Saturday, February 20, 2010

The Anti-Choice Ideal

Many antis see abortion as a black and white issue. They think that, if we criminalize abortion, it will have no negative consequences on society. The slutty, evil little baby killers will go to jail, which will discourage women from having abortions. Everything works out just perfectly, right?

Wrong.

Criminalizing abortion will do nothing but lead to the invasion of women's privacy and to a takeover of their liberties. If you criminalize abortion, you make every woman who has a miscarriage a suspect of murder. After all, if a woman is pregnant and later miscarries, how do you know if she really miscarried naturally? What if she intentionally induced the abortion? What if she smoked? What if she drank alcohol? What if she took drugs? What if she rode a roller coaster? What if she intentionally fell down the stairs? How will we figure out if she did any of these things? Should we just lock all pregnant women in special institutions that watch over their each and every move so we'll know if she committed "murder"? Are anti-choicers willing to take away women's right to privacy in order to advance their agenda? My guess is yes.

A Utah bill that criminalizes miscarriage was passed recently. This brings us back to my prior questions. How do we know if it was a spontaneous abortion or an induced abortion? How do we know that she intentionally fell down the stairs? Will we start investigating every person who has a miscarriage? How far, exactly, are antis willing to go in order to give fertilized eggs special rights?

If you bring this up when engaging an anti, they're likely to tell you that you're just being paranoid. The sad truth is that this isn't just paranoia. It's not even a guess as to what is going to happen. It's happened already. This is what happens when we make abortion a punishable crime. Pregnant people, even those who want their pregnancies, become suspects. This is why I "Trust Women".

The criminalization of miscarriages ties into the "personhood" issue. The anti-choice attempt to grant "personhood" to fertilized eggs is nothing more than a distraction from the fact that women are persons. When you grant personhood to the fetus, you begin to strip away female personhood. Dr. Hern makes excellent points in this article about fetal personhood.

Does it matter that a woman may spontaneously abort (“miscarry”) a pregnancy before she is even aware of it? Does it matter that this may happen in at least 75 percent of all conceptions? What about a spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) that happens when the woman is aware of the pregnancy? This happens in about 10-15 percent of all known pregnancies. Is the spontaneously aborted embryo a person? What if the woman smokes or drinks or takes drugs or rides the roller-coaster or hangs out with weird people? Is she guilty of homicide if she has a miscarriage because some or all of these activities are known or thought by some to cause damage to the embryo or cause a miscarriage? Who will document this damaging behavior, and who decides what is damaging?


Anti-choice attempts to take away women's basic liberties are real, and we must expose this to the public. Women being jailed for falling down stairs and the senate criminalizing miscarriage are two very small glimpses into what the future will look like if we let the anti-choicers win. For the sake of your sisters, aunt, best friend, cousins, and even for the sake of anti-choice women, we have to fight against this.

God bless all of you!

16 comments:

  1. You're talking about people who believe dying is a small price to pay to protect the "rights" of a fetus. Strapping pregnant women to a bed in an institution, only letting them up for a supervised pee, is not above them. Unless some wayward anti who stumbles on this blog wants to prove me wrong.

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  2. You need a lesson in biology. During fertilization, the egg becomes an embryo. The term egg is better suited for the breakfast table. Since you're silly enough to worry about every miscarriage being investigated (a doctor's always involved and it's their job to report any crime committed), then I guess no one should get married now because when a husband or wife dies unexpectedly, the surviving spouse may be questioned about the circumstances. Or better yet, let's abort all children before they're born then the parents will never be questioned when their child dies suddenly. Or hey, how about this: From now on, no one should ever have anything to do with anyone else in case one of their friends, colleagues, co-workers, etc., dies unexpectedly because of possible questioning by the police. You're hysterics are hysterical.

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  3. ~ A doctor's always involved and it's their job to report any crime committed ~
    Scott, you're sadly misinformed or uneducated. Do you have any idea the number of women in this country alone that go through pregnancy without a doctor's involvement? Paying attention to the Healthcare crisis at all? As to whether it's a job for a doctor to report, many will disagree with you. See the issue of doctors refusing to prescribe birth control. It's hardly hysterics to know that when people are given absolute power they absolutely abuse it. Further, grade school biology failed you. During fertilization the EGG, known also as Ovum--(See GREEK LANGUAGE!) once fertilized becomes a zygote. Not a baby! Ever claimed a tax deducation on a zygote? Nope, didn't think so. Cells with the POTENTIAL for life, doesn't mean a baby. As the article clearly explains, with 70% of all conceptions resulting in miscarriage, ALL cells don't magically morph into anything. Back to your biology class...this means every zygote doesn't turn into a baby, every cyst doesn't turn into cancerous tumor and every kid in a classroom doesn't turn into a genius. The difference lies in the word POTENTIAL! Pay attention!

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  4. If a woman starts bleeding during her pregnancy, she goes to the doctor. Simple as that. If there is evidence she intentionally caused the miscarriage, the doctor should report it if he's an ethical doctor.

    You're right about people being given absolute power and absolutely abusing it. Planned Parenthood is a perfect example.

    During fertilization there is an explosion of LIFE at that very moment and there are 23 + 23 chromosomes that combine to create the DNA that determines the characteristics of the human being that was just created. Height, hair color, eye color, facial characteristics, etc., are all determined at that very moment. My biology is just fine.

    Ever claimed a deduction on a 9-month gestation unborn baby? Nope, didn't think so. So what?

    At fertilization there definitely is life otherwise no human intervention would be required to stop it from continuing to develop and since both participants in the fertilization are human, the new life is also human. Elementary biology.

    A newborn has the POTENTIAL to become an adult. This means every newborn doesn't turn into an adult. Again, so what? That means they should be killed out of "convenience?" Of course not.

    If women don't want to become pregnant, are they too ignorant to know how that happens or what?

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  5. I want to amend my second to last paragraph to read, "A newborn has the POTENTIAL to become and adult. So that means unborn children should be killed out of convenience because they haven't lived up to their potential yet? Of course not."

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  6. No one is having abortions out of convenience. There is absolutely nothing convenient about abortion. Saying that abortion is done out of "convenience" implies that pregnancy is a mere "inconvenience". It's not. It's life changing. If antis want to prove that they don't hate women, they should really stop trivializing their experiences.

    It doesn't matter if the fetus is aive, human, or whatever. No one has the right to use another person's body against his or her will, and fetuses should not have that right, either. This isn't a question of whether or not fetuses are alive/human beings, it's a quesiton of whether or not women deserve liberty. Pro-Choice says yes, anti-choice says no.

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  7. "Height, hair color, eye color, facial characteristics, etc., are all determined at that very moment. My biology is just fine."

    No, Scott. Your biology isn't just fine. Physical characteristics have a basis in biology, but environmental factors can change those physical characteristics. Things can happen in utero that can change the fetus' physical characteristics. Things can happen early in the child's life that changes her or his physical characteristics.

    Secondly, doctors don't have an obligation to report all illegal behavior. Doctors are bound by confidentiality agreements to keep all patient information quiet, unless their patient threatens to hurt themselves or someone else, or if the patient reports past or present child abuse. If they reveal any information without the patient's permission or a court order, even if it's about criminal behavior, it's the doctor who can get in deep legal and professional trouble, not the patient.

    So, Scott, I guess biology and ethics aren't your strong suits. Why do you keep talking about them?

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  8. ProChoiceGal: "This isn't a question of whether or not fetuses are alive/human beings, it's a quesiton of whether or not women deserve liberty."

    Scott: So women deserve liberty after their child is born, too?

    FEMily, my biology and ethics are just fine, thank you. Environmental and other factors can change a persons looks after their born as well. So what?

    So, Femily, according to you, since you're so ethical, when should a woman be able to have an abortion? Within the first month, first three months, first six months, all the way to nine months, or what?

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  9. You keep saying "So what?" whenever someone points out to you that you're wrong. That's all I'm doing. You don't know what you're talking about. The only point I'm making is that you're misinformed. I'm just correcting you so that you don't make the mistake again.

    A slew of anti-choicers have asked me when I think a woman should be able to have an abortion. That's because they come from a place where women need to be bridled. They're also coming from a place where everyone believes they should have a certain amount of control over their peers' lives. I don't come from that place. I come from a place where women make their own decisions based on what's best for her and hers and deal with the consequences themselves and with whomever they choose. That place is called Earth. I don't believe there should be any legal restrictions on abortion for any reason, because that would be giving a special right to a fetus that no person has. Whether one is a zygote, an embryo, a fetus, a newborn, an infant, a toddler, a little kid, a tween, an adolescent, an adult, a middle-ager, or a senior, one does not have a right to use a person's body in any way without their permission.

    And if you haven't noticed, laws that limit abortion rights haven't reduced the number of abortions. "Partial-birth" abortion, for example, has only ever been used in extreme emergency circumstances and has accounted for less than 1% of all abortions performed in the United States. That's been true since before 2003, and it remains true to this day. The laws just send a message to the millions of women in this country (including any of the women in your life, Scott): Sometimes, ladies, the government owns your body.

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  10. There are no laws that limit abortion "rights." Name one. (I place "rights" in quotes because no one has the right to an abortion).

    I said "So what" to environmental and other factors possibly changing the attributes of the unborn because that doesn't change the fact that at conception, unless acted upon by outside forces, the newly formed life's characteristics are all determined at that moment, and environmental and other factors can change the characteristics of anyone, born or unborn. So your point is pointless.

    The unborn is a separate human being. The baby is not a part of his mother's body. If he were, he wouldn't be able to live on his own after being born.

    So after a baby is born, he can also affect the mother's body by causing the mother to be exhausted from lack of sleep, and mental problems with post-partum depression, or mental anguish if the child is deformed in some way, or sadness due to her changed body, or a decrease in income if she doesn't go back to work, etc., etc., etc. Not unlike some of the same "problems" she can realize during pregnancy. So in those cases, why shouldn't the mother be legally able to kill her baby after he's born?

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  11. "There are no laws that limit abortion "rights.""

    There are laws in some countries that make it illegal to have an abortion. This limits abortion rights. If you're talking about in the USA, we have parental consent laws, required waiting periods, etc. Anything that limits access to abortion limits abortion rights.

    "The unborn is a separate human being. The baby is not a part of his mother's body. If he were, he wouldn't be able to live on his own after being born."

    I'll go ahead and respond to this one by saying "So what?". It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if the embryo is apart of the woman or not. It still doesn't have the right to use her body against her will.

    A baby (a real baby, not a fetus) can definitely cause a lot of stress on the parents. HOWEVER, if the woman doesn't want the baby and doesn't want to go through parenthood, then she can give the child up for adoption. They baby is not dependent on the parents (yes, it's dependent on it for food, shelter, etc, but I'm talking about physical dependency), and it can be removed from the mother's care immediately if that's what she wants. This doesn't hold true for fetuses. The only way to remove a fetus from the woman/to end her pregnancy immediately is to kill the fetus. Please don't even bother with the "but she can give the fetus up for adoption!" argument. She can't. Fetuses have to be born before they can be given up for adoption.

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  12. PCG and Fem want to rationalize their own abortions. Some of us can see through the blatent self-hatred they have for themselves. They can keep attempting to sound intelligent until they are blue in the face but inherently, every person deep down knows abortion is the murder of a fellow human being. Living in denial is the only thing that allows some adults to live another day. There will come a time when our world will look back on the atrocity of abortion and be SHOCKED that we allowed this to happen(just as most of us do now when we realize that slavery and the holocaust really were acceptable to the majority).

    Give a small child a picture of a fetus and they will tell you what it is ("I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children". . .Quote by a Famous Man)

    When I read sites like this, I really cannot fathom how humans become so evil. There is no other word for what abortion is but evil.

    Hitler legalized everything he did before he did it -- this did not make it right. It just made it legal.

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  13. "PCG and Fem want to rationalize their own abortions."

    I want to rationalize the abortion that I've never had?

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  14. Why get defensive about the abortion you've never had if nothing is inheritantly wrong with abortion? No need to defend what you don't believe is wrong.

    The point is that you admit that a fetus is a living human being and you are making an INTENTIONAL choice to participate first hand in the killing of innocent human beings. And you are SOOO proud of this fact that you've put together this site in honor of YOU, YOU, YOU.

    Pro-lifers - Make sure you ask your health care providers whether they are pro-life as well. Our country can overcome mindsets such as PCG's. I would not wish this future "doctor" on my worst enemy to say nothing of my loved ones.

    Pro-lifers make choices everyday too and you can be assured that if/when you start working in the health field, this site will come back to haunt you. You are putting your shallow value of human life out there for rational humans to view.

    You are also well aware that there are dangerous fanatics who you lump in with True Pro-Life advocates. These dangerous individuals value you in the same way you value the fetus. True Pro-Lifers truly see your humanity, love you and only want you to see the error of your ways. God Bless You PCG.

    Sometimes the Truth hurts, but it can also set you Free.

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  15. I'm not being defensive about the abortion that I've never had. I'm just informing you that I've never had an abortion, and that you're making silly assumptions.

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  16. Sometimes the Truth hurts, but it can also set you Free.

    Silly is as Silly does.

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***PLEASE READ***

Due to constant spam and derailing coming from a few antis, I am now making this blog a "safe place". This does not mean that I won't allow opposing views. It means that I'm not longer going to allow hateful or unrelated/spammy comments. This will continue on until the anti-choice spammers get bored with harassing me and the people who post here, and is especially relevant when it comes to the topic of rape. I hope this doesn't deter any respectful people from commenting. :)