Abortion restrictions violate women’s Freedom of Religion
There’s an arresting passage in Riverdaughter’s post about the abortion restrictions in the healthcare bill:
With anti-abortion measures, women are not just subject to the state, they are forced to recognize a religious presence in their lives whether they have faith or not. Men do not need to recognize any faith. They are allowed complete freedom of conscience.
Riverdaughter goes on to recite the familiar argument that it’s absurd for the government to honor the anti-abortion scruples of conservative Christians while simultaneously forcing the rest of us to pay taxes for war or torture or capital punishment or any number of policies we abhor. I call that a familiar argument because it is; we all know that the fundies and Catholics get special and totally unconstitutional privileges.
But what fascinates me about the paragraph I quoted is the emphasis on the individual woman. Anti-abortion laws essentially force every woman in this country to be a conservative Christian whether she likes it or not. No matter what she personally believes — whether she’s an atheist or a Unitarian or a Jew or a Muslim — she must obey fundamentalist Christian law.
It’s no different than forcing every woman into a sharia court if she wants a divorce, or forcing her to wear a veil.
So: do women in this country have freedom of religion or not?
48 Responses to “Abortion restrictions violate women’s Freedom of Religion”
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Shannon Drury says:
Freedom FROM religion is what I’d appreciate.
December 20th, 2009 at 4:59 pm EST -
riverdaughter says:
The more I think about it, Violet, the angrier I get. I spent my childhood trapped in a fundamentalist christian sect that didn’t treat women as equals. I vowed I would never live like that. Now, some assholes in Congress are going to force religious dogma down my daughters’ throats. I am beyond livid. I’m shaking with anger.
The have a right to be free from religious bondage. -
Aspen says:
I know this isn’t the point, but it still bears mentioning.
Christianity doesn’t inherently prohibit abortion, anyway.
Which is another infuriating thing about these anti-separation of church and state people. They are not even required to prove that their religion actually says what they say it says. Let alone respect freedom of religion (which I realize is the main point). -
Cyn says:
When Hillary was vilified and ridiculed last year for having the balls to run for POTUS, I thought that was the bottom. We’ve now reached a new bottom. How much farther do you think this can go? Where will it stop? I can’t keep up the anger. I want to cry. Will we ever have a fighting chance?
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Northwest rain says:
NIce of you all to wake up — I’ve been blogging about this since 13 Nov. 2009
I wrote:
This bill is NOT religion neutral — and the religious views of an extreme minority are being forced on the majority (women).
http://imaginationpluspolitics.....so-stupid/
Now that the big girls have finally seen the light with their own eyes — I will go off and find other windmills.
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Northwest rain says:
Since my comments don’t post — I must assume that my comments are unwelcome here. Too bad.
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Alison says:
But don’t worry! There won’t be any abortions with 50 million going toward abstinence-only education!
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Grace says:
I know that this may sound terribly cynical, but this victory from the anti-choice forces in Congress may be the only way for the stupid “post-feminists” like Naomi Wolf and other Obama’s groupies, to realize that they were screwed by the Messiah.
For the first time they may start to fight their own goddammed battles instead of taking for granted the rights gained by the same feminist movement they chose to dismiss as being outdated and unnecessary.
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Violet Socks says:
Since my comments don’t post — I must assume that my comments are unwelcome here.
Your comment was in the mod queue.
NIce of you all to wake up…Now that the big girls have finally seen the light with their own eyes — I will go off and find other windmills.
Who are you talking to? It’s my blog, so I guess you’re talking to me. But I’ve never thought this healthcare thing was acceptable, and I’ve been talking about the Stupak disaster since it happened.
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hm says:
Northwest rain, I read your post and good on you for recognizing the religion angle of this fucking bill when Stupak came out first with his clusterfuck. Controlling women and making women impotent using religion comes easy to some of these fundamentalists, no, I am not talking about those crazy Muslim Imams. If I may suggest, update your post with that other fucker Nelson and link a memeorandum article and get it on meme. This needs to go viral.
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m Andrea says:
Perhaps someone over here could explain why my idea doesn’t ever seem to resonate. If I believe in XYZ religion, and that religion happens to require that I have 24 hour access to birth control, abortion, and chocolate, then wouldn’t I be entitled to have my religious views respected in the exact same way as the fundies?
I realize that many women are heavily brainwashed into abiding by patriarchal norms, but in all sincerity my religious views are being severely disrespected. Why not play by their own rules and choke them with it?
Btw, donations to my church are all tax deductable and of course with those deductions the church sponsers an annual spa and chocolate retreat where we contemplate our good fortune to have such a benevolent goddess. If the only objection is “oh golly the fundies won’t approve” I say who freaking cares and full steam ahead. Yes there is a list of boxes to tick off in order to get church status and those are actually all doable.
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Jeff says:
It does open up one avenue of attack. The US Congress barely survived ONE round of townhall meetings before scurrying back to the safety of the Beltway. State legislators, who are STUCK there, can be reduced to a greasy spot quite easily.
Happy hunting!
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Nadai says:
m Andrea, I’ve been joking for years that I need to found the First Reformed Temple of Bast so that I can write off my catfood and vet expenses as religious donations. Maybe all of us should found our own religions. If the Scientologists can get away with it, I don’t see why we can’t.
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lexia says:
m Andrea,
I like it! Once you charter it, I’m going to have a convenient “revelation” that compels me to obey every doctrine put forward by you, The God-Whisperer.
Sort of like the Mormons got from their leader when the liberal pressure to change their racist doctrines got to be too much. Or Catholics got from their leader back in the early 80′s, when he said “Abortion is the worst of crimes” .
But why stop there? Why not have a religion that makes God the image of Woman, women the only template for the human race, the only ones allowed to receive and dispense Divine orders, the only ones allowed to inflict all the consequences of sex but suffer none themselves?
Then we’d have at least one religion like those now protected for men under the freedom for religion laws.
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Branjor says:
Why not have a religion that makes God the image of Woman
The ironic thing is that the Christian God *is* the image of woman. Woman as Creator, by virtue of her power to give birth (and the other forms of creativity women have always exercised in their societies), was embedded deeply in the human psyche long before the malegod came along. This image of Woman as Creator was then vaporized into pure “spirit” and projected onto an image of a male “God” who is now considered to be the most important thing in the universe due to “his” status as Creator.
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Sasha, CA says:
Perhaps someone over here could explain why my idea doesn’t ever seem to resonate.
Because this is only superficially about religion. Note that the “it’s against my religion, so my tax dollars shouldn’t be used to finance it” (or, more accurately, the “it’s against my religion, so nobody’s tax dollars should be used to finance it”) gambit doesn’t work with anything but abortion. There are plenty of Christians who feel very strongly that capital punishment and wars of aggression go against their religion, yet they can’t even prevent their own tax dollars from being spent on these things, let alone everyone else’s. As for the fundies, they’d love to prevent their taxes from benefitting homosexuals or paying for contraception and the HPV vaccine, but they haven’t been too successful in those areas (I realize that they managed to defund birth control providers in some states, but that’s largely because those providers also performed abortions).
The real reason it works with abortion is that many of our supposed allies are sufficiently squicked out by abortion and so eager to find “common ground” with our opposition that they have effectively given away our rights and allowed the forced pregnancy brigade to frame the debate. They have all but conceded that abortion isn’t a medical procedure like any other; no, it’s a “moral issue.” The Hyde Amendment isn’t even controversial anymore, because pro-choice Dems seem to believe that reasonable people can disagree on the “morality” of abortion and that it is therefore unconscionable to use tax dollars to subsidize the abortions of poor women. Note that this argument would never fly when it comes to the government subsidizing HIV/AIDS drugs for poor gays, although nearly all fundies believe very strongly that gays are immoral. Tough! Even if some of the subsidized drugs end up going to people who contracted the virus by deliberately engaging in unprotected sex after the dangers of doing so were well known, this is a health issue, and the fundies will just have to deal. Unfortunately our so-called allies are unwilling to make the same argument with regard to abortion.
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LabRat says:
To play devil’s advocate, the thing about abortion is that it’s not just against someone’s religion, it’s an argument about when personhood begins. If you believe that’s conception or some arbitrary point when certain things happen during development (weirdest I ever heard was lungs), then abortion actually IS murder and no one believes that murder shouldn’t be against the law, nor do they believe that murder is only wrong because it’s against someone’s religion. “Look, clearly it’s not” just isn’t that effective a counterargument to this point of view.
That said, most people against abortion still don’t think of the average fetus as a full person, or else there would be no such thing as being willing to make exceptions for cases of rape and incest; you don’t get to kill somebody because their existence is emotionally traumatic for you unless they’re actually threatening your life.
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Sasha, CA says:
If you believe that’s conception or some arbitrary point when certain things happen during development (weirdest I ever heard was lungs), then abortion actually IS murder
Nope, it would be killing in self-defense (i.e., justifiable homicide), not murder. That fetus is going to cause its host some very serious pain; it may even cost her her life or result in long-term/permanent damage to her body and psyche. There is no question that someone would be justified in using lethal force if a stranger in the street was going to inflict that kind of torment on them against their express wishes. This ought to be no different. Intent doesn’t matter here; you have a right to defend yourself even if the person attacking you doesn’t know what they are doing.
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Sasha, CA says:
One thing I’ve always found very interesting is that the people who are trying to force women to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term are not also trying to force people to donate organs and bone marrow. Surely they realize that people — even innocent babies (I guess they cease being so innocent right after they are born) — will die without those donations. But of course a requirement to donate bone marrow would also affect men — i.e., real people who matter — so we can’t have that. Plus, it’s a painful — albeit very safe — procedure, so it would just be wrong to compel people to donate bone marrow against their will, even if others will definitely die without those donations. Women, on the other hand, should be forced to accept far greater pain, not to mention the risk of losing their life or health, to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term. Hmm . . .
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LabRat says:
This ought to be no different.
But it is. Pregnancy isn’t a clear-cut case of harm; it’s a natural biological process with a set conclusion of perpetuating the species, and whether we volunteered or not, women are the half of that species that gets to act out the placental mammal role. Thanks to the wonders of birth control, far more women who get pregnant want to be than not, and for that majority the condition is a joyous one. Equating a pregnancy to an assault by a stranger- especially given that the pregnancy itself resulted from an act of the woman and someone who is almost certainly no stranger- comes off as a rhetorical dodge.
Don’t get me wrong, I believe abortion should never, ever be illegal, partly because I DO think the right of the woman not to be forced through a potentially dangerous and potentially traumatic condition trumps, and partly because I think the issue is so morally tangled the blunt ham fist of the law should come nowhere near it. But I do understand the thinking of those who DO believe it to be murder (and aren’t cariacature misogynists, which horrifyingly enough exist), and this argument doesn’t begin to address the root of their opposition.
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Aspen says:
@Labrat
I know you are just playing devil’s advocate. But the issue is still that no one should get to force what they “believe” about when (human person) life begins onto others. I know you aren’t disagreeing with that. But even in the devil’s advocate situation, when it is argued from a supposedly religion-neutral POV, it is still the case that “beliefs”, not facts, are being used to oppose the rights of others who may not share that belief. -
Nina M. says:
I don’t mean to burst any bubbles about the potential of the religion angle, but this was part of the reasoning Justice Blackmun used in Roe.
Roe notes that throughout history, Judeo-Christian thought held that the human soul entered the fetus (thus conferring “personhood”) at quickening (~16 weeks). At present, we’ve got a difference of opinion, with the Vatican and certain Christian factions now saying that ensoulment happens at conception, or very shortly thereafter depending on what position a politician wants to take on banning oral contraception.
Thus, In the absence of empirical, scientific evidence that pinpoints ensoulment, which would indicate when an embryo / fetus should have the civil rights of a person, it must be understood that this is essentially a religious question. The first amendment clearly states that the government must not show partiality in disputes over religious issues – the government is not permitted to “back” one religion over another in a question of theology. Absent a compelling public interest, the government is not permitted to ban pre-viability abortion.
SCOTUS has shat on the first amendment establishment clause ever since by allowing random jackasses to invent public interest pretenses (protecting women and taxpayers through waiting periods, forced lectures, funding bans, onerous regulations, parental notice and consent) (Webster)… until they decided you didn’t need a compelling public interest so long as the restriction was “no biggie” (Casey) and then they dropped that too, and decided that the government could pretty much do anything it wants short of preemptory execution of a woman who is thinking about doing something she might later possibly come to regret (Carhart).
I’m no lawyer, though – maybe I’m remembering this all wrong.
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Unree says:
Pregnancy isn’t a clear-cut case of harm; it’s a natural biological process with a set conclusion of perpetuating the species, and whether we volunteered or not, women are the half of that species that gets to act out the placental mammal role.
You haven’t rebutted the self-defense point. Pregnancy is painful and harmful in the ways that Sasha, CA described. It’s “natural” and “biological” to desire to defend oneself against adversity. Anyone who doesn’t find this pain and harm unwelcome can go right ahead and embrace it.
With all the impediments to abortion that exist, I don’t know how you know that most pregnancies in this age of contraception are wanted. We know that about half of them in the United States are unplanned. Some accidental pregnancies turn out to be desired after the fact, I suppose, but some planned pregnancies turn out to be regretted.
Compulsory bone marrow donation would also have a “set conclusion of perpetuating the species,” as would the elimination of war, but we allow other considerations to override species-perpetuating rules.
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m Andrea says:
They have all but conceded that abortion isn’t a medical procedure like any other; no, it’s a “moral issue.”
Exactly! That’s my point! While this should be a simple concept it does directly challenge and contradict every patriarchal doctrine women have been carefully brainwashed to believe, and so it might make it easier if I first mention something else. Cultural Relativism is the idea that of course no discrimination exists in any particular time or place because the people of that time period and geographical area said everybody is happy with the status quo. That excuse works — until we remember to include ALL the people and ask them what they think about the situation, which amazingly enough includes the folks with second class status.
That is the exact same situation we have here. People are brainwashed into believing that no faith besides that of a patriarchal religion exists, and therefore no other faith needs to be accomodated. People already accept the fact that “faith” needs to be accomodated. They have already agreed to abide by that (invalid) principle. That they are too intellectually lazy to understand it’s invalid is not my problem, they have already agreed to abide by it anyway.
What I am saying, is let’s remind them that another faith exists, and therefore it also needs accommodating. This places them into a corner where they only have two options: they can either recognize that the principle in invalid, in which case there’s zero reason to accomodate the fundie’s wacky religious beliefs; or they have to accomodate mine as well. Mine has copious amounts of chocolate and spa days.
But some feminists would rather listen to the voice which upholds patriarchal religions as the only one which needs accomodating. Women aren’t stupid, but women are literally — not figuratively but literally — indoctrinated into the cult of patriarchy using standard brainwashing techniques which are normally only used against an enemy in times of war. I wrote a recent post on brainwashing, please read it and sorry for the length here.
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m Andrea says:
Each and every objection to abortion rights has been refuted, using logic. If not here, then elsewhere. So their objections have nothing to do with reason, and everything to do with their lizard brain. Which is why I’ve come to believe that this debate needs something more conducive to being recognized by the primordial id.
Religion is close, but something even more knee-jerky would be better.
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Sasha, CA says:
Thanks to the wonders of birth control, far more women who get pregnant want to be than not, and for that majority the condition is a joyous one. Equating a pregnancy to an assault by a stranger- especially given that the pregnancy itself resulted from an act of the woman and someone who is almost certainly no stranger- comes off as a rhetorical dodge.
It doesn’t have to be a stranger. The person attacking you could be your husband or another family member, and legally you’d have the same right to defend yourself. The fact that pregnancy is a joyous occasion for women who want to be pregnant doesn’t change the fact that forcing someone to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term is a horrific, dehumanizing act. I know several women — myself included — who would commit suicide to avoid having to go through with a forced pregnancy. Just like many people willingly accept the pain and risks of organ donation to save a loved one’s life, many women willingly accept the pain and risk of pregnancy and childbirth to bring a baby into the world. That doesn’t make it okay though to force these experiences onto non-consenting people. Everyone seems to get that when it comes to organ or even bone marrow donations, but when it comes to pregnancy, there’s a large a number of people who see no problem with forcing women to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term.
As for those supposedly well-meaning people who really believe that abortion is murder, if someone really believed that (as opposed to, say, being motivated by a desire to punish women for having sex), here’s what they’d do: Instead of trying to make abortion illegal (criminalization has a negligible effect on the number of abortions performed in a country; the only thing it results in is lots of dead and maimed women), they’d focus on promoting comprehensive sex ed and ensuring that contraception is widely available and free. They’d also back research for new, improved birth control methods and they’d work on dismantling hurdles to using contraception (the fear of being viewed as a “slut” if one has condoms ready, so-called “conscience clauses” that allow pharmacists to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions, etc.). The other major thing they’d do is work to drastically expand aid for women with dependent children. A large percentage of women having abortions do so primarily for economic reasons. They simply can’t afford a/another child. If someone really believed that abortion is murder, they’d want to make sure that nobody needs to abort for economic reasons, especially in a country as rich as this one.
Strangely, though, the people who profess to believe that abortion is murder do the exact opposite of the above. They favor criminalization and they oppose sex education, birth control, and everything else that has a proven track record of reducing the number of abortions performed. Why? Because their real objective is to control and punish women, not to eliminate the need for most abortions.
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Violet Socks says:
Nina, I’m no lawyer either, but is that really the reasoning in Roe? That’s not how I read it. It seems to me that Blackmun based the right to abortion on the right to privacy, which he suggested was somewhere in the 14th amendment (or the 9th amendment, or the penumbra of the Bill of Rights, or perhaps behind the sofa cushions).
I think his summary of all the various theories on when life begins and whether abortion is permissible (from ancient times to modern, from religious dogma to the modern AMA) was just to make the point that no clear compelling standard exists. And then from there he says that since no standard exists, Texas’s interests cannot trump the woman’s right to privacy.
What Blackmun does not do is say: since only religious nuts are pushing this “life begins at conception” and “all abortion is wrong” crap, and since they’re the ones making the anti-abortion laws, then such laws contradict the First Amendment (both the establishment clause and the free exercise clause). And that’s sort of what I was fantasizing about with this post.
But again, I’m not a lawyer, so I may have misunderstood Roe.
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gxm17 says:
The entire abortion argument boils down to the patriarchal tenet that women are not capable of making life and death decisions, even when it comes to our own bodies and our own lives. It all comes down to the chattel concept our culture and religions are built on. Only men can make life and death decisions: capital punishment and war… and forced pregnancy.
The anti-choice stance is not grounded in morality; it is grounded in control, in men trying to wrest women’s natural superiority when it comes to reproductive success. As a commenter once posted here: Women are the biological gatekeepers. Men have waged this war for centuries and women suffer, again and again. Really makes one wonder why we bother procreating.
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slythwolf says:
@LabRat – We have all heard it before. Yawn. Personhood, murder, blah blah blah.
You, my husband, the church, the state, and any fetus you care to name can borrow my personal uterus when I say so. Not before. The state does not compel me to donate a kidney; it doesn’t even compel me to donate blood. It therefore cannot compel me to donate my uterus. I don’t care if a fetus is a person or not. Personhood is irrelevant. The uterus in question still belongs to me.
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Donald W. Paulus says:
If personhood begins at conception or at any time before actual birth, then why in the case of a miscarriage are there not formal funeral ceremonies for the unborn fetus? Has any society in the history of the planet provided such ceremonies in such a situation? They do if the baby dies at birth or any time thereafter. And, notice the basic difference linguistically between baby and fetus. I think the basic justification of the anti abortion movement is based on a religious view that doesn’t even correspond to our actual practice.
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Donald W. Paulus says:
Our actual practice as human beings.
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TheOtherDelphyne says:
and whether we volunteered or not, women are the half of that species that gets to act out the placental mammal role
I don’t think I’ve ever heard dehumanizing a woman put like this. Placental mammal role – what pseudo-clinical-intellectual bull shit.
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Kookaburra says:
Many religious people do have memorials after miscarriages. I have been to several to support close family members and friends, even though I am not religious anymore. They just tend to be very small, with very few people and a clergymember in attendance, and are not publicized.
@Sasha #26: That’s exactly why I became disillusioned with the “pro-life” movement when I was in high school during my X-treme!X-tian! phase. I came in with lots of ideas – campaign for social programs for poor mothers, education about birth control, creating a network of families who would be willing to take in pregnant women and teens who had been kicked out of their homes or weren’t safe there or who were willing to take care of children while the mother worked, fundraising for local women’s shelters, campaigning for adoption/foster care reform, you name it.
But all I got in response to my ideas was, “BUT THAT WILL ENCOURAGE THEM TO SIIIIIIIN!!!” Ugh. I still get livid thinking about it. Apparently an unwed mother’s only appropriate contribution to society is to serve as a warning to other women about what would happen to you if you had the bad taste to get pregnant. Makes me all foamy.
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Gidget Commando says:
I’m sending this to as many pro-choice, pro-woman friends as I can. Here’s hoping the whole shebang goes viral. The fundies wanna play Supreme Court hardball? Well, MY First Amendment rights can’t be trumped by THEIR religious sensibilities. Right on, ladies, right on.
This might be my favorite yule gift yet!
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gxm17 says:
Many years ago I would frequent a religious discussion board and one of the Catholics explained that the Catholic church started memorializing fetuses some time in the 90s. A service for unbaptized infants was started in 1970, and miscarriages/abortions were added about 20 years later. How long has the Catholic church been around and they don’t begin memorializing fetuses until after abortion is legalized? It’s very interesting to watch the doctrinal contortions required to maintain oppression of the female half of humanity.
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Lexia says:
They’re on a par with the legal contortions, that’s for sure.
As someone brilliantly pointed out in another thread, a man’s right to his body survives even his death, since his organs must be donated with his consent and can’t be taken from his dead body without that consent.
In even more infuriating contrast, a man’s right not to procreate is grounded so much in his absolute right to his own person that the government enforces it even when the man’s body is no longer in any way involved. There are a whole string of decisions that have stopped women from implanting and bringing to term an embryo made with a man who does not wish this.
“Davis v. Davis” in Tennessee is one of the first cases of this kind; all of these appear to be decided in favor of the man. I first noticed “Davis” because the newspaper, in the tiny little paragraph noting this, switched from its then customary use of “unborn child” to “embryo” in this one instance. A Texas case is here: http://texasfamilylawblog.word.....-vs-roman/
A Massachusetts case here: http://www.macathconf.org/froz.....cision.htmSome good news: it does appear that Planned Parenthood was successful in arguing the blatant disparity in “Davis” between men’s and women’s right to physical autonomy. In Planned Parenthood v. Sundquist, the Tennessee Supreme Court reapplied the “strict scrutiny” standard the Supreme Court still applies to men’s rights but eviscerated for women in “Casey”, among others, and struck down a restrictive Tennessee anti-abortion law. If I’m reading the decision right, it’s also a bit of an FU to the federal government from one of the more adamant states-rights states.
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alwaysfiredup says:
Strangely, though, the people who profess to believe that abortion is murder do the exact opposite of the above. They favor criminalization and they oppose sex education, birth control, and everything else that has a proven track record of reducing the number of abortions performed. Why? Because their real objective is to control and punish women, not to eliminate the need for most abortions.
I am not going to attempt to relitigate this underlying issue. But I do tire of the relentless smears here against “anti-choicers.” (“Pro-life” would be more accurate as I’m not against choice, but the label seems to irritate many posters here.) I believe abortion is always wrong, sometimes a necessary evil and occasionally tantamount to murder. Yet I hold none of those other positions quoted above. I do not want to criminalize women who have abortions and am an ardent believer in sex, birth control and comprehensive sex ed, as well as crisis pregnancy counseling, anti-poverty programs and any other program or policy that has the potential to reduce abortions without coercion. I most certainly do not wish to control women.
I was an unwed teen mother in college and routinely would talk to classmates who found themselves pregnant. None of those conversations ever involved religion as I’m not really religious. Most of the girls I talked to would ultimately abort, although some did not. I never, ever thought worse of the girls who aborted. I knew exactly how hard a decision it was. I was just sad about it. My latest project is focused on providing resources to the mothers of wanted babies who turn out to have genetic problems, to encourage the mothers to continue the pregnancy.
As I said, I don’t want to relitigate the issue and I don’t intend or expect to change anyone’s mind. But it is simply not accurate to claim that abortion opponents are all godbags who use abortion rhetoric as a pretext to oppress women. Particularly those who frequent a feminist blog.
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Violet Socks says:
But it is simply not accurate to claim that abortion opponents are all godbags who use abortion rhetoric as a pretext to oppress women.
This is true. As those of you who’ve been regulars here for awhile know, I’m in the perhaps atypical situation of actually knowing “pro-life” feminists who really don’t hate women. They’re a small group I think — most of the ones I know are in the radical Catholic community. I would argue (and have) that their position is intensely problematic, but whatever.
However it’s also true that those people are not the ones behind the vast majority of anti-abortion legislation or the overall anti-abortion movement. That movement is saturated with the kind of anti-woman fundie crap that we all know and loathe.
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Gidget Commando says:
But it is simply not accurate to claim that abortion opponents are all godbags who use abortion rhetoric as a pretext to oppress women. Particularly those who frequent a feminist blog.
I have no ill will towards people who walk their talk on “pro-life,” as you have indicated you do (supporting comprehensive sex-ed, anti-poverty programs, etc.). There are many fine people who walk that talk. For all of our blogging shorthand here, I suspect that many, if not most, of the posters here would respect you and those who act similarly despite our disagreements.
Unfortunately, there are a fair number of people who not only don’t walk their talk, but who actively seek to enforce their unearned power on those of us who believe diferently, whether or not we consent. That’s the difference. I see no pro-choicers talking about forcing everyone to have abortions after a certain number of pregnancies, or in certain situations. I DO see an awful lot of self-professed “pro-life” people trying like hell to deny me the right to a safe, legal abortion, even though carrying a pregnancy to term would likely leave me disabled for life.
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TheOtherDelphyne says:
Go over and read Riverdaughter’s new post on the “conscience” rule….
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Branjor says:
As far as I’m concerned, where a woman’s own body is concerned (or any “separate” body which is located within hers and draws on her body for it’s own needs), the woman is God. When life begins or if abortion is tantamount to “murder” doesn’t matter to me, because that woman is God.
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gxm17 says:
alwaysfiredup, if you do not want to see abortion outlawed, then you are pro-choice whether you use the label or not. One can be personally pro-life but accept that other women must follow their own hearts. Unless someone is anti-capital punishment, anti-war, anti-mercy killing, anti-anything that takes a human life (even self defense) then I think the “pro-life” label is inaccurate; and that’s why I use the term anti-choice. It’s rare to find someone who is truly “pro-life.”
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Sasha, CA says:
I do not want to criminalize women who have abortions
How about doctors who perform abortions? Most of the people who’d like to overturn Roe don’t actually want to criminalize women who have abortions ’cause sending women to prison while the men who knocked them up go free is a PR nightmare. I have no problem with people who are personally opposed to abortion as long as they are not trying to make it more difficult for other women to obtain an abortion; in fact, I have a couple of friends who fall into that category. While they oppose abortion, they also oppose all efforts to make abortion less accessible because they know what the result of such measures will be: desperate, dead, and maimed girls and women. They understand that the number of abortions performed can be reduced only by decreasing the need for abortion, which is why they focus their efforts on the type of programs and initiatives I, you, and Kookaburra were describing. Of course that makes them pro-choice.
But it is simply not accurate to claim that abortion opponents are all godbags who use abortion rhetoric as a pretext to oppress women.
Sorry, but my description accurately captures the vast majority of forced pregnancy proponents. Nearly all anti-choice groups are also anti-contraception; a few — like Feminists for Life — take no position on birth control. If your goal is really to prevent abortion, you’d want to do everything in your power to make contraception as widely available as possible. Unless, of course, that would interfere with your primary goal: preventing women from having sex and punishing them if they do. These are the same people who oppose the HPV vaccine on the grounds that the threat of cancer is necessary to deter girls/women from engaging in pre-marital sex!
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Nina M. says:
Vi – LOL – that’s really funny. You’re right of course. I think the establishment clause thing was something I was kicking around with the lawyers for the one of the groups, years ago. I might have come up with it myself though more likely I read it somewhere first. Ha. My memory is getting worse and worse….
There is some precedent here, though… I’ll have to look at the Griswold again, and an earlier case about a law banning (parents? schools?) from teaching kids German….
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Kiuku says:
I have a right to kill something that’s inside me. I’m a woman. If men were women, they wouldn’t have any problem with having this right. It’s only natural. You calling it murder does not take away my right to do it. You don’t want to pay for it? It’s medical. It’s murder, and it’s my right to kill something that’s inside me. In fact, I’d even go as far as to say it’s my right to leave a newborn baby. Just because you make fake milk doesn’t mean I need to find it. I don’t need to wean it off my body, and just because you make some fake milk, doesn’t mean i need to go buy it. A kid has a right to be a dependent when it has reached the age where it can eat food that’s not from a tit.
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Kiuku says:
against abortion? don’t have one. No one has a right to come out of someone’s vagina. Men think they should have a right to come out of a vagina, but you don’t see them taking care of anything but themselves and what they can express legal ownership over.
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Kiuku says:
you gotta pay a man for anything he does. But they should have a right to come out of a vagina free of charge. How are they going to regulate abortions and women’s birthing without completely invading their privacy? they were able to do this before with the institution of marriage, but now with women’s freedom financially and freedom from marriage men no longer have the privacy intrusion agaisnt women they took for granted before, so now they just make it illegal and try to legislate some privacy intrusions on women such as registering pregnancies
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Kiuku says:
In fact not only should they come out of a vagina free of charge, women should have to pay for it. I hear this new healthcare bill gips women on prenatal health care. They’ve gotta buy a rider just like every other shitty health insurance out there when it comes to women’s medical care.
