But oh no! Protesters surround the clinic, holding up signs that say things like "Kill your fetus!" and "Pregnancy is wrong!" They ambush you as you try to get through the door to see your doctor. One of them hands you a pamphlet that reads:
You have choices. Come to our abortion palace and we'll take that fetus right out of you so you can continue fucking strangers and having fun!!!!!
So far, a pretty normal maternity clinic experience; you think nothing of it. These people are a hassle, but they can't hurt you.
Until one of them comes at you with a baseball bat. "Beat it out of her!" someone screams. You run to the safety of the clinic waiting room, where they can't touch you.
Two weeks later, police come to your door. "I'm sorry, ma'am, you're going to have to come with us."
"Why?" you ask.
"According to our sources, you're thirty-two weeks pregnant. That is a criminal act."
"Criminal?" You are shocked.
"Yes, criminal. Congress just passed a law outlawing pregnancy."
That is what pro-abortion is, you fucking right-wing morons. What I am is pro-choice.
http://content8.flixster.com/photo/12/50/25/12502538_gal.jpg
ReplyDeletesee, that's the kind of thing that really makes you think.
ReplyDeleteI would say that defending the lawful right for a woman to have an abortion in the event of traumatic events such as rape, incest or if the mother's life is in danger if she carries to term, or the baby will be born with life threatening or quality of life ending problems, that would be pro-choice. I would say a woman that abuses that choice as a means of birth control is pro-abortion. I definitely don't agree with aggressive "trolling" of abortion clinics but I don't see the harm in one or two councilors being outside and there to talk to a girl going in to make that decision if they are solicited by the girl. It must be realized that SO many abortions are done on girls who make that decision out of unabated fear. Fear of parental reaction, fear of lack of paternal support, etc. That's why I'm for the parents of any girl under the age of 18 being notified and consulted with IN HOUSE before an abortion is carried out. I think it should also be that the doctor performing the abortion, by law, be forced to inform the lady and or the parents of the alternatives and especially the medical risks and potential psychological risk involved with having the procedure.
ReplyDeleteI think the problem and the need for that is due to many doctors being completely insensitive to the girl and they see dollar signs each time a girl walks into the office as opposed to having compassion and concern as to why he will be doing the procedure.
Ellie, you have made a great presentation of the distinction between pro-abortion and pro-choice.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, your closing destroys its effectiveness. Please consider, do you want to help pro-life people understand your position, or do you want to score points off of them? Because calling them "fucking right-wing morons" will not drive the point home, it will instead cause them to become defensive. The part of their brains that could process your point rationally and maybe even update their opinions will shut down, and they will be left with the feeling of having been punched in the gut, and the instinctive need to strike back.
I don't think that is what you want. I think you really want them to understand you, but maybe you also felt threatened, because they are trying to pass laws to control you. And so you had to lash out at those you felt threatened by. And I hope that, if you think explicitly about it, you will decide that you care enough about being understood, about being effective in promoting your point, that you should be the bigger person and avoid lashing out. I am asking you in particular to make this effort because I think you have something important to say, and I don't want your point to be lost.
Adam, though I do agree with your idea that a girl should consult with a councilor and be informed of the medical and psychological risks of abortion before having one, I disagree that her parents should legally need to be informed. Some girls have very good reasons for not wanting to go to their parents about their pregnancy. In 2005, Tunisia Archie murdered her 12 year old daughter, Jasmine, by forcing bleach down her throat after learning that she had lost her virginity. In 1999, Mehmet Goren, a devout Muslim living in the United Kingdom, killed his 15 year old daughter, Tulay, who was suspected of being pregnant in order to "preserve her honor." Sometimes a girls' "unabated fear... of parental reaction" is in fact legitimate and could, in some rare cases, save their lives. Of course the two girls mentioned previously probably shouldn't have been having sex at the ages of 12 and 15, if they even WERE as the reasons behind their murders can not be proved since signs of sexual activity could not be found on Jasmine's body and Tulay's body was never found, sexual activity at a young age does not make you a bad person. Maybe they didn't receive enough attention at home and were just looking for it wherever they could get it. And it should be remembered that not everyone who gets an abortion is abusing the privileged. Even correctly used, most forms of birth control are only effective 98% of the time. I also believe that extreme poverty or having a mother still in high school could have extreme effects on a baby's "quality of life". Finally, very few doctor fit into the category of "completely insensitive" and it's ideas like that that can help lead to murders such as that of Dr. George Tiller. It should also not be assumed that all abortion doctors are male.
ReplyDelete@Adam: You have made many points, and I am going to respond to all of them. However, it is very late at night, so I'm not sure how coherent I'll be.
ReplyDelete1. Studies have found that most girls actually do tell their parents when they get abortions, whether parental notification is required or not; the ones who don't tell their parents are the ones who can't - girls whose parents might beat them for getting pregnant, girls whose fathers were the ones to impregnate them in the first place, etc. Parental notification laws encourage terrified girls to perform abortions on themselves to avoid telling their parents.
2. Women don't abuse the right to abortions (whatever that means). Nobody has a tea party with her friends and says, "You know what would be fun, guys? If we all got pregnant so we could get abortions together. Then we can get pedicures!" Women get abortions because they have to - for financial reasons, for their own safety, or for any of the reasons you mentioned.
3. You seem to discount fear as a legitimate reason to get an abortion. I don't quite understand why. After all, having a child is a big deal. It takes a major toll on your body, and afterwards, you're responsible for another human being. Too many people think that having a child is like having a dog that learns to talk, and those people are not prepared for the 24-7 stress of a baby. Because the stress is twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. You never stop being a parent. There are no breaks. And our society does not have structures in place that support parents. I'd say a woman has every right to be afraid when she finds out she's pregnant.
4. That being said, women don't suddenly become unable to make decisions when they get pregnant. Fear doesn't blind them to reality. They're not helpless children who have abortions "done on" them. They choose to get abortions.
5. The harm in having unlicensed "counselors" with no background in medicine or therapy hanging around outside abortion clinics is that they are not impartial. A real counselor would present the pros and cons to all options and trust that a woman is intelligent enough to make her own choices with actual, unbiased information. For example, they might mention the medical and psychological risks of having an abortion as well as the medical and psychological risks of giving birth and then having a child. (Side note: I am skeptical of anyone who claims to know about the "psychological risks" of having an abortion. If you can show me some unbiased evidence of long-term psychological effects that can unequivocally be linked to having an abortion, I'd like to see it.)
6. I don't think abortion clinics are really raking in the big bucks. 90% of Planned Parenthood's clients are not there to get abortions, but to get gyno exams, birth control, etc. Abortion providers are not rolling around in money they made from tricking naive little girls into getting abortions. Most abortion providers also perform other women's health services, so their income is not entirely abortion-derived.
I hope I have been courteous. I'm not trying to attack you, just show you my perspective.
@ JGWeissman: You may be right. I'll consult with my fellow Naked Pics of Hot Celebs bloggers and see what they think.
ReplyDeleteI don't like to read too much on a computer monitor but you this topic and then the posts. They are great. I look forward to the next post. It's hard to find commonsense now-a-days.
ReplyDeleteFrom a 34yr old woman, who has the abortion choice.
Thank You
Have you seen the photographs? Have you smelled the dumpsters filled with babies? Pro-choice? Pro-abortion? These are just word games. When you see a baby hanging out of a woman's vagina, thrashing around as the doctor drains his life, the lines between pro "choice" and pro "abortion" blur and mean nothing.
ReplyDeleteEllie,
ReplyDeleteThough I share the "right wing moron" sentiment you express in your closing, I agree with JGWeissman. I think you write one of the most compelling critiques of pro-life attitudes and tactics I have read - ever. Why discredit yourself with the cheap shot? Why alienate possibly tens of thousands of people who are struggling to decide how they feel about this difficult and divisive issue? You are perhaps one of a handful of people who actually have the power to make a difference. That the power is vested in you with an ability to present a fresh, relevant perspective by conceiving and skillfully articulating such a scenario is remarkable. That you would squander that power - and this opportunity - is disheartening. Weigh what you gain with the comment against what is lost. I sincerely hope you will consider this one small, but major revision. I look forward to more of your voice amidst the noise. Good luck.
@Anonymous 1:49 - I'm pretty sure you're joking, but just in case you're not: No, I haven't seen the photographs. Send 'em over!
ReplyDeleteWhy should we be concerned with building bridges for morons whose very methodology relies upon the systematic alienation of pretty much anything with a thinking brain? Because the morons have managed to hijack the values that we claim as Americans and turn them into instruments of fear and hate, all the while masquerading under a banner of righteousness? This is America, we don't negotiate with terrorists, right?
ReplyDeleteWe are not politicians, we don't have to pander to repressive ideologies espoused by the morally decrepit and we don't have to live our lives trying to talk sense to people who are only out to convert us. It is our responsibility to express our intolerance of the morons and to point out the flaws in their logic and the holes in their evidence every chance we get.
You are so right, Ellie. People are so ignorant it looks like they got a degree in it.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous:
ReplyDeleteAHAHAHA what? Dumpsters filled with babies? That's a joke, right?
your rhetoric sucks. to anyone who is anti-abortion would think these exact words, "you just flipped the goddamn scenario." right? i mean, how "creative."
ReplyDeletei do believe in pro-choice. however, when stating an argument you need to refute all the possibilities that would make the opposing views look like its less logical than yours. if i were anti-abortion, i'd simply yell out the same anti-abortion shit they always repeat. ya know? your essay simply mocks the ways of anti-abortionists instead of making an effective argument.
to me, probably not to a lot of people though...your rhetoric isn't that good.
good job for tryin' though ;)
lol way to use a completely irrelevant and intellectually dishonest argument! I wish you were really pro-abortion so I wouldn't have to defend morons like you to the other side.
ReplyDeleteMy argument in this post is that the term "pro-abortion," which right-wing commentators use to mean "pro-choice," does *not* mean the same thing as "pro-choice." Although I am pro-choice, this post is not one that defends the right to an abortion. This post is entirely about the rhetoric.
ReplyDeleteYou've. Missed. The. Point. I doubt this is unusual for you.
@ anonymous 12:41am:
ReplyDeletethree words: reading comprehension course.
My sentiments exactly! But right wing fucking morons didn't get where they are with a whole lot of common sense - if any - so I doubt they'll have enough to get the point here. Nice try though! Loved it.
ReplyDeleteYour argument isn't for abortion rights, it's against the Christian fundamentalist anti abortion movement. They're hypocrites, every person they judge for their abortion is a sin that is just as dark in G-d's eyes as the abortion itself.
ReplyDeleteWith that said, I'm an agnostic and I'm against abortion on moral grounds. When the zygote is made it's biological path is set, it has a complete set of chromosomes, and under normal circumstances it will grow into a person. The tricky part here is defining exactly what a person is, I would argue that the fetus is not a person, it is a human, but not a person, and by the same token I would make the same argument for a baby and for even a severely retarded person.
At a minimum I would say to be a person one must be conscious of one's self, something that higher animals realize. A baby's clear inability to be aware of even its own existence disqualifies it from being a person; if you want to qualify a baby as a person then you must also be willing to qualify a dog or a monkey as a person and give onto them the same rights a baby is given. But wait, the baby is conscious of somethings, it's awake, and it will become a person. Well a zygote at some point will become a person as well and I'd argue that it gains some form of awareness in the womb, its brain certainly functions. Irregardless, the consciousness argument is flawed because a sleeping baby isn't conscious yet it is not ok to kill it. Does the time frame perhaps dictate that the fetus that will become conscious is worth less than the baby that will become conscious more quickly?
Is the fetus not worth as much because it is not quite as developed? Where exactly do we draw the imaginary line? At what point exactly is it ok to cut a life short of all of its potential? At what point does a woman's temporary convenience outweigh all of the happiness that the human life can experience? With a few notable exceptions I can't see that there is any justification for destroying the sum of a human life and all of its experiences for the sake of easiness.
Right, but it's still a child. Once you establish that you have the choice to kill it at one stage of development, you've already established yourself as someone who supports the choice to murder a child. At that point all you're doing is arguing over it's age.
ReplyDeleteUnless, you know, you think that a species magically changes when a babies head slides on out of the birth canal.