness, or disgrace.) is the mother’s milk of the anti-choice movement.
Wait, since when does “thinks X medical procedure should be easily available” mean “thinks X medical procedure sounds like a hoot!”
I mean, I would think ill of any political movement which sought to ban root canals. That just sounds stupid, not to mention a bad idea. But do I want to undergo a root canal? Hells to the no. But when I need one, I damn well expect it to be on the table.
“The blase way that nurses have of taking blood or giving shots never fails to impress me, since I’m usually about to faint when the needle comes out.”
I don’t think you’re alone in that. I just had to have some skin removed thanks to atypical cells, and both the nurse and the surgeon asked if I’d ever considered going into the medical field solely on account of my ability to watch them work without feeling sick or light-headed.
I’d have to wonder if Dr. Clouthier has ever actually been to the doctor herself. Medical intervention is pretty much always unpleasant to one degree or another. It’s just that the unpleasantness of the treatment is far, far less than the unpleasantness of the condition you’re hoping to treat or prevent.
I went over there and thought she was being logical. I said:
Now she’s making me look bad, saying that she doesn’t think Pap smears are morally loaded at all.However, I also made this comment:
I don’t understand why so many people (bloggers as well as commenters) have focused on Amanda’s offhand comparison example instead of the topic of the post. Did Pavlov train them to salivate when they hear the word abortion? Do they subscribe to Google Abortion Alert?
My first boyfriend was very, very fucked up for this very reason. How did I know his mother used to tell him that she should have had an abortion instead of giving birth to him? Because she said it to him in front of me. We were both about 19.
But, hey, better for him to be born and rejected by his mother his whole life than to have been aborted when he was still a clump of cells, right?
I understand why pro-lifers like to tell you about how many women regret their abortions. It’s all designed to deflect from their obvious lack of concern for women’s health. Or worse their down right hatred of women.
But it always seems like their weakest argument to me. Clearly the women I know who have had abortions regret them…but they had them anyway because they would have really regretted having the child. The most obvious was my one friend who had been dating an abusive guy, and just when she got her ducks in a row to leave him it turns out she’s pregnant. Abortion was not at all a selfish decision for her.
Complete digression on root canals: I got to have three within a couple of months (kids, don’t put off going to the dentist for 10 years!) and they actually weren’t that bad. They sure weren’t fun, but they didn’t hurt since my dentist and endodontist were both willing to give me as much Novocain as my body could handle. Getting a cavity filled bothers me more because of the combination of the sound and the smell.
But, hey, I didn’t see a dentist for 10 years, so I guess that means he should have refused to help me, since I only had myself to blame for the situation I was in. If I hadn’t been wantonly running around town drinking orange juice and eating sugary foods, I wouldn’t have needed dental care.
Somegirls:Somegirls:
I appreciate your experiences with the women in your life and your willingness to to say the “women I know who have had abortions regret them, but would have regretted the child more had they chosen to carry the pregnancy to a healthy outcome”(paraphrase mine)
I thank you for not saying “most or all women” and clarifying it to “women I know”
I would like to introduce you to a woman who had an abortion purely for what antichoice profetus people call selfish reasons. That would be me. I am neither ashamed nor have ever had regret about my termination of my pregnancy. I don’t go around announcing my abortion to people, nor do I talk about my experiences as a general rule, but I would no more do so with a root canal or hysterectomy. That said, I am not in the “had an abortion of shame closet” that the rightwing fundies insist I must be in if I had one.
I have announced my abortions in crowded coffee shops, asked antichoicers how much time I should do in jail or if they thought I was mentally unhinged before, during or after my procedure to only see flustered stammering ensue and verbal backpedaling ensue.
Just thought you might like to say that you now know one woman who thought out of all her decisions regarding the direction of her adult life would take, the decision to have an abortion was her finest.
anyway, thanks again for being sensitive enough to say the women I know. Nothing grinds my fruitloops* like hearing a politician, or other liberal or otherwise person say “most women (regret, feel guilt, agonize, etc) over their abortions”
*Thanks to Twisty Faster for the ingenious turn of phrase “grinds my fruitloops”
somegirls:
I disagree. I’m starting to think it’s designed to counterbalance the regret, depression, and bitterness women will naturally feel when they bear an unwanted child.Good point about shame removal, Dr. Science.
Also, though, it’s clear that this goes back to Amanda’s point about them being way too anxious and conflicted about sex. For example:
Um, I don’t know what happened to the text I tried to blockquote. I was referring in the rest of my comment to this portion of Dr. Clouthier’s post:
Society benefits that shame is associated with “the right to choose.” Is there no shame anymore? Even with the shame, far too many people engage in sex without thought and consideration of the consequences that can result in another being paying the ultimate price for momentary pleasure.
I think this line is a hoot:
However, I can understand a woman’s claim to her own body.
So she can understand the claim, but really, women don’t own their own bodies.
Somegirls, I think what pisses me off the most about this asshole Melissa’s post is just that—the seething desire to make women suffer needlessly that underlies her post. Women should suffer and feel shame! For what? Um, taking care of themselves and doing what’s right for them and their families. She wants women to have two options: The bad choice or shame. You don’t get to be happy, that’s for sure, not if you’ve had Teh Sex.
Here’s the other thing: I’m cognizant of the fact (and Melissa probably hasn’t thought of this) that women who have abortions are out there, reading. Of course they are—they’re 30-40% of women. They’re reading my blog and Melissa’s blog. And when she says that you should feel ashamed, she is not just shaming into the ether, but deliberately putting stuff out there to hurt members of her audience who didn’t do shit to deserve it.
Amanda, you could definitely be a biologist, even if you’re very squeamish. Lots of modern biology research gets done without cutting open animals or seeing blood or anything like that.
What I find interesting is that two of the commenters have basically related stories (who knows if they’re made up or not! I strongly suspect they are made up- especially the one the refers to being a feminist as “being in the sisterhood”- that’s just a creepy term and obviously being used to imply that feminism is a “cult” ((much like xianity!)))
about people they know NOT being aborted or them NOT being aborted.
That argument is always the most interesting to me.
As if there was just that choice and no variables in the decision- it’s that black and white thinking that’s always amusing. It implies that the massive grey area that is LIFE is quite terrifying to that person.
Plus I will add that anyone who goes around being glad that they weren’t aborted is probably somewhat depressive anyhow and trying to make themselves feel better about being alive. The few people who have said this to me over the years have been just that- one even took his own life a few years later.
d’oh
by “commenters” I’m referring to the ones in Melissa’s post- sorry I didn’t make that clear in my comment!
Regarding that whole “I’m glad I wasn’t aborted” line of reasoning.
The realist in me acknowledges that my parents were really not ready to have me, and the smart thing to do would have been to abort and then make sure to be super diligent about birth control for another 5 years before finally deciding to have children when they were really ready for parenthood.
Being a generally unwanted child your parents didn’t have the resources to raise SUCKS. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy to be alive, but academically, I know my parents didn’t make the best choice.
Danica: interestingly enough, I even had one person ask me, “How would you feel if your mother had aborted you?”
This argument always cracks me up. How would I feel? Easy answer: I wouldn’t care at all. Being that I wouldn’t exist, I would have no thoughts on the matter.
I’ve had 2 abortions over the course of my lifetime. Neither one was a picnic: it hurt, it was traumatizing on both a physical and emotional level. Making the decision to have an abortion was one of the hardest I ever had to make. And I don’t regret either one. I wouldn’t go back and change that decision. I wouldn’t even go back and change the course of events that lead me to the clinic’s door (not that I could change some of the events: I wasn’t given a choice to not have sex the first time I got pregnant).
“Being a generally unwanted child your parents didn’t have the resources to raise SUCKS.”
My brother was conceived practically as soon as my mother stopped breastfeeding with my sister (3 months). It was unplanned and, to a certain degree, unwanted. My mother was okay with having a third child, but she sure as hell didn’t want one for another couple of years. She still–two decades later–gets rather cranky and bitter about having had to raise the two of them at once. I don’t think she’s ever said anything to him or my sister about him having been an accident, but them having to split emotional and financial resources that were already a bit thin on the ground while they were growing up was definitely a hardship.
@hello
Thanks for your story. I guess mostly what I was trying to say is that carrying a pregnancy to term is not always the happy regret free decision. So the argument that women shouldn’t have abortions because some regret it is silly at best.
@Dr Science
Valid point. I imagine it’s both/and.
@Amanda
More and more each day I’m realizing that you’re correct that Anti-choicers are really about hurting and penalizing women and that’s it.
The best slave
does not need to be beaten.
She beats herself.
Not with a leather whip,
or with stick or twigs,
not with a blackjack
or a billyclub,
but with the fine whip
of her own tongue
& the subtle beating
of her mind
against her mind.
For who can hate her half so well
as she hates herself?
& who can match the finesse
of her self-abuse?
Years of training
are required for this.
Twenty years
of subtle self-indulgence,
self-denial;
until the subject
thinks herself a queen
& yet a beggar —
both at the same time.
She must doubt herself
in everything but love.
She must choose passionately
& badly.
She must feel lost as a dog
without her master.
She must refer all moral questions
to her mirror.
She must fall in love with a cossack
or a poet.
She must never go out of the house
unless veiled in paint.
She must wear tight shoes
so she always remembers her bondage.
She must never forget
she is rooted in the ground.
Though she is quick to learn
& admittedly clever,
her natural doubt of herself
should make her so weak
that she dabbles brilliantly
in half a dozen talents
& thus embellishes
but does not change
our life.
If she’s an artist
& comes close to genius,
the very fact of her gift
should cause her such pain
that she will take her own life
rather than best us.
& after she dies, we will cry
& make her a saint.
http://www.ericajong.com/poems/alcestis.htm
I loved the comment that Pap smears may be somehow amoral because the cancer they detect is caused by a sexually transmiited virus.
Is it wrong to hope these idiots die a painful and preventable death from cervical cancer - contracted from their christian husbands? Of course these wives ‘cleaved only unto their husbands’. But their husbands were encouraged to ’sow their wild oats’ before marriage.
Sick sick sick…
See Andrea Yates. It’s interesting how women can get squeezed between different forms of patriarchy; unnecessary Caesareans and episiotomies aren’t exactly the height of woman-friendliness.
The blogger can’t stick to a damn argument. Either women who get abortions are hapless victims or selfish (selfish, selfish, selfish) bitches. Pick one, lady.
And WTF is it about sex, which is generally fun and life-affirming, that should make people single it out for shame? Where’s the shame at acting like a bully and beating up on weaker kids or adults? Where’s the shame at being a bigot? Where’s the shame at having helped send hundreds of thousands of people to their deaths to stroke one rich kid’s ego?
I know someone who organized a speakout on abortion back in the seventies, at a time when Catholic terrorists were invading the local abortion clinic. Many highly respectable female members of the community came and talked about how they had had abortions. These included his mother. He was an obvious organizer of the speakout, which took place at a city council hearing in the midwest.
His mother went out in the cloakroom during a break and encountered a papist who reviled her son as an instigator. She explained that if abortion had been legal in the early thirties this pious man would not have had him to worry about.
Earlier, she had had an abortion in another country where the procedure, though technically illegal, could happen under safe conditions, with a real doctor doing it, with a nurse assisting. This was almost eighty years ago.
However, back in the US, she became pregnant again, because contraception was hard to obtain. She went to an abortionist who was in a swanky apartment in a toney neighborhood, done up as a proper upper-class dwelling. The patients waited and genteelly drank tea, while trying to ignore the shrieks from the kitchen, which served as operatory. The abortionist had to keep the patient conscious and unanaesthetized so as to be able to get her down the back staircase, in case they were raided. In the end his mother couldn’t face the thought of going through with this, and left, continuing the pregnancy.
I am old enough to remember an incident in the fifties when a young woman of proper WASP origins, died in the course of an abortion. The panicking abortionist cut her up in little pieces and distributed them in trash cans around the same very toney neighborhood.
Ah yes, the “what if you were aborted” question.
What if my parents hadn’t met? What if the accident my grandparents got into before they had my dad was fatal?
It’s sort of like asking “what if my aunt had testicles…would she then be my uncle?”
I also like how one poster here responded to another classic what-if, “what if the fetus would go on to cure cancer” by saying “what if the mother went on to cure cancer if she didn’t get sidetracked by the baby.”
And Paul, to answer your questions, this is because ascetic misogyny is integral to any religion that posits a unitary, masculine, paternal deity. Especially if part of the male dominant outlook at it’s basis involves nonsense fantasies like virgin birth, and of a savior whose mythology expresses weird oedipal fantasies.
For me, “I had an abortion” should be as morally loaded as “I had a Pap smear”.
Great….except that fundies are taking exception to our pap smear too.
Add me to another woman who had an abortion for selfish reasons. My trauma involved the nurse at the student centre who said “Congratulations, you’re pregnant!”. I’ll never forgive her….congratulations? My only regret is that I had it in a catholic country where abortion was illegal and I had to find a kind physician to help me out. It was difficult because it was done in a back room, with NO ANAESTHESIA….I was wide awake. Bless that poor nurse whose hand I held throughout the whole procedure.
Otherwise, it’s 10 years later, I’m a successful physician myself, I’m married and I’m pregnant with a very wanted child. And irony of ironies I work in primary care in a Catholic institution, and we do plenty of pregnancy tests. I’ve never congratulated the young ladies who come in nervously asking for a pregnancy tests. I’ve always simply told them it’s positive. I discuss ALL their options, their choices and decisions…….if they decide not to proceed with their pregnancy….I quietly point them in the direction of someone I know will help them.
It’s so silly, people seem to think if abortion is illegal, it will automatically end. I’m a living testament to someone who DID NOT WANT a child, who was living where abortion is illegal, who had it done anyway - at great risk to myself.
Sorry…..back to lurking
great post Amanda
Hello — Sincere thanks for your story; somegirls line about “abortion wasn’t a selfish decision [for my friend]” really rubbed me the wrong way, too. I mean, it sounds like somegirls is probably pretty young, so that plays a role, but all the same — those kinds of caveats feed into the loop whereby anti-choicers have abortions, sure that *their* abortions are justified exceptions unlike those of other women. It’s just another test that can be used against women, and that women can use against one another, to fail at being human: you had an abortion? Yes? minus 50 human points. But you REALLY, really regretted it, right? No? minus 100, sorry, you’ve moved into subhuman territory. Gah.
I think it’s pretty well established by now that people who feel this way don’t think of sex as fun and life-affirming. These are the same people who feel that oral sex is a fair trade for a guy helping out around the house, that it’s a contractual obligation rather than an enjoyable act; that men have to trick women into sleeping with them, if not outright buy them through gifts; and that women have no actual interest in sex, but are willing to put up with it for ulterior motives, whether children, trapping a husband, or getting a free meal.In short, they’re sick.
And on the other side, I was adopted. My adopted parents were trying to have a kid for years and had two miscarriages and then got me.
They took all these pre-purchase classes and saw a shrink and everything. I have the records. And they weren’t ready to have me. Well, they got another, a sister. Well, then the wheels blew off the cart. She got pregnant and carries a girl to term. Another sister but this one was different. She was related. Then came a boy.
They weren’t capable of handling the split family. There was a definite difference in how the two groups were treated. But I did benefit from some guilt purchases occasionally.
What do you do if your parents actually went out of their way to get you and then have buyers remorse? It makes it interesting.
I found my birth mother a number of years ago and asked her why she didn’t abort me. Her family was damned and determined that she carry me and deliver me but also determined that she never see me or have any contact with me after birth. She did get to hold me the next day for a few minutes but she spent the whole rest of her life until we met wondering if she would ever see me.
It’s interesting… We’ve talked about many of the emotions that she experienced and what she went through. I don’t know what else to say about that but I do remember my adopted mother being extremely physically and mentally abusive. I remember her saying that it was a mistake that they got me. (I was the reason for their marital problems. I’m so omnipotent.) The adopted father was passive aggressive and favored ‘his’ son a whole lot more than me.
Adoption isn’t always the answer. I did say to a bunch of religious idiots that I wondered why my mother didn’t abort me. I was beaten to within inches of my life many times with fists and whatever was handy. My point to them was that there ARE things worse than abortion. It gave them something to think about… If I didn’t have to go through all the crap that I did as a kid, perhaps I could have cured cancer and the common cold…
Late addition:
Well because if everybody knew how much fun sex was, they’d be doing it all the time… There would be no time for war…
No wonder the Europeans think we all need a hobby… Nude beaches are what shameful people get? Well, gimme more of that shame…
The line about abortion being selfish, though, really bothers me, because it paints a picture of this greedy, self-absorbed woman who is too “lazy” to carry a baby to term. Which ignores 3 separate things:
1) Pregnancy ain’t trivial. “It’s just 9 months” is bullshit. It’s hard work, and it takes a giant and sometimes relevant bite out of your life.
2) That assumes that the pregnancy is obligatory, which is of course begging the question.
3) The woman is only thinking of herself when she chooses to abort.
Which is the biggie. Of course she isn’t. To (mis)quote (I can’t guarantee precise accuracy) the brilliant Freakonomics, “when a woman decides she is not ready for a child, she is usually right.” A woman who aborts is serving her eventual children (or not children) as well, or better, than bringing them to term would.
But I’d agree that Kathleen has a critical point: the idea that I can tell whether or not a given abortion is “right” is of course bullshit. It’s like relationships: if you decide to break up with someone, you’ve made the right call by definition. Staying after that decision is simply awful.* So I’d expand on Freakonomics, to say that a woman who decides to abort is right by definition, and trying to judge that without being her is of course another trick.
;-)
I was caught with a girl in my bed. Oh the shame…
Would it have been any more shameful if it had been a guy?
Sex is dirty if you do it right…
DRAT!!!
Quick comment went out without context: In high school I was caught…
Oh the shame… Had protection. What was the problem…
* Which will no doubt be twisted to say that I think a “child’s life” is no more important than a boyfriend of a week. It’s an analogy, fundies.
Oh, “Doctor” Melissa…she’s good buddies with “Doctor” Helen, another sad case of internalized misogyny. Of course they feel the need to tsk-tsk at women who want to live life for themselves, rather than solely for others; otherwise all the dick-waving he-men they suck up to would hate them, rather than take them at their word that they’re “:better than all thoseI’m Not Sorry, which is composed of the testimonies of women who didn’t regret their abortions — whether said abortions were performed for “selfish” reasons or not.
Melody, I’m not surprised about that 17-year-old’s attitude. Today’s teenagers have come of age in an intensely right-wing, anti-sex, abstinence-only-embracing culture, and off the internet, there’s barely any support for the idea that women and especially girls have a right to sexual enjoyment without “consequences.”
Amanda, this is totally OT, but I saw this essay in last week’s Globe and was really pissed off by it. Summary: “I’m proud that instead of having sex and drinking, my daughters and their friends instead slut-shame female public figures who dare not to fit into society’s narrow little boxes for ‘good’ women.”
PinkyLeftBrain– First, wow, that must have been so hard. Kudos to you for making it through. Second, right on — adoption always gets recommended as the easy go-to alternative to abortion. Your case shows it can turn out really badly for the kid, and from what I’ve read it seems to often turn out badly for the surrendering mom who can’t help wondering about this person out there. The anti-choice position insists that everybody has to be a total optimist. What if one is constitutionally NOT an optimist? I know I’d wonder about my kid having an experience like yours, and just be haunted by it.
My apologies to those I’ve offended. My argument was simply in response to the anti-choicers that claim abortion is always a selfish decision to be regretted and carrying the pregnancy to term is a happy joy world. Point well taken that presenting examples of “unselfish” abortions is simply playing into their mindset.
I will have to take exception to the condescending speculations on my age.
I wasn’t a planned child and the day my mom went in to get her tubes tied they ran some tests and the doctor came back and told her “We can’t perform the operation, you’re pregnant”.
Needless to say she was shocked as hell because up until that point she’d had no symptoms of being pregnant. Apparently I was about four weeks along or so and the doctor asked her point blank if she wanted an abortion. My dad was in the waiting room (expecting her to be heading into the OR) and she sat across from her doctor, thought about it and said, “No, I’ll keep it.” Then she walked out into the waiting room and told my dad he was going to be a dad again. My mom was honest enough to admit to me that when he originally heard the news he wasn’t happy about it at all but she’d made the decision so they left. As her pregnancy continued he grew to love the idea of another kid and once I was born he took time off of his job to raise me while she went back to work.
The joke in my family is how I someone managed to slip in there at the last minute. My mom likes to put it in terms of I was a “surprise” to which I would counter “Don’t sugar coat it, you and dad had an accident” and that’s our playful banter. But while as a angst filled teenager I will never forget a discussion I had with my mother where I admitted to her that I felt I wasn’t really wanted, to which she said:
“Trust me, if I hadn’t wanted you, you wouldn’t have been here.”
A lot of anti-choice people like to go, “Aren’t you glad your mom had you?” and of course I say, “Yes” but then I will point out that last statement and that my mom made the CHOICE to have me, I wasn’t something forced on her. She had the option not to and she, sitting in a doctor’s office, alone decided she wanted to keep the pregnancy. Had she decided against it, it wouldn’t have mattered because I wouldn’t have known the fucking difference because as someone else pointed out earlier, I wouldn’t have existed.
Not every child is so lucky to be born into a family where they are wanted and that seems to go against the anti-choice/fundi belief that once a baby just springs from the vagina then the mother will fill with oxytocin and all will be ponies and rainbows. To know that that doesn’t always happen, that their are MOTHERS who don’t like their own children just kills their world view and then they have to plug their ears and go “la la la la la” and run far away from reality.
Yes, thanks to pinkyleftbrain for telling her story. I read a few of the comments over there and I’m just stunned by how completely ignorant that crowd is of the *realities of family life*. First, they are in some fantasy world where all abortions are for single, healthy, white teenagers. Hello? Married women? Divorcing Women? Mothers with other family members who need care and concern? Women pregnant with damaged or dying fetuses? Women pregnant with fetuses carrying irreversible and untreatable genetic flaws? women already dealing with children possessing those medical problems?
Second of all, speaking of the aunt of three adopted children, two from abroad and one from “The system” in this country adoption is no sure thing. I’d say my nieces are lucky since they landed with extremely loving, competent, energetic, devoted parents. I’d say my new nephew? unlucky. He landed with devoted, competent, energetic, parents who were making up for the loss of a beloved dead child and didn’t think their adoption fever through. Now they’ve got an older, defiant, angry, boy in place of their beloved younger daughter and *he knows he’s not the love of their lives.* How’s that for a great adoption story?
Families are imperfect. Choosing to have an abortion is only one among many imperfect options but its by no means definitively a bad choice for either the woman, her family, or the embryo.
aimai
Fair cop, consider it withdrawn with apologies!
Hey, some people juggle geese!A gem from the Doctor in her comment thread, and my response
3) The woman is only thinking of herself when she chooses to abort.
Which is the biggie. Of course she isn’t. To (mis)quote (I can’t guarantee precise accuracy) the brilliant Freakonomics, “when a woman decides she is not ready for a child, she is usually right.” A woman who aborts is serving her eventual children (or not children) as well, or better, than bringing them to term would.
But see she should have thought of that before she opened her legs, the slut, and if she couldn’t bother doing that then her and her children have to be made to suffer as punishment.
See how complicated issues become simpler when you stop giving a shit about anybody else?
Honestly, it always seemed a bit off to me that adoption is considered the moral alternative to abortion. It just always seemed like it would be really cruel to the birth mothers to basically force them to give up their child.* Aside from the fact that even a healthy, relatively risk free pregnancy is not picnic, that’s got to be some serious angst to be carrying around–knowing that you have a child but not getting to be part of that child’s life.
This is also why if I get pregnant again, I will definitely be having an abortion as soon as I can get an appointment. I can’t see giving up a child that I gave birth to. It would kill me to do so. But I also don’t want any more children. I can barely handle the two I have (and I feel I have to add this–I do love my boys and wouldn’t not have had them) and, knowing myself, I would not be a good parent to any of them if I had more. Abortion absolutely would be the best option for me, my already born children, and my marriage.
*This is not to knock women who have voluntarily given up children for adoption. I’m sure if someone comes to the decision on her own that it’s the best thing for her, then that’s the best thing for her and I’m not going to judge that. However, I won’t pretend that I understand it and it definitely isn’t something that I could do.
So you’re saying that women who have had abortions are now men?
Wow, no wonder the feminists are hosting abortion parties–at least afterwards, they’ll have all the same rights that men do!
…are women who’ve never been pregnant or are incapable of becoming so also men? ‘cuz man, I’ve got me some privilege coming if it does.
mothworm:
from which it follows that if a woman isn’t pregnant every single minute of her childbearing years, she’s really not feminine enough? (And I guess if a man takes more than a few hours’ break from impregnating women, his masculinity goes right down the, uh, nevermind…)
Even if “feminine” were some kind of attribute that made sense, this comment by the Doctor seems particularly stupid. Even if you value the fact that someone has the ability to perform some action, that’s no reason for them to perform it each and every time they have the opportunity.
Oh, “Doctor” Melissa…she’s good buddies with “Doctor” Helen, another sad case of internalized misogyny. Of course they feel the need to tsk-tsk at women who want to live life for themselves, not for men and children; otherwise all the dick-waving he-men they suck up to would hate them, and they could no longer pretend to be “better than all those uppity women” anymore.
Somegirls, please check out I’m Not Sorry, which is composed of the testimonies of women who didn’t regret their abortions — whether said abortions were performed for “selfish” reasons or not.
Melody, I’m not surprised about that 17-year-old’s attitude. Today’s teenagers have come of age in an intensely right-wing, anti-sex, abstinence-only-embracing culture, and off the internet, there’s barely any support for the idea that women and especially girls have a right to sexual enjoyment without “consequences.”
Amanda, this is totally OT, but I saw this essay in last week’s Globe and was really pissed off by it. Summary: “I’m proud that instead of having sex and drinking, my daughters and their friends instead slut-shame female public figures who dare not to fit into society’s narrow little boxes for ‘good’ women.”
are women who’ve never been pregnant or are incapable of becoming so also men? ‘cuz man, I’ve got me some privilege coming if it does.
No, women who haven’t been pregnant are still just disobedient sluts refusing their duty to Jesus.
PinkyLeftBrain– First, wow, that must have been so hard. Kudos to you for making it through. Second, right on — adoption always gets recommended as the easy go-to alternative to abortion.
Second the support, and thanks for your sane approach to suffered trauma.
Also, when an anti-choice nut tells me that I’m so lucky to have my (adopted) child and wouldn’t it be nice if abortion were completely unattainable in this country so that more infertile couples could have babies–I walk away screaming.
One, adoption and abortion: They are NOT related. It’s not choose one or the other. Adoption is a good alternative to have open for fertile couples who, for their own reasons, are not able to parent. It beat the hell out of abandoning the baby in a cardboard box behind a dumpster. But abortion? Abortion ends the unwanted pregnancy so that an independent innocent human life is not created.
More importantly, though: Even great parents who choose adoption, as my wife and I did, can never make things okay for our kid. Someone made the decision to leave her for dead when she was 5 months old. That’s the ultimate rejection. Anyone who thinks that ‘how would you feel if you’d been aborted’ is an argument should try parenting a child who was not wanted. How would that feel? Pretty damn lousy.
And adoption is not the band-aid over that sucking chest wound that makes everything all better, because the misbehaving sex-havers have been punished and the good infertile people have been rewarded.
Yeah, I’m hostile, but take into account that those sicko sexist creeps feel free to say these things right to my face–because they can see that I agree with them, I adopted a child! The notion that someone could share your circumstance and still know you’re a moral idiot escapes them
What if you have an abortion and lose ALL your feminineness and then you birth a baby later? Does your feminineness come back then, or do you have to have more babies to make up?
If 1 in 3 women have an abortion at some point, and most of those women go on to have more children, it can’t be far off 1 in 5 of us who owe our existence to the availability of abortion. So my favourite answer to “What if you’d been aborted?” is “What if my potential elder half-sibling hadn’t?”
Didi, thanks for your story. It’s an important reminder of the realities of abortion bans. Women have always found ways to end pregnancies - just not always safely, or cheaply enough, and not all women who need to have been able to.
as someone who, rationally speaking, OUGHT to have been aborted (and believe me, both my mother and i occasionally wish i had been…) I usually respond to the “but what if YOU had been aborted?” with, “well, then my mom would probably be a much happier, wealthier, still-married being…probably with several children, instead of just the one. does that break even or is it better?”
i have yet to get a response.
But you’re not supposed to worry about such things. Once the child is born, it’s not your concern. Although any subsequent fear about its well-being after you’ve given it up for adoption is an extension of your punishment for having had sex in the first place.
Most of the anti-choicers are only concerned about one thing: punishing the woman for having sex. Forcing her to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term fulfills (most of) the punishment. Any subsequent guilt she might have post-birth is additional punishment, which might explain their efforts to convince women to feel guilty about having an abortion.
Sure, they may prattle on about their concern for the fetus, but if they were really concerned about life why is it that so many of the so-called pro-lifers don’t give a damn about a child after it’s born? Most of them appear to be all about worshipping the fetus. If the child is abused, neglected, or killed after it’s born, so what? It’s god’s will. Sure, the kid didn’t do anything to deserve it, but, well, “sins of the mother” and all that.
“Amanda, this is totally OT, but I saw this essay in last week’s Globe and was really pissed off by it. Summary: “I’m proud that instead of having sex and drinking, my daughters and their friends instead slut-shame female public figures who dare not to fit into society’s narrow little boxes for ‘good’ women.””
Favorite quote from it:
“except mine, of course.” As if he didn’t already mention enough about them to let things speak for themselves.
Why didn’t I see a single word in that article condemning the fathers of Britney and Jamie Lynn’s children?
I’m imagining the following Feminine Scorecard being passed out by the Women Against Uterine Vacancy Society:
Being female = 2,000 points (this is your starting point)
Birthing a male child = 500 points
Birthing a female child = 250 points
Staying in an abusive marriage = 100 points per year
Giving birth out of wedlock = -200 points
Using birth control = -200 points per year of use
Getting a divorce = -1,000 points
Having an abortion = -2,000 points
Having a tubal = -4,000 points
Any woman with a negative score is not a Real Woman™.
“God Made Me!
My Parents Adopted Me!”
Big billboard that was up for about 6-9 months in Santa Rosa, California, last year, featuring of course a big picture of the little grinning cherub and his doting adoptive parents.
And not a single allusion to the woman who bore him–who really made the kid. She is out of sight and out of mind.
Instead we just have God “making” the kid apparently by sheer miraculous fiat.
Damn! That blog should have a warning sticker on it: “May reduce your intelligence.”
Rarely have I experienced such crap ‘writing’.
Which was probably her choice. How should I, as an adopted child, feel about the person who owns the womb in which I was gestated? Please do tell. As touchy-feely-presumably-anti-choicy as that billboard is, I’m not sure what more sentiment you want.
Just as I don’t “thank her for not aborting me” I don’t particularly spend much time “thanking her for bearing me.” It was her choice to not take part in my life past day -1/0, and I say entirely without rancor that that’s exactly what she got.
Oh ho ho ho, burn!
“God Made Me!
My Parents Adopted Me!”
Big billboard that was up for about 6-9 months in Santa Rosa, California, last year, featuring of course a big picture of the little grinning cherub and his doting adoptive parents.
Screams out for some culture-jamming, don’t it? Perhaps replacing the second line with a sticker reading “For refund, call [abortion hotline number]”
The “what if my parents aborted me” line of worry always makes me think, well, what if my parents had had sex five minutes before or after the time they actually did? A completely different sperm could have made it to the egg, and I, as I know me, wouldn’t be here either. There are a near infinite number of people who could exist, but don’t. It’s not really something to get worked up about if you think about it for more than ten seconds. If I’d been aborted, I wouldn’t exist to fret over it. Big deal.
Which was probably her choice. How should I, as an adopted child, feel about the person who owns the womb in which I was gestated? Please do tell. As touchy-feely-presumably-anti-choicy as that billboard is, I’m not sure what more sentiment you want.
It’s not so much that adopted people should feel one way or another about the woman who bore them. It’s more that it completely removes the woman’s role in constructing the child and assigns it to “God.” That’s kind of fucked up.
But see, you have to figure in their ‘current world view’.
They profess to believe that war should be a ‘last resort’ and yet many/most of them supported and voted for the re-election of a man that used war as a second resort after the truth failed to excite enough people into the attack of Iraq.
I would recommend that abortion be a ‘last resort’ and that it still be available. The anti-choicers want to remove conscious choice in the matter. You are pregnant so you must deliver the fetus. I’ve even heard some of the more ‘out there’ folks talking about jailing women who spontaneously abort because they must have done something wrong.
On the flip side of this is a woman that I worked with who had relatives who were assured that they had a 75% chance of having a child that wouldn’t live to see their first birthday. Approximately 25% chance of a stillborn and 50% chance of a child that would die before it’s first birthday and a 25% chance that it would live to one but would still have health issues and could pass this condition on to their children.
They were ‘of the family’ to use a euphemism from Star Trek (children of Landru) and were heavy fundie and were under the ‘go forth and prosper’ which always seems to mean procreate with abandon.
Every child they had died. Every time that happened, they sued the OB and their doctor of the moment. Every time they ‘won’ their case.
Yes, blame it on the doctor. Why? Because one didn’t abort them when they were young. Oh but these self-righteous turds wouldn’t adopt someone elses kid. Oh the horrors of not having the product of your own loins screaming and puking all over your furniture.
I just had so many problems with their decisions and lack of anything even remotely related at some galactic distance to ‘common sense’.
If I was her doctor, I’d have sterilized her when I had the chance. She has enough sense to know where the penis goes but the rest of life just didn’t sink in. Hell sterilize both of them.
Frivolous lawsuits? Doctors being sued out of practice? Holy shit people… And so much for adoption being ‘an alternative to abortion’. Must be an alternative for those not ‘of the family’…
If hypocrisy were dollar bills they’d be so stinking rich…
Oh, the first thing that I said to me birth mom was ‘Hi. Long time, no see.’ She just about passed out…
But see, you have to figure in their ‘current world view’.
They profess to believe that war should be a ‘last resort’ and yet many/most of them supported and voted for the re-election of a man that used war as a second resort after the truth failed to excite enough people into the attack of Iraq.
I would recommend that abortion be a ‘last resort’ and that it still be available. The anti-choicers want to remove conscious choice in the matter. You are pregnant so you must deliver the fetus. I’ve even heard some of the more ‘out there’ folks talking about jailing women who spontaneously abort because they must have done something wrong.
On the flip side of this is a woman that I worked with who had relatives who were assured that they had a 75% chance of having a child that wouldn’t live to see their first birthday. Approximately 25% chance of a stillborn and 50% chance of a child that would die before it’s first birthday and a 25% chance that it would live to one but would still have health issues and could pass this condition on to their children.
They were ‘of the family’ to use a euphemism from Star Trek (children of Landru) and were heavy fundie and were under the ‘go forth and prosper’ which always seems to mean procreate with abandon.
Every child they had died. Every time that happened, they sued the OB and their doctor of the moment. Every time they ‘won’ their case.
Yes, blame it on the doctor. Why? Because one didn’t abort them when they were young. Oh but these self-righteous turds wouldn’t adopt someone elses kid. Oh the horrors of not having the product of your own loins screaming and puking all over your furniture.
I just had so many problems with their decisions and lack of anything even remotely related at some galactic distance to ‘common sense’.
If I was her doctor, I’d have sterilized her when I had the chance. She has enough sense to know where the penis goes but the rest of life just didn’t sink in. Hell sterilize both of them.
Frivolous lawsuits? Doctors being sued out of practice? Holy shit people… And so much for adoption being ‘an alternative to abortion’. Must be an alternative for those not ‘of the family’…
If hypocrisy were dollar bills they’d be so stinking rich…
Oh, the first thing that I said to me birth mom was ‘Hi. Long time, no see.’ She just about passed out…
But see, you have to figure in their ‘current world view’.
They profess to believe that war should be a ‘last resort’ and yet many/most of them supported and voted for the re-election of a man that used war as a second resort after the truth failed to excite enough people into the attack of Iraq.
I would recommend that abortion be a ‘last resort’ and that it still be available. The anti-choicers want to remove conscious choice in the matter. You are pregnant so you must deliver the fetus. I’ve even heard some of the more ‘out there’ folks talking about jailing women who spontaneously abort because they must have done something wrong.
On the flip side of this is a woman that I worked with who had relatives who were assured that they had a 75% chance of having a child that wouldn’t live to see their first birthday. Approximately 25% chance of a stillborn and 50% chance of a child that would die before it’s first birthday and a 25% chance that it would live to one but would still have health issues and could pass this condition on to their children.
They were ‘of the family’ to use a euphemism from Star Trek (children of Landru) and were heavy fundie and were under the ‘go forth and prosper’ which always seems to mean procreate with abandon.
Every child they had died. Every time that happened, they sued the OB and their doctor of the moment. Every time they ‘won’ their case.
Yes, blame it on the doctor. Why? Because one didn’t abort them when they were young. Oh but these self-righteous turds wouldn’t adopt someone elses kid. Oh the horrors of not having the product of your own loins screaming and puking all over your furniture.
I just had so many problems with their decisions and lack of anything even remotely related at some galactic distance to ‘common sense’.
If I was her doctor, I’d have sterilized her when I had the chance. She has enough sense to know where the penis goes but the rest of life just didn’t sink in. Hell sterilize both of them.
Frivolous lawsuits? Doctors being sued out of practice? Holy shit people… And so much for adoption being ‘an alternative to abortion’. Must be an alternative for those not ‘of the family’…
If hypocrisy were dollar bills they’d be so stinking rich…
Oh, the first thing that I said to me birth mom was ‘Hi. Long time, no see.’ She just about passed out…
But see, you have to figure in their ‘current world view’.
They profess to believe that war should be a ‘last resort’ and yet many/most of them supported and voted for the re-election of a man that used war as a second resort after the truth failed to excite enough people into the attack of Iraq.
I would recommend that abortion be a ‘last resort’ and that it still be available. The anti-choicers want to remove conscious choice in the matter. You are pregnant so you must deliver the fetus. I’ve even heard some of the more ‘out there’ folks talking about jailing women who spontaneously abort because they must have done something wrong.
On the flip side of this is a woman that I worked with who had relatives who were assured that they had a 75% chance of having a child that wouldn’t live to see their first birthday. Approximately 25% chance of a stillborn and 50% chance of a child that would die before it’s first birthday and a 25% chance that it would live to one but would still have health issues and could pass this condition on to their children.
They were ‘of the family’ to use a euphemism from Star Trek (children of Landru) and were heavy fundie and were under the ‘go forth and prosper’ which always seems to mean procreate with abandon.
Every child they had died. Every time that happened, they sued the OB and their doctor of the moment. Every time they ‘won’ their case.
Yes, blame it on the doctor. Why? Because one didn’t abort them when they were young. Oh but these self-righteous turds wouldn’t adopt someone elses kid. Oh the horrors of not having the product of your own loins screaming and puking all over your furniture.
I just had so many problems with their decisions and lack of anything even remotely related at some galactic distance to ‘common sense’.
If I was her doctor, I’d have sterilized her when I had the chance. She has enough sense to know where the penis goes but the rest of life just didn’t sink in. Hell sterilize both of them.
Frivolous lawsuits? Doctors being sued out of practice? Holy shit people… And so much for adoption being ‘an alternative to abortion’. Must be an alternative for those not ‘of the family’…
If hypocrisy were dollar bills they’d be so stinking rich…
Oh, the first thing that I said to me birth mom was ‘Hi. Long time, no see.’ She just about passed out…
But see, you have to figure in their ‘current world view’.
They profess to believe that war should be a ‘last resort’ and yet many/most of them supported and voted for the re-election of a man that used war as a second resort after the truth failed to excite enough people into the attack of Iraq.
I would recommend that abortion be a ‘last resort’ and that it still be available. The anti-choicers want to remove conscious choice in the matter. You are pregnant so you must deliver the fetus. I’ve even heard some of the more ‘out there’ folks talking about jailing women who spontaneously abort because they must have done something wrong.
On the flip side of this is a woman that I worked with who had relatives who were assured that they had a 75% chance of having a child that wouldn’t live to see their first birthday. Approximately 25% chance of a stillborn and 50% chance of a child that would die before it’s first birthday and a 25% chance that it would live to one but would still have health issues and could pass this condition on to their children.
They were ‘of the family’ to use a euphemism from Star Trek (children of Landru) and were heavy fundie and were under the ‘go forth and prosper’ which always seems to mean procreate with abandon.
Every child they had died. Every time that happened, they sued the OB and their doctor of the moment. Every time they ‘won’ their case.
Yes, blame it on the doctor. Why? Because one didn’t abort them when they were young. Oh but these self-righteous turds wouldn’t adopt someone elses kid. Oh the horrors of not having the product of your own loins screaming and puking all over your furniture.
I just had so many problems with their decisions and lack of anything even remotely related at some galactic distance to ‘common sense’.
If I was her doctor, I’d have sterilized her when I had the chance. She has enough sense to know where the penis goes but the rest of life just didn’t sink in. Hell sterilize both of them.
Frivolous lawsuits? Doctors being sued out of practice? Holy shit people… And so much for adoption being ‘an alternative to abortion’. Must be an alternative for those not ‘of the family’…
If hypocrisy were dollar bills they’d be so stinking rich…
Oh, the first thing that I said to me birth mom was ‘Hi. Long time, no see.’ She just about passed out from laughing so hard…
I can’t leave a comment anymore? This is a test…
But see, you have to figure in their ‘current world view’.
They profess to believe that war should be a ‘last resort’ and yet many/most of them supported and voted for the re-election of a man that used war as a second resort after the truth failed to excite enough people into the attack of Iraq.
I would recommend that abortion be a ‘last resort’ and that it still be available. The anti-choicers want to remove conscious choice in the matter. You are pregnant so you must deliver the fetus. I’ve even heard some of the more ‘out there’ folks talking about jailing women who spontaneously abort because they must have done something wrong.
On the flip side of this is a woman that I worked with who had relatives who were assured that they had a 75% chance of having a child that wouldn’t live to see their first birthday. Approximately 25% chance of a stillborn and 50% chance of a child that would die before it’s first birthday and a 25% chance that it would live to one but would still have health issues and could pass this condition on to their children.
They were ‘of the family’ to use a euphemism from Star Trek (children of Landru) and were heavy fundie and were under the ‘go forth and prosper’ which always seems to mean procreate with abandon.
Every child they had died. Every time that happened, they sued the OB and their doctor of the moment. Every time they ‘won’ their case.
Yes, blame it on the doctor. Why? Because one didn’t abort them when they were young. Oh but these self-righteous turds wouldn’t adopt someone else’s kid. Oh the horrors of not having the product of your own loins screaming and puking all over your furniture.
I just had so many problems with their decisions and lack of anything even remotely related at some galactic distance to ‘common sense’.
If I was her doctor, I’d have sterilized her when I had the chance. She has enough sense to know where the penis goes but the rest of life just didn’t sink in. Hell sterilize both of them.
Frivolous lawsuits? Doctors being sued out of practice? Holy shit people… And so much for adoption being ‘an alternative to abortion’. Must be an alternative for those not ‘of the family’…
If hypocrisy were dollar bills they’d be so stinking rich…
Oh, the first thing that I said to me birth mom was ‘Hi. Long time, no see.’ She just about passed out from laughing so hard…
Huh. That worked. Nothing else does…
I agree with UltraMagnus — there’s a lot of value in knowing that your mother had the choice to have an abortion, and chose to have you.
Although I was conceived before Roe vs. Wade, my mother lived in New York State and my grandparents had lots of friends in the community, so when she became pregnant at the age of 18 they offered her the chance to get an abortion. She said no way, because she *wanted* me. If she had never been offered the choice of abortion, I would not know how passionately she wanted me.
Her life was pretty miserable because she was adopted, and her adoptive family, my grandparents, loved her and doted on her but she never felt she *belonged* to them or that they understood her, and she had a lot of angst about feeling worthless because her birth mother didn’t want her. My grandparents did everything possible to make my mother feel safe, loved, and wanted, but just knowing she was adopted hurt her self esteem terribly.
Also, she had in fact had an abortion when she was 14, after being raped. If not for *that* abortion, neither I nor my two brothers would be here. So if you’re going to whine about “what if you were aborted?” it makes just as much sense to say “what if your mom couldn’t have aborted the child she didn’t want, before she had you, the child she did? would you even exist then?” Obviously abortion can cause people to exist just as much as it can cause them not to exist, due to the fact that WOMEN WHO GET ABORTIONS LATER ON MAY GET PREGNANT WITH WANTED CHILDREN. God, I’d like to tattoo that on some fundie foreheads.
*Sigh*
As I’ve mentioned before, I already feel guilty enough that my mother chose to have me instead of getting treatment for the cancer that eventually killed her when I was seven. I can’t even imagine the enormous burden of guilt I would have to carry around if she hadn’t even been offered the option and been forced to shorten her own life by carrying me to term.
You assume she’s a person, which is a few light-years ahead of that billboard. Apparently anti-choicers think that the woman is merely sort of a holding tank for God’s handiwork. (I guess it’s easier to think of it that way, so one needn’t be reminded that icky, icky sex was involved.)
Auguste, I can’t tell you how you should feel about being adopted - how could anyone presume to say that?
But I know several women who gave up their babies for adoption. All of them did it because they could not economically/emotionally cope, and because this was at a time - we’re talking 40 or more years ago - where the pressure was strongly on low-income women in the UK who could not cope and turned to social services, to hand over their child/ren to be adopted, rather than receive help taking care of them.
Some women may put the child out of their minds, knowing the odds were against their ever meeting again. But none of the women I knew personally did that. They remembered and hoped and wanted a contact again with their children.
This article:
http://health.msn.com/health-topics/breast-cancer/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100199754>1=31024
feeds nicely into this discussion, I think.
Is a male doctor worse for a woman or are male doctors getting a bad rap for being, male.
The point this totally misses is that there are bad doctors that are both male and female. A woman going out of her way to shun male doctors because they are male totally ignores that fact.
Would I have a hard time going to a female urologist? I’m sure that will be a question thrown into this. Well, if she looked like Cathy Ireland, oddly, yes but in the end if she could diagnose my problem and help me then I’d be just as grateful. Women are interested in the male equipment just as much as a male would have an interest in the female equipment. (Trying to deflate the ‘he doesn’t care because he’s a he and has no interest or compassion argument)
And sorry for the multiple posts. Very sorry…
My sons attended daycare with twin girls who lost their mother to malignant melanoma when they were 6 months old.
I can’t imagine how much harder it would have been for their father to face his single-parent situation had his late wife not had the choice to abort them at 4 months. (She gave birth 6 weeks early so she could start treatment - too late though).
These girls would never have to wear the mantle of “mother killers” that they might consciously or unconsciously have to if abortion were illegal. Their mother made the (possibly fatal) decision to bear them with a full plate of choices, rather than under duress. Their existance can never be blamed for their mother’s demise.
In this particular case, there were no older siblings to look after. Since the fundies never worry about the “already born” children, I wonder if they ever consider the damage to families when a mother dies because of a completed pregnancy? Don’t those children “need a mother” too?
“I wonder if they ever consider the damage to families when a mother dies because of a completed pregnancy? Don’t those children “need a mother” too?”
I thought in wingnutlandia, women were just like replaceable gears in a machine. If one “wears out”, you just get another…
A woman going out of her way to shun male doctors because they are male totally ignores that fact.
Many women who “shun” male doctors do so because they feel more comfortable with a female doctor.
A big part of whether you have a good experience in the world of Western medicine is whether you feel comfortable with your doctor.
“I wonder if they ever consider the damage to families when a mother dies because of a completed pregnancy? Don’t those children “need a mother” too?”
Also, if the mother and the child would BOTH die from not having an abortion done, many of them say it’s cool that two people die instead of one. And that is why we must keep Bobby Jindal away from the White House once Obama wins, and try to get him out of the governor’s mansion in ‘11 before he can put together any regressive abortion laws in LA (as if the ones Blanco put forth weren’t bad enough.) I know Blackwell also supports that degree of an abortion ban.
It’s interesting that Jindal supports emergency contraception; he says it’s because he doesn’t define it as abortion as some do (btw, he has the biology background to judge this,) but I’d like to think it’s because he knows that his classmates at Brown and Oxford, and possibly himself/his wife/etc. would have had their lives derailed without contraception.
I wonder if they ever consider the damage to families when a mother dies because of a completed pregnancy? Don’t those children “need a mother” too?
no no, they just need a female–any will do. Only Teh Fetuseses are Teh Irreplaceable Snowflakes. Unless they’re girl fetuses. Natch.
I think there is also a misconception (as it were) among fundies that abortions are only done when some wonton jezebel, without husband and very young, gets knocked up. They don’t seem to want to think about those women who have kids and husbands and still abort because they cannot personally, maritally, or financially deal with another child.
Well, I have had some sex that was about as erotic as a pap smear. Is that what she meant?