Why I’m Pro Choice
Edit: whoa, it’s blog for choice day, apparently. Why didn’t I know this? You’d think someone who is a feminist pinko commie liberal and attends law school would know or care about the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. However, I’ve been playing my Nintendo DS so much I’m lucky I know what year it is. Luckily I have brain age to tell me ever day. Anyway, I guess I participated unwittingly.
I was reading this post about stumping pro-lifers with one question, and I immediately realized this was not a good argument (I need to think more before I post, yeah not that it was a bad argument, that I’ve said this to people before and they did respond with “yeah let’s throw them all in jail” or “women who miscarry should be investigated as murderers. That’s all I meant). But anyway, I like any blog about thinking rather than just blindly practicing faith, in any case. The question that made me think about abortion, anyway, if you’re too lazy to read, was “If abortion was illegal, what should be done with the women who have illegal abortions?” For one, I have posed this question on more than one occasion to pro-lifers and they responded with visions of women who miscarry being under criminal investigation, and all sorts of horrifying things which seemed to me a Margaret Atwoodesque dystopia where women are chattle. I don’t think this question is a good way to stump someone in the forced-pregnancy camp.
I think there are a lot of arguments to be made that are difficult to refute. Something I’ve asked and never gotten a satisfactory response to, however, was how can one say abortion is murder, yet at the same time not be as adamantly calling for compulsory organ and blood donation?
The issue with compulsory organ and blood donation is one of bodily integrity. You can’t force someone to sit there with a needle drawing blood–you can’t force someone to give up his or her organs at death. Essentially, you can’t FORCE someone to sustain the life of another person, no matter how easy it would be for you to do so.
I think going through pregnancy is far more difficult than organ donation or blood donation, and yet no one is clamoring for laws making compulsory these things which would save millions upon millions of lives.
The idea of forcing people to be strapped down and have a needle shoved into their arms and blood withdrawn without their consent is horrifying. I’m not sure why with this one, but the idea of people having their organs harvested while they are brain dead leads to organ donation being a voluntary thing, despite the millions of lives it would save if everyone did it.
You truly can’t be “pro-life” without pretty much conceding that women are the one exception to a generally accepted idea that people have the right to do with their bodies what they please. Even if a fetus were a fully formed 30 year old in miniature form with a conscience, it doesn’t stand to reason that a woman should have to use her own body to sustain that of another person against her will. If a woman cannot legally stick stuff up her vagina if she wants to, or take a pill if she wants to while pregnant, or starve herself, or drink wine in a hot tub, she has effectively lost the ability to control her body in the same way a person who chooses to walk straight past the blood donation van does.
I’ve tried to anticipate arguments against this reasoning. The biggie, I assume, is “she chose to have sex,” and therefore agreed to create this life. This poses a problem when you mention rape victims, of course. If someone makes an exception then, for rape victims, they are essentially saying women should be punished for having sex, because if refusing to use one’s body to sustain another life in one instance is “murder” but it isn’t in another, I cannot see this as anything but punishment for having sex. I also don’t think choosing to create that life should obligate you to it in any case–we choose all the time to bring people in the world–yet are no longer responsible for their lives once they are out of the womb. You might say the 5 year old who needs a kidney transplant is not your responsibility, but collectively if each of us did check off the donor card and donate blood, we’d be saving those lives. Somehow an unwanted fetus is a different situation than selfishly retaining your useful organs after death when it could save lives.
I suppose you could say abortion is an active killing while withholding something from someone is a passive killing, but then you can passively kill a fetus as well by starving yourself, and I think this is an urban myth but hypothetically by sitting in a spa and drinking champagne. Should those methods of abortion be ok while more active means are not? Then again, i guess if you don’t eat, or you drink booze or too much vitamin C, or have a doctor perform a surgery on you, or take an abortifacient pill, you’re trying to *kill* the fetus right? Should you be forced to eat or go to jail? Forced to not drink certain things or go to jail? It’s all the same thing–when you force someone to use her body in a certain way, or to not use it in a certain way, you’re denying her rights that I’m pretty sure 99% of supposed “pro-lifers” find sacrosanct. Most of these people make a moronic argument that a 9 month inconvenience isn’t a big deal. I vehemently disagree with this–but for the sake of argument–even if it were–donating blood or organs is unequivocally easier. If your spouse needed a kidney to live, and you were a match, should you be forced to donate it? Is that not too a temporary inconvenience in order to save a life?
I don’t buy arguments like, the fetus needs a chance at life, or it’s “innocent.” Particularly the innocent part, because to say a fetus is innocent but a five year old needing a heart transplant isn’t can be nothing but forcing stupid fucking religion down my throat because I assume the only way someone could say that with a straight face is if they think someone needs to be born in order to find Jesus and a 5 year old is a-ok to die post baptism. I also bristle at the idea that someone who supposedly cares about “life” feels godly enough to be able to decide when someone has “lived” his or her life. I say a 60 year old who may only have 20 more years should not be tossed aside like trash just because selfish people don’t want to donate blood and organs.
So, in essence, I’m pro-choice because I think women are human beings and should never be put in a situation where their own bodies are subjugated in order to sustain another. I can’t say whether I’d have one myself because I’ve never been in the situation of becoming impregnated by rape and I have no idea how I’d react to it–but I think it’s incredibly important, even if you think women who abort are selfish assholes, to have the option NO MATTER WHAT because without it women are reduced to sub-human beings. I am not an “American factory,” and abortion is no more murder than refusing to donate blood or organs.
The one issue I’m conflicted about with this argument is whether abortion should be regulated post-viability. I think it should be, but I still don’t think a woman should have to sustain another being against her will. In this case I’d think it was VERY SELFISH to want a baby removed from one’s womb post-viability for no good reason, (I realize this would be rare upon rare and when republicans act like women abort at 8 months pregnancy for no reason as easily as purchasing a taco supreme they are full of shit) and I certainly think measures should be taken to keep it alive before putting it up for adoption (aka she shouldn’t have the right to make it dead when it would otherwise live). Then again it’s VERY SELFISH not to donate blood, bone marrow or your organs if you are able to. Just because something is asshattery doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have the right to do it.
If the answer to the above, for a pro-lifer, is something like “because god decides if people die of disease” or something, said person can go fuck a mite-infested cactus because “god” is a shitty argument and I will only entertain secular ones, although I suspect most secular anti-abortion arguments are incredibly thinly veiled.
Oh yeah, I’m also pro choice because roast fetus is DELICIOUS.
If I found someone who was vehemently in favor of compulsory blood and organ and bone marrow donation and was also pro-life I’d disagree still, but I’d at least have to give that person kudos for being intellectually consistent.
((I’d also like to point out that a lot of my arguments are like, “ok, assuming EVERYTHING YOU SAY IS TRUE, I’m still right.” This argument I make here is one of those. It’s “even if for some reason a zygote is a life on par with a post-viability baby.” I’m not saying I think that and I’m pro-choice anyway, this whole thing is, even if that were true, abortion should STILL be legal. I wish people had the mental capacity to realize they can lobby for “life” without wanting to take away women’s rights to bodily autonomy by trying to convince people to, you know, not abort on their own volition, and to be in favor of things like contraception and support for mothers without means to reduce the number of abortions)).
This is amazing and you should read it
I read this story in the AZ Republic a long time ago. It was a great story then and it’s a great story now, I just now remembered that since I have a blog it’d be fun to talk about.
The story is called “It’s a Man’s World” and is in the money section for some bizarre reason. It’s an interview with a transgender woman talking about how she’s treated differently in the workplace now, as a woman, than she had been when she looked like a man.
I think every guy on the planet should read this article. I think a lot of well-meaning guys out there might not realize how they just give women hints that they really aren’t worth talking to through their actions. Subtle things that show they think men are just more competent by virtue of their genitalia, like preferring to talk to other men. Women do this too, come to think of it–I’ve had a lot of experiences where I’ve been perfectly capable of fixing something or doing something, yet someone wanted to wait for a man to do it. (I was lucky growing up I was the only one who could fix the computer or VCR, I guess, or I’d have had a whole lot more tantrums). This quote from the article really encapsulates what I mean by this being inadvertent:
When you were a man, did you not see the disrespect women receive?
It’s one thing to see it and another thing to experience it. Let’s say you buy a Honda. That’s when you start to realize how many Hondas there are on the road. In my day-to-day world as David, there was no reason for me to recognize what was happening.
And although everything in this article is anecdotal, at least the article is *something* to show that people who say “oh women just CHOOSE lower paying jobs” are full of horse shit. Something I can say to people when they act like an act ensuring fairness in pay is not necessary.
Have you seen pay discrepancies?
After almost 10 years as Donna, I am just now getting back to the same salary level I had when I was a guy. When I left PCS, I was making really good money and took a little less to go to Dell. I’ve been consulting ever since I left Dell, and now eight years later, I’m getting back to the level I would have demanded as David at that stage of my career and my skill set.
I’m now a contractor, and six months ago, I was on a contract and negotiated rates. . . . I went through the process of negotiating with their recruiter, who was a guy who assured me I was being given the maximum allowed for this position. It was less than I wanted, but I accepted it only to find that someone else on the contract, a man, was making 10 percent more. That kind of stuff infuriates me, and I confronted them with it. They just said the circumstances were different. I left over it.
This article also made me think of things I’d never really considered before, like this:
Discuss your experience in school.
It was not feminine to be smart because it intimidated and threatened the guys. Girls I went to school with struggled with the fact they were intelligent and didn’t want to overly emphasize it. When I was in grade school, teachers would pair up boys against girls in doing flash cards. Girls were always far smarter than we were, but there were girls who felt really guilty about it. It’s a statement if you have to apologize for your intelligence.
I realize now, as an adult, that a lot of guys out there don’t give a fig about a woman’s intelligence and are intimidated by intelligent women. Being the socially unacceptable fool that I am, though, I relished nothing more than cementing my spot as the eccentric genius in class (it probably resulted in people thinking I was an idiot/weirdo more often than not, but whatever, I have enough guilt and self-loathing over everything I’ve ever done in the past to dwell on this). There was a girl in middle school who called me genius as an insult, but it just really made me think she was a total nasty asshole rather than make me think I ought to tone it down. I guess I’ve really been inoculated from this sort of thing because I met my husband in high school and the first two years of our relationship consisted of mostly competing for top grades in the classes we shared and trying to pummel the snot out of each other in fighting games. I imagine it’d be really frustrating for a heterosexual woman to have to navigate a dating world full of heterosexual guys who are intimidated by smart, successful women would induce one to continually slam her head into her own desk, I’m sure. Maybe there should be a dating site entirely dedicated to smart people and the potential dating partners who appreciate intelligence.
This is also something that surprised me:
As a man, people respected far more physical space around me. They didn’t intrude on my personal space, whereas now as a woman, you don’t have as much space. People seem much more comfortable to crowd you.
I never noticed this before, but I do notice it now after reading this article. I guess I always just figured that people butted up right against men in lines and crowds too–I thought it was equal-opportunity asshattery, but now I’m doubly annoyed by being crowded. You’re telling me if I had a dick I could have some goddamned personal space? Ugh.
Anyway, I really encourage the two people who read this blog to read this article, it’s great. I also saved it onto my hard drive in case the Arizona Republic ever takes it down. I’ll just replicate it somewhere, somehow.
LOL my harpy wife isn’t around I can break my diet
I see it in commercials, comic strips, people’s discourse, you name it. Men who are overweight and probably told by their doctors they need to change their eating habits, so their wives “put them on a diet,” and they relish in enjoying food that doesn’t taste like hairy ass when the battle axe isn’t around. (I never see this happen the other way around, although I suppose it could).
I want to smack the shit out of any idiot who thinks this is funny, or how a relationship should work.
I think eating healthy is important–not weight loss–but what kind of bullshit is that to act like your WIFE is the reason you can’t just eat whatever you want when your health is suffering? When you have high cholesterol? When you have diabetes? Blame your genes, blame your doctor for using a weight-loss band-aid on everything, blame your sky daddy, blame anyone, but it’s not the fault of your SPOUSE! This subject came up because of a comic I just read where a woman caught her husband “cheating. . .” on his DIET, but it’s also a sore spot to me because my dad gets annoyed with his wife for keeping him from gorging himself on sugar when he’s diabetic.
If I was my dad’s wife I’d say, go ahead you catfucker, go fucking kill yourself, then, see if I care. Here I am not wanting you to die and all, and you’re getting mad at me? Go die if you want to, then. I’m not your damn mother, take some personal responsibility. It’s not my job to control your friggin’ food intake and keep you from going into a diabetic coma. You’re an adult.
This would never happen in my relationship, by the way, because oddly enough, my husband and I treat each other like adults and don’t try to control each other. Whatever he wants to eat is his freakin’ business. If he ever became diabetic or something I’d prefer that he would control it so he wouldn’t, you know, die, but there’s no way on earth I’d become his surrogate mom and smack his hand as it reaches into the cookie jar. No way would I open myself up to becoming the object of scorn when the real culprit is pancreatic malfunction.
Really, if someone has some kind of medical illness where not cutting out certain foods might, I dunno, result in DEATH, I’d think one or two options should be available if said person’s spouse was AFRAID OF HIS OR HER BELOVED DYING and tried to prevent such catastrophe.
Option 1: Be an adult and explain to your spouse that you don’t appreciate the nagging. Maybe with an, ok. I understand that you love me and don’t want me to die. But I just don’t want to diet, I’m an adult and I can make this choice. This is my choice as an adult, and you shouldn’t worry yourself trying to control my diet.
And then go about eating what you want like an adult instead of acting like a petulant fucking child and acting like your mother spouse is holding you back from you doing what you really want to do, or,
Option 2: be an adult and make a plan of healthy eating that you can live with and adhere to it, maybe deviating sometimes because you’re a human, and not hoisting your health onto the backs of others and then taking out your frustrations on them.
If one’s spouse just can’t handle this candid request, then there’s a problem there. That’s just controlling. I mean I’d understand it if someone was worried about my health, but after a gentle “ok fuck off” I’d appreciate the fucking off to happen. I don’t really think someone should be trying to control someone else’s diet in the first place–but I can understand why someone would start doing that out of fear for someone else’s health. I just think people ought to communicate instead of having some silent bitter war.
I swear popular culture makes marriage out to be men going from one mother they like to have temper tantrums at to another. I hope aside from my dad and the idiots who make commercials and comics this is a rarity in actual relationships. Do most people liiike. . .just not talk to their spouses except to bark orders at each other? Is there something my husband and I are just missing out on here by respecting each other and being friends? I don’t get it.
People who have become that which they loathed
An Open Letter to Supposedly Progressive Hillary Clinton Haters:
I said it before and I’ll say it again–I still can’t believe how you are blasting hot diarrhea all over yourselves because Hillary Clinton didn’t move to Mars after the primary. You know what I mean. You who are acting like she peed in your cheerios or something. You who lost respect for Obama because he didn’t seek to execute her as his first move as president. You who fall to the ground and immediately curl into the fetal position at the mere mention of the senator’s name.
To tell you the truth–I never really got into the Clinton/Obama debate except to say stuff like, I’m in favor of Obama because I think it’s foolhardy to mandate the purchase of medical insurance because the government sets ridiculous standards for what constitutes living wages, and I was pretty sure a lot of impovershed people would be mandated to buy insurance while not receiving a lick of aid for it. And I prefered Obama for his stance on the Iraq war. That was pretty much abooout it. I knew in my heart of hearts that either way, I win. Either way, on January 20, 2009, I’d be partying like it was 1999. Not that I partied in 1999. But you know what I mean.
Now, I’m not going to get into why you felt so much vitriol over Clinton during the primary, or if it should be retained–I think even if she is secretly a demonic homunculus, it’d be wise for you just to shut the fuck up already. Here’s why.
Nothing caused rabid Obama supporters to make with the weeping and gnashing of teeth more than the two supposed women who called themselves PUMAs and went on every message board saying they were going to vote for McCain if Clinton lost. No matter how many times these supporters were assured that this group of women was just being totally blown out of proportion by the media, how the very name itself was sexist and almost seemed like a joke, how the founder of the group never gave a dime toward the Clinton campaign yet donated money to the McCain campaign–people just believed in their heart of hearts that “women” would be the downfall of Obama for this reason. Yes, there was a whoooooole lot of stupidity and sexism to go around. Yes, you were a fucking idiot for gearing up to blame women for a potential Obama loss even though Democrats never get a majority of the white male vote but they DO get a majority of the woman vote, but this is not the time to repent for past stupidity.
This is the time in which if you do not shut the hell up you will become that which you loathe most–a PUMA. In reality you were there all along, but if you shut the fuck up now, it will be less noticable.
Yes, PUMAs who came onto message boards just to call Obama an “empty suit” and would not listen to what you felt was reason were incredibly frustrating. People who came onto message boards to make totally unsubstantiated claims about Obama, repeat lies, and spew hatred were frustrating, right?
But doesn’t that, you know, seem a little bit familiar?
I still haven’t found anyone who can give me one good freakin’ reason why Clinton is the devil. And I mean a GOOD reason. Tell me how she differs so very, very much from Obama. Please, tell me why one of the very few senators with the chutzpuh to take a stance against the deplorable rule change that will make it more difficult for women to access contraception is a very, very bad person?
She didn’t campaign hard enough for Obama? What alternate universe were you living in all that time? Please go back and spread your ridiculous excrement there instead. Clinton could not have shown support for Obama after the primary any more than if she got his face tattooed on her ass and pulled her pants down to show the world while on Meet the Press.
You don’t like her husband? Senator Clinton is not a block of tofu. She hasn’t just absorbed her husband’s personality. Plenty of decent women have jackoffs for husbands (and vice versa), you’re going to have to do better than that.
Corruption? Give me some examples instead of just screaming bullshit.
If the only reason you don’t like her is because she’s a woman and she’d backhand your stupid ass before getting in the kitchen and making you a sandwich, well, then you can just stick a hot poker in your eye, jackass.
Anyway. Think about it. Be reasonable here. Listen to reason. Do everything you implored others to do, but refuse to do yourself. Embrace victory, for the love of cheddar cheese, embrace it!
Love,
Ze CheekyMartian
