frustrate

argh argh argh.

Kay so I know this is controversial, and it’s probably not even a good idea to post this on here because, what, 12 people follow me and at least two of them (hi, guys) are against abortion, so if this already going to a place that you do not want to follow, then please hop off and find a nice picture of kittens or something. Thanks. I won’t be offended, really. I just need to get this off my chest and pretend like somebody cares.

But,

with all the shit going on with Planned Parenthood,

it’s really struck me how possible it is that abortion could be severely limited, maybe even banned. I don’t think it will be rendered illegal, not unless something hugely major happens, but it’s possible that abortion services will get chipped away until they’re effectively out of service, until abortion is effectively illegal. And that’s so, so, so scary. Not even for myself: I’m thankfully and decidedly unpregnant right now, but if, god forbid, if I were to get pregnant in the next five years, I can imagine myself getting an abortion or going through with the pregnancy — or to be more accurate, I can’t at all imagine myself doing either. That is, they both seem like options so far removed that it seems impossible that they could ever happen. Maybe I wouldn’t get an abortion at all. I think I could live with that. So no, it’s not that I’m afraid I wouldn’t get an abortion, it’s that I’m afraid that I wouldn’t be able to get an abortion. Can’t and won’t: two hugely different things.

Think about it. If abortion is made illegal, that’s a good 39 seven years of effort lost. That’s making women a little more equal than they were 39 years ago. No, it wouldn’t be as bad as it was back then — we’ve made advancements in other areas as well — but the right to abortion has helped make us more equal in many ways and, I would go so far as to argue, has allowed us to improve in other areas as well. But if abortion were to be made illegal, that’s taking away the right to control our bodies, something that was established thirty. nine. years. ago. Thirty nine! And people want to go back to that! Now, I realize that the number of abortions has gone way way way up to what it was before abortion was legal. And some people, I suppose, think that if abortion were made illegal, this number would drop back down and everything would be fine and dandy. Um, hella no. Thing is, our culture is now so much more used to abortion (even though a lot of people will never come into contact with one) that to get rid of them now would like getting rid of women’s right to vote one hundred years after the fact. Horrible analogy, yeah, but the sentiment is the same: shit’s changed. Logistically, we can’t go back.

Forget the number of years for a second. People want to allow the government to control our bodies. People want the government to force women to have babies. People want to force women to be pregnant. Think about that for a moment. Let it sink in. And then — holy shit. People want this. The only other group of people whose bodies are controlled by a higher authority are children. Seriously. Seriously seriously. For the most part, you can do whatever the hell you want to your body without government interference. You can eat extremely bad food and never exercise. You can contract lung cancer by smoking tobacco. You can kill your liver through excessive drinking. You can go to war and risk getting shot or exploded. You can get surgery or you can opt not to do so. You can take your meds or you can refuse them. Shit, you can probably cut off your own arm if you really want to. And yet people want to control our right to make a medical decision about our own body.

What pisses me off so much and is actually one of the most insulting things I’ve ever heard is when people say they’re against abortion because it’s harmful to women. Firstly, please look at the list above — the one about killing your body through bad choices — and realize that people do many bad things to themselves, and abortion, purely in terms of the damage it does to your own body, is no worse than any of those. In fact, for many women, it’s better. People sometimes like to reference abortion giving you a higher chance of getting breast cancer. In response: a) it has so far proven to probably be false; b) so so so so so so many things that we do make us more at risk for cancer, and they’re still legal. People may say that abortion makes a woman depressed or feel extremely guilty. In response: a) postpartum depression, anybody? Like seriously, giving birth can screw you over emotionally, too; b) that most definitely does not go for all women. In fact, a number report feeling relieved about and supportive of their decision.

No, the real reason people are against abortion — and I respect this approach a little more just because it’s frank — is because they believe that it kills babies, which is immoral. Now, this is something that I can understand. I really can. However you look at it, abortion isn’t a nice, fluffy procedure. It doesn’t result in a cute, wailing baby. It ends in a silenced fetus. And yes, that is something that is somewhat disturbing, and yes, those pictures of aborted fetuses (although not all of them are real, I hasten to add) are extremely sad.

But look, and this is something serious: life does not guarantee a happy beginning, middle, or end. Maybe that sounds like a cop-out, but hear me out. In a perfect world, we’d putter around, giving babies stable, happy, two-parent homes and access to education and enough money and all the things they need to be the happiest babies, children, teenagers, and adults. In that perfect fantasy, women would only get pregnant when they want a baby, and they and their partner would always have enough time and money to take care of it, and it wouldn’t conflict with their career or future or anything. In a perfect world, nobody would have to weigh two ‘immoral’ things and choose the slightly less awful option.

But this isn’t a perfect world, as I’m sure you’re aware. Sometimes — often, even — we have to choose between two terrible things. And sometimes one of those options is getting an abortion. And the world simply isn’t simple enough for anyone to go, look, getting an abortion is always the worse, more immoral option. Because sometimes, that’s just wrong. Yeah, killing a baby is terrible, but you can’t — you really, truly can’t — put the baby in such a position of superiority over the mother. You can’t treat the baby as though its right to be born trumps every aspect of the mother’s free will. You can’t assume that the baby getting born is a greater asset to the world than the mother living her life the way she needs to, without a pregnancy and without a baby. You can’t keep putting this baby’s life over the mother’s life. Because that’s essentially what you’re doing, when you’re blindly opposed to abortion on a legal level: you’re saying that the baby is always more important than the mother, and that belief, whether you explicitly recognize it or not, is extremely degrading and extremely dangerous.

Here are some examples of anti-choice people’s beliefs about abortion and why they are dangerous or wrong:

- Being pregnant and uncomfortable for nine months is worth it if you can save a baby’s life.
I understand the sentiment here, but look at it like this. If you really, really don’t want to be pregnant — like, it’s actually the worst thing that’s ever happened to you — then five minutes can seem like nine months. To put a person in that position is essentially like torturing them for nine months. It’s a horrible thing to experience and it’s a horrible thing to force on somebody. Pregnancy itself isn’t always a nice experience, just in terms of the physical discomfort (not to mention the pain of giving birth), and that coupled with roughly nine months’ worth of psychological torment is cruel to force on anyone.

- Getting an abortion (because of your career) is selfish.
This one pisses me off so much. Do you realize, do you really realize, that a job is one of the most important things in anyone’s life? Do you realize that many, if not most, if not all, women with jobs can’t just put those jobs on hold for nine months and get them back when the baby is born? (I know that being pregnant doesn’t indispose you for nine months, by the way; I know that many pregnant women work right through their eighth month. The fact is, though, being pregnant can make you sick for a long time, and even if it doesn’t, it can severely limit what you’re able to do, especially depending on your job.) Especially for women with competitive careers, ones with positions of superiority, for example, being pregnant can be a serious blow to their career. Who are you to tell them that’s not important? Who the hell are you to decide that this baby is more important than their source of income, which they need to survive, I remind you? Not to mention that they would need that job to pay for the hospital bills if they go through with the pregnancy, so yeah, I’d say a job is pretty damn important.

Also, abortion is sometimes selfish, yes, but it’s often not. It’s often — usually — a case of a woman looking at her life, realizing that she can’t handle being pregnant right now, and making the decision to do the best thing for her. Who the hell are you to judge her for that? You don’t know her life. You couldn’t make a better decision for her.

- If you didn’t want to get pregnant you should have kept your legs shut.
Okay. Okay okay. This is one of the worst. I’m not one of those people who thinks pregnancy is super unfair, because it’s not. Nature needs somebody to crank out the offspring, and since we’re not an asexual species, 50% of the population gets saddled with that. That’s not unfair, that’s life — literally. What’s unfair about this situation, however, is that in our present, modern, American society, which allows for enormous flexibility and mobility in nearly every aspect, would be that the absence of abortion would not allow women to get out of the state of being pregnant.
Let’s not get too caught up on rape. To put it briefly — if you’re raped, you can’t very well choose to keep your legs shut. Let’s talk about the women who don’t want babies at all. Let’s talk about women who don’t want babies right now. If you go by the pro-life statement, that means that all women, even married ones, would have to abstain from sex until about the age of 50 or older. You know why? Because even the most careful use of contraceptives sometimes fails and women get pregnant anyway. The only fail-proof way to avoid being pregnant is to not have sex, and it’s so unrealistic to promote abstinence as the only life path. Even if you think it’s immoral to have unwed sex for any reason other than baby-making, you must at least realize that that attitude is not adopted by the general population — both men and women. Basically, there’s no way to ensure that women never get pregnant when they don’t want to, and for that reason, we need abortion to remain safe and legal.

Rather than seriously infringing on women’s rights, let’s all work together to make pregnancy a better experience, however it ends, or fails to begin:

- Sex education

- Easy and cheap access to effective contraceptives

- Dramatically reduce the amount of rape and for god’s sake, don’t encourage rape culture or the rape myth

- Informed and unbiased and available information about women’s options for pregnancy, listing all of the information, both pros and cons, about: abortion, pregnancy itself, adoption, and raising the baby

- Much better benefits for pregnant women and benefits for parents

- Better health care in general

And if we can achieve that, then thank you. (For the record, I definitely don’t hate/dislike people who are pro-life. I respect their opinions — when they’re opinions and not actions. I don’t respect the action of trying to make abortion illegal. But the actual people who are pro-life are rarely evil or misogynistic, I just think they’re misguided about this one particular thing.)
(Way hay, I've missed the past five days of BEDA, but this is about five pages in Word so let's hope this makes up for it!)