This is actually a picture of a woman, but she's pregnant, so through the lens of misogyny, all you can see is the fetus. (Toe rays are always carefully marked in utero.)
It's true. As soon as I get pregnant, my needs and wants will be ignored in favor of the needs and wants of a group of undifferentiated, rapidly dividing cells. (Some people call this is a baby.) I can return to my previous state of visibility by having an abortion, but it won't have been my decision, because pregnant women, not being people at all, don't make choices.
Think about it. What is the "abortion industry" doing to women? That's the framing of this entire article, and article I couldn't even read all the way through because my brain, in a desire not to die a horrible death, starting rendering it as wharrrgarble after the first few paragraphs.
What is the "abortion industry" doing to women. Doing to women. To women.
Keep in mind, no woman randomly comes into contact with an abortion, ever. It's not like incidentally viewing sexual material on the cover of a magazine at the grocery store. That's certainly possible. It's not random "bless you!s" contacts with religion. There is, literally, no way for a woman to, without choice and purpose, have an abortion. You have to want an abortion to get an abortion. You have to decide you want an abortion, you have to find where to get an abortion, you have to pay for the abortion, you have to get to the facility, you have to wait for your appointment, you have to take off your clothes and put your feet in the stirrups.
None of this is done to anyone.
Prolifers have made abortions as difficult to get as possible. They have enacted waiting periods, ultrasound viewing requirements, limits on when in the pregnancy you can have one, facility requirements well above what is required for other, similarly simple procedures, and, oh yeah, with all the protesting, bombings and murders, there are very few doctors even willing to perform abortions.
It's not like you can walk across the street to your neighborhood abortion provider two weeks before your due date and receive a free abortion five minutes later. You have to jump through hoop after hoop- and hope that nobody ever finds out you got one, because, well, you're a murderer. And a slut. A murdering slut.
Abortions are provided for women, women who choose them and want them so badly they are willing to jump through any number of hoops and risk the personal fallout of being discovered to get them.
Women are people. We make choices. We continue to be people and make choices even after we get pregnant. Stop infantilizing us. Stop making us invisible. We're right here, you should be able to see us.
Well said.
ReplyDeleteOne of the more disturbing conclusions that you can reach from this kind of rhetoric is that the writer believes that pregnancy is something done to a woman-- by which I mean to say that pregnancy is not actual work and danger for women, but something done to her, not by her. It reflects the sperm magic thinking that Amanda Marcotte has written about over at pandagon. It's creepy and hugely erasing-- it's like telling a man that work is something done to him, not something he does.
ReplyDeletei think i was able to read the whole thing, because i'm insulated by the fact that A) i'm so tired i can't sleep, and B) i had my social security hearing today. [and got a "positive determination! after being told by my lawyer that i probably WOULDN'T get ANY determination today. and it's backdated to october of 08. so YAY and i'm in a positive frame of mind for once.
ReplyDeleteor WAS]
she kept going on and on and ON about "women of color, poor women, and recent immigrants". because these are the women who tend to have the most abortions [as a group, not individually] and she seems to think that they're having abortions because they don't have a CHOICE. because all those hoops aren't there, i guess - like, she seems to really truly believe the narrative that obtaining an abortion is easier than obtaining a flu vaccine.
because she does totally miss the point about the hoops - i mean, she DOEA point out that 87% of counties don't have access, but she blatantly states that this is ONLY because of "market forces" and IGNORES all the bullshit that local and state governments pull to make clinics impossible [the ones you point out, and more].
she states that abortion training doesn't happen often because "doctors don't want too" - and she says it's because they're anti-abortion, as opposed to, i don't know, afraid of being assassainated.
she babbles a bit about Catholic hospitals and all the care they provide, saying that that care should be federally funded despite their stance on abortion - when it isn't abortion that prevents federal funding. it's birth control.
then again, i'm pretty positive that she thinks that the "conscience clauses" about BC are good and perfect, too. deny women BC, then deny them abortions, and giggle as their lives are destroyed - because they don't matter even a hundreth as much as the POTENTIAL life they MAY have [i mean, at LEAST 1/4 pregnancies end in miscarriage - we can't even know the real number because so many happen before a woman knows she's pregnant!]
she goes on and fucking ON about how doctors and nurses shouldn't be "forced" to do something "against their conscience" - but i'll say to THEM what they [effectively] say to US - you don't want to deal in abortion, don't train for a job where it might be required. be a fucking PODIATRIST, i don't know, but stop flooding into the OB/GYN field and then throwing a fucking fit when you're asked to do something *IN* that field.
as a side note - the hospital that would have let me die, when i was pregnant and dying, was a Catholic hospital. the doc was all ready to do it - if my asshole psychotic pathological liar then-boyfriend hadn't gone and complained, he would have done it there in the ER, because i was *dying*, and even a Catholic hospital can't say "no" to a dying patient.
except, apparantly, if the "father" complains about the "loss" of "his" child - AFTER the doctor explained that i'd live another 48 if a MIRACLE happened, and i was 11 weeks along, and there never be any baby.
so, i'm NOT for giving the fucking fundies even MORE ammo to use against women, in the form of yet ANOTHER "conscience clause" that means they'll turn away dying women because they're "pro-life" - it's not as if abortions happen in hospitals OUTSIDE of life-or-death emergencies, anyway.
CONGRATULATIONS!
ReplyDeleteI guess pagan prayers upon the ether work. It is notoriously hard to get anything approved by Disability.
I listened to a male acquaintance of mine go on and on and on about how an ex of his had had an abortion (also of his), and he didn't think it was fair women could do that without the man having any recourse, and I finally turned to him and said, "Look, as soon as we have the technology to take the pregnancy out of her body and put it into yours, I'll agree with you, but I don't think you'd be so gung ho about the 'baybee' if you had to be the one to gestate and birth it, now would you?"
He doesn't talk to me anymore.
come see the LAST!
ReplyDeletegraveyardofthegods.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=11323
thanks! i feel much less like everything's gonna fall apart, now. :)
ReplyDeletei've had "friends" of the same type - they don't talk to me anymore, either.
and i'm pretty sure i'm better off for it