A while ago, I mentioned to Thagmano and Rachel that I would probably post my “I’m not sorry” story.
I had an abortion last January. I wasn’t exactly pleased about that. In my dotage, I’m just fertile goddamned myrtle. I …

(sorry about the capitaI Is in pIace of that Ietter that comes between k and m. broken keyboard

Why do you have to discuss this? I believe abortions should be legal, even encouraged to people who are actually considering it. Why?

First, if my parents had any doubts about having me, I would have adviced them NOT to have me at all. No body needs an “obligatory birth”. No thanks!

Second, if you have doubts about having children and you still engaged in behaviour that could lead into having some, you are irresponsible. It places a doubt on your abilities to be a parent. Maybe you should be sterlized, permanently after the abortion.

How is that for a pro-choice position?

April over at “for better or for worse” podcasted on South Dakota’s ban on abortions. I’m pro-life, but I don’t try to change people’s view on it. But I do however love to say what is on my mind.
Abortions will alway…

‘The British government has this week defied the United States by giving money for safe abortion services in developing countries to organisations that have been cut off ffrom American funding.

Nearly 70,000 women and girls died last year because they went to back-street abortionists. Hundreds of thousands of others suffered serious injuries. Critics of America’s aid policy say some might have lived if the US had not withdrawn funding from clinics that provide safe services - or that simply tell women where to find them.

The ‘global gag’ rule, as it has become known, was imposed by President George Bush in 2001. It requires any organisation applying for US funds to sign an undertaking not to counsel women on abortion - other than advising against it - or to provide abortion services.

On Tuesday the UK became the founder donor of a fund set up specifically to attempt to replace the lost dollars and increase safe abortion serices.’

If this law can stand up to scrutiny then other states will follow.

It’s not about whether this law can stand up to scrutiny, gengwall. It’s about who’s doing the scrutinising.

From the AP today:

S.D. Closer to Strict Abortion Limits

Most importantly in the bill, the unborn are explicitely declared human beings that have constitutional protection within the SD constitution. Some significant portions:

HB 1215 Section 1. The Legislature accepts and concurs with the conclusion of the South Dakota Task Force to Study Abortion, based upon written materials, scientific studies, and testimony of witnesses presented to the task force, that life begins at the time of conception, a conclusion confirmed by scientific advances since the 1973 decision of Roe v. Wade, including the fact that each human being is totally unique immediately at fertilization. ..Moreover, the Legislature finds that the guarantee of due process of law under the Constitution of South Dakota applies equally to born and unborn human beings, and that under the Constitution of South Dakota, a pregnant mother and her unborn child, each possess a natural and inalienable right to life.

Section 5 (1) “Pregnant,” the human female reproductive condition, of having a living unborn human being within her body throughout the entire embryonic and fetal ages of the unborn child from fertilization to full gestation and child birth
(2) “Unborn human being,” an individual living member of the species, homo sapiens, throughout the entire embryonic and fetal ages of the unborn child from fertilization to full gestation and childbirth;

Of course, SD is far from the mecca of abortion. But that certainly isn’t the point. If this law can stand up to scrutiny then other states will follow. More importantly, is this law stands up then it’s principals, which establish that the unborn are human beings with equal protection rights, stand as well. Roe avoided this issue. Now it very likely could be confronted head on by it. If 14th ammendment rights are extended to the unborn…well, you know where I’m going, we’ve been through this before.

I must admit this is happeneing even sooner than I expected. The time for compromise and action to limit abortions voluntarily is now, before abortions are outlawed nation wide.

Here’s my take on it:

All adults over 21 must undergo mandatory testing, and be required by law to give one kidney to whoever needs it, if there’s a match. If it is reasonable to demand a woman sacrifice her body for the life of a foetus, then it is equally reasonable to demand citizens sacrifice a kidney to anyone who will die without it.

Of course, we shall test all members of congress first, so they can set an example of patriotism to the nation.

This analogy is inspired, and I for one hope you all write your congressional representatives requesting a law like this.

http://www.firstgov.gov/Contact.shtml

This is what illegal abortion will inflict on a country.

‘Democrats leader Lyn Allison, who kickstarted the debate with a private members bill last year and revealed on the eve of the debate she had undergone a termination as a teenager in rural Victoria, said she simply felt “relief”.

“In my first speech in this place I said I hoped one day to see a time when women would cross the floor in solidarity on women’s issues and that’s what happened today…”

Brilliant. Spread the word!

The bill passed (hooray!) by 45 votes to 28. Female Senators from *all* parties co-sponsored the bill and of the 26 women who voted, 23 supported it. Being such a sensitive issue, there was no whooping and hollering etc, but a quiet ‘Well done, girls, well done’, was heard after the result was announced.

I am not generally a supporter of the party or politics of this country’s immigration minister, Amanda Vanstone, but I did enjoy this illustrative comment she made:

“One of the men said…he doesn’t want abortion to be any easier and a pill would necessarily be easier. Well, hello. Clearly he has never had the mindset of it ever happening to him. It is not going to happen to him. It is not going to happen to him because he is a boy.”

I offer this in support of my arguement that if only women were permitted to vote on the abortion issue, there would virtually be no issue. Therefore, this is about raw patriarchal power - men’s power over women. Again, this *may* not be the case in the US where support for Christian fundamentalist beliefs is so widespread (and alternative worldviews appear to be being denied your youth wherever possible) that your country is in danger of becoming a theocracy if it isn’t already. That is where you get your ‘bargaining’ strength from, gengwall. You make yourself sound like a reasonable man, and I believe you believe yourself to be one, but from my perspective, I’m sorry, but you are not. You are participating in an abuse of power.

To the memory of Rev. Coretta Scott King, Religious Peacemaker

The problem, of course, is that we all have different views on what constitutes behaving badly. Personally, I hate that the government subsidizes corporations I believe are behaving badly…but somehow all the invective of the religious right seems not to come down on all the things that Christ is supposed to have talked about, but only about the sex lives of people. I rarely hear the prolife contingent or the religious right in general berating corporations for pollution that causes birth defects, or othe ways in which both people and corporations are “bad citzens”….instead, it seems only pruriently interested in the sex lives of single women.

For instance, policies which push birth control on teenagers (including the importance of always using two types at once) so hard the teens get bruised. Countries like Belgium have used this sort of policy to have the lowest abortion rates in the world. I don’t understand why pro-lifers have so little interest in imitating that.

Primarily because we feel to do so would make us hypocritical and would deny our beliefs. Not necessarily defensible or logical positions, but those are the reasons.

Do you believe in the marketplace or not? If you do, then you have to admit that when the demand is high enough, the market mostly finds a way around barriers - and that includes legal barriers.

Even the very few pro-lifers who would think to view the problem this way would probably deny the reality. I’m afraid we need a crane to pull our heads out of the sand. Of course, overexagerating this claim doesn’t help (not saying you are, just that it has been). Unfortunately, this is where the “pro-life” argument becomes contradictory - outlawing abortion won’t stop abortion. Admitedly, we need to do some self-reflection in this area.

The only way to have a really low abortion rate is to lower demand, rather than banning supply. That means pushing birth control on teens as if it were oxygen, and also providing painfully generous welfare support for single mothers.

Welfare - another area that is a hard move for us. The thinking is a variation on what you dealt with in “Men’s Rights Myth: Women Trick Men Into Fatherhood So They Can Collect Child Support.” Just insert “welfare” for “Child Support”. I think your argument works never-the-less. But it is a tough sell to pro-lifers who can site examples and mentally exagerate them into epidemic proportions. Plus, we just hate the government spending our money on people we believe are behaving badly.

Will that have negative side effects? Maybe. But if pro-lifers are serious about lowering the abortion rate, they should be willing to consider the trade-offs. What good is an “idealogically correct” approach to lowering abortion rates, if it doesn’t actually work very well compared to other methods?

Yes, we should be willing to consider trade-offs. “What good is…?” Answer - no good at all.

First of all, has the pro-life movement actually been proposing that we treat abortion as if it were murder?…The argument that pro-lifers can’t consider what is practical, because of their unshakable moral commitment to treating abortion as murder, falls apart when we look at the laws pro-lifers propose.

1 - yes, we can be hypocritical just as good as anyone. 2 - there is a lot of incrementalism in our strategy. 3 - doesn’t mean we don’t think it’s murder anyway.

In a system that forces us to choose between one or the other, which is better: 700,000 murders potentially prevented, or 700,000 murders not prevented plus an official statement calling abortion murder?

The answer is obvious but I don’t know if anyone from the pro-choice side (blogs not withstanding) is selling it this way. So, most pro-lifers have never been asked the question.

But the pro-life movement as a whole clearly favors the latter policy. And I find that incomprehensible.

it is.

Putting abstract principle above 700,000 lives doesn’t seem like a supportable position, to me…

it isn’t.

… and certainly undermines the pro-life claim to be motivated only by caring about what happens to babies.

yes, it does.

I’m out. Thanks for listening. I hope this fosters a better understanding of our side.

Wow. I guess we grew up differently. I was a teen in the seventies, graduated high school in 1976, and we *did* talk about it. In fact, an older male friend sat my first serious boyfriend down and explained to him that if we were going to be sexually active, it was not only necessary to use contraception, but since I was the one who had to take pill, it should be *his* responsibility to pay for my prescription. And he did.