Today is Blog for Choice day, and the good folks sponsoring the event have asked us bloggers to write about why we’re pro-choice. It’s a terrific idea, and I expect the intertubes will be flooded today with excellent posts listing all the reasons to support women’s reproductive freedom.

I, however, am going to be a contrarian asshole.

I’m tired of giving the reasons why I’m pro-choice. I’ve been giving the reasons why I’m pro-choice for 30 goddamn years, and the thing is, reasons don’t matter. Not to the people on the other side, the weepy irrational twit-headed godbags who want to extend full citizenship rights to 8-celled clumps and herd women into forced-incubation camps. They don’t even understand reasons.

Listen: 30 years ago I took the pro-choice side in a high school debate on abortion. I gave a good solid presentation, listing all the reasons why it was right and necessary for women to have the right to an abortion: because it’s a matter of fundamental bodily integrity, because the decision to bear a child belongs solely to the person doing the bearing, because women will seek abortions no matter what and if they’re illegal then thousands of women will suffer or die from back-alley hack jobs, etc., etc. When I sat down, I was genuinely curious to see how my debate opponent would answer my arguments.

She didn’t even try. She didn’t address a single point, didn’t discuss a single question of law or rights or statistics. Instead, she pulled out a piece of paper and started reading: “Mommy, I’m 8 inches long and I have all my organs! I love the sound of your voice…” It was the Talking Fetus pamphlet! Yes, that thing. It was making the rounds 30 years ago and it’s still out there today. It’s like the Christmas fruitcake that won’t die.

Anyway, my debate opponent read this thing with a trembling voice, her eyes welling with tears as the wee diary-keeping embryo drew ever closer to its destiny with Jesus. By the end she and the whole class were sobbing — snot dripping out, the whole bit. I leaned my head against the wall and wished our teacher would schedule a lesson on propaganda.

I don’t remember if, when I got up to respond, I actually said, “You do realize that this wasn’t really written by a baby, right?”, but I was certainly thinking it. It wouldn’t have mattered though. At that point my classmates would have sooner voted for roasting live kittens than for abortion, and in fact in their minds it was pretty much the same thing.

And that’s still how the anti-choice people think, which is to say, they don’t really think. They just fantasize about talking fetuses and cry. So, instead of trying to fight them with reasons, maybe we should just circulate some really, really sappy pamphlets. I know: we could do one written from the point of view of a woman bleeding to death on the floor of a motel bathroom as the illegal abortionist hightails it out of there with the cash and the coathanger in his pocket. It could end with the dead woman in Jesus’s arms, asking “Whatever happened to Roe v. Wade?”

Posted by Violet under Blogging for Choice, Reproductive Rights, Recommended on January 22, 2007, 6:09 am EST

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Today we’re observing the 33rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that handed women power over our own bodies. This was a power white men had enjoyed since the founding of our republic, and one that black men had achieved legally (though not practically, of course) a hundred years before.

You see, that’s what the right to an abortion is: it’s power over your own body. It’s the right to decide whether or not you’re going to incubate a fetus. It’s the right to fundamental bodily integrity.

I’ve always thought the pro-choice movement made a serious error when it settled on “choice” as the euphemism for the right to an abortion. Choice sounds like something you get at a Chinese restaurant. It sounds like having a nice variety of car colors to choose from, instead of only basic black, as Henry Ford envisioned.

It’s not “choice.” It’s personal, physical sovereignty.

If you’re a man, and you’re having a hard time grasping this, try the following thought experiment: Imagine if the government had the right to force an organ transplant on you. Imagine if the government had the right to take one of your kidneys, assuming it decided that somebody else needed that kidney more. Think of it: you’re at the mercy of the government. The fate of your own internal bodily organs is at the whim of some bureaucrat or judge.

Or try this (again, if you’re a man): Imagine if the government had the right to sterilize you. Governments used to do this, actually – our own experimented with sterilizing blacks, the Nazis experimented with sterilizing Jews. So, imagine if the government had the right at any time to seize you and sterilize you. They wouldn’t do this to all men, of course; just the ones the government didn’t want to procreate. Maybe just self-described liberal men. Heck, maybe just liberal bloggers of El Salvadoran extraction. There aren’t too many of those, but I’d be willing to bet that if the U.S. government were seizing them from the streets and force-sterilizing them, there would be an outcry.

And the outcry would be from everyone who values liberty, everyone who abhors a police state, everyone who understands that sovereignty over your own body is the root of freedom. I don’t think it would be dismissed as a fringe issue. I can’t imagine people saying, “well, it’s just liberal El Salvadoran bloggers that this is happening to. It’s a fringe issue.”

Buy a clue, boys: Abortion isn’t a fringe issue either.

First of all, anything that affects more than one half of the population is, by definition, not on the fringe. (And if you’re a Democrat, anything that affects well over half your voters is sure as hell not some little side issue.)

Secondly, abortion isn’t some girly “choice” thing, like which brand of tampon to use or what color nail polish to apply. It’s the right to control our bodies. It’s the right to determine what happens to our bodies, to determine if we will bear children, to determine our own destiny.

So, you liberal men: Let’s not have any more of this talk of abortion rights as something we can give up in exchange for greater popularity with people who vote Republican anyway. It’s not a bargaining chip, and it’s not optional. If you’re willing to sell me and my sisters down the river, then you might as well switch sides. You belong with the party of torture, extreme rendition, wiretapping, and thought police. The party of people who think “human rights” is a racket dreamed up by Amnesty International. Those are your kin, your brethren.

Got it?

(Posted in conjunction with: Blog for Choice)

Posted by Violet under Blogging for Choice, Reproductive Rights, Recommended on January 22, 2006, 2:16 pm EST

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Blogging for choice.

1950s: A million illegal abortions a year are performed in the U.S. Over a thousand women die each year from complications.

2005: A million legal abortions a year are performed in the U.S. Fewer than a dozen women die each year from complications.

Abortion is not going to stop. It’s just going to get very, very ugly. Our Bodies, Ourselves for the New Century reminds us of what the world of illegal abortions was like:

In the 1960s, abortionists often turned women away if they could not pay $1,000 or more in cash. Some male abortionists insisted on having sexual relations before the abortion.

And then the actual procedure was incredibly risky. Since abortionists were flying under the radar, they did everything they could to maximize their own security. Often there was no anesthesia, since they wanted women out of the office/motel room/back alley as quickly as possible. Sanitary measures were inadequate, since they were working fast and in non-sterile environments. And if complications did develop – which they often did, given the conditions – the woman was on her own. Many abortionists worked anonymously and forbade the woman to ever contact him/her again.

No wonder over a thousand women died every year.

And of course, poor and minority women bore the brunt. Before Roe, 90% of abortions were performed on white women, but 75% of the women who died were women of color.

Could somebody explain “pro-life” to me again?

(Note: figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Our Bodies, Ourselves for the New Century.)

Posted by Violet under Blogging for Choice, Reproductive Rights on January 11, 2006, 3:32 pm EST

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Blogging for choice. It’s a good thing. And, godbag willing, I hope to hell we can block Alito.

But it’s also good to bear in mind that, when it comes right down to it, the suits in D.C. don’t give a shit.

Walter Shapiro in Salon comes right out and says it:

…the fate of the abortion decision and O’Connor’s legal legacy are not, by themselves, enough politically to derail the Alito nomination. In early December, political strategists directing the opposition to Alito privately calculated that they had almost no chance of stopping the rush to giving Bush another justice.

This, despite the fact that the great majority of Americans care very much about “the fate of the abortion decision.” Nearly 70% of them would drop Alito like a Costa Rican on a 747 if they thought he would vote to make abortion illegal. That includes 44% of Republicans. Think about it: even Republicans would oppose Alito — almost half of them, anyway — if they thought he’d vote to overturn Roe.

But this information does not seem to have affected the suits in D.C. The reason that opposition to Alito has perked up a bit now is that we just so happen to be in the middle of an Imperial Presidency scandal of Nixonian proportions. The Democrats are feeling their oats a bit, sensing they can get some traction against a Bush-enabler like Alito. But the choice thing? See, that never really mattered. Prying into the suits’ business, fucking with their shit — that matters.

So here’s the political question: what’s with the seeming indifference of these Senators to the prospect of Roe being overturned? Of course they don’t actually care about human liberty or anything; one realizes that. But what’s the political angle? They can read those poll numbers perfectly well.

My guess? Suits on both sides of the aisle realize that if Roe goes down in flames, the war over choice will simply move to a new theatre — state legislatures, perhaps a Constitutional amendment. The war will go on, and war is what politicians feed on. The Republicans will need the continued support of the wingnut base to keep up the good fight against the abortionist infidels. The Democrats will be invigorated, maybe even united, and the money and votes will pour in. Happiness for the suits; happiness all around. Happiness while women die; happiness while desperate teenagers bleed to death on the floor of motel bathrooms. Happiness, happiness, happiness all around.

Posted by Violet under Blogging for Choice, Reproductive Rights on January 9, 2006, 3:04 pm EST

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