Comments on: “What if your mother was pro-choice?”

By: Know Thine Enemy: Fetal Personhood as Metaphorical Thinking (Repost) « It’s All Connected…

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 21:34:33 +0000

[...] God, she could have felt it possible meaningfully to say no is an open one at the very least. As Barbara put it in the “What If Your Mother Was Pro-Choice Thread” on Alas: It seems to me that the [...]

By: Bjartmarr

Bjartmarr — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 06:13:19 +0000

And if you hadn’t been the one who lived, then you would mind?

What button do I push to imply that I’m pointing and laughing?

By: Elkins

Elkins — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 06:56:30 +0000

Of course you don’t mind if your mother was pro-choice you are the one who lived.

And if you hadn’t been the one who lived, then you would mind?

By: Jake Squid

Jake Squid — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:04:10 +0000

Also fact:

Santa Claus knows when you are sleeping and knows when you’re awake.
Swine before pearls.
The earth is flat.
Zeus is the greatest of gods.
I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.
Maggots spontaneously generate from rotting meat.

By: Myca

Myca — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 20:15:22 +0000

I don’t know how you can get around the fact that abortion is murder, life begins at conception and God infuses the soul.

You keep using that word, ‘fact’.
I do not think it means what you think it means.

—Myca

By: Mary

Mary — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 19:54:07 +0000

Of course you don’t mind if your mother was pro-choice you are the one who lived.

What if the father wants the child, where is his choice ? What would the baby’s choice be, life or death ? I don’t know how you can get around the fact that abortion is murder, life begins at conception and God infuses the soul.

By: Brandy V.

Brandy V. — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 03:10:33 +0000

I’ll tell you what happened if my mother had not had her abortion…

I wouldn’t be here, if my mother didn’t abort another baby. Neither would my sister. It works both ways, people often forget.

Why? Because a girl with a baby is usually considered largely unmarriageable, especially in the ’70s when my mother was 14 and made the choice to have sex. She got pregnant; if she kept her baby, she may not have finished high school, or gone on to college. Her quality of life would have been drastically decreased by either of those things. Her friends and family would have shamed her; wasn’t it only 30 years ago that they didn’t allow visibly pregnant woman to teach in schools? Imagine what they would have done with pregnant students. Being a single parent is hard and not something I would wish on anyone who has other options. I don’t know if her boyfriend (if he was a boyfriend, or maybe just a random guy) was supportive of her at all; perhaps he didn’t even know about the pregnancy. It’s not his business to, either. But all I know is, she was able to have an abortion and she spared herself a world of suffering, and my unborn half-brother some too.

She later met my father. They knew and loved each other for six years, and both are college-educated, and were able to support a family of four. The chances of her finding time to even meet my father while caring for a child were very, very slim. So that is why I am definitely pro-choice, and if I turned my back on that I feel I would largely be turning my back on my own existence. Something I have always very firmly believed in is that children should be born into as stable an environment as possible. This is probably why I have decided that kids, adopted or not, will have to come for me after 30, when I’ll hopefully be well-settled in life.

So the question really is; what if my mother had been ‘pro-life’? Should she do something stupid like having a baby when she’s not emotionally, monetarily, or even physically prepared, because it’s the ‘right thing to do’? Right now I’m watching my sister suffer the effects of having had a child with the wrong man, an abusive alchohlic. As much as I love my niece, I know that another child could have been born to another man, and that that child would have a much easier time at life. It’s not fair, but it is definitely true.

As long as people keep their laws off my body and my way of life, I’m perfectly happy. It’s your choice and you can choose to have a baby or you can choose not to. I will always pick what I think is smartest in any situation, and feel secure in the fact that no one can make those choices for me except, well, me. (:

By: Mobalized

Mobalized — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:30:25 +0000

Just because someone is pro choice doesnt mean they are going to have a abortion. My parents are pro choice as am i. More than likely pro choice would be exercised in a situation where necessary by most people although yes there are people that abuse it as there are people that abuse everything. You say if she had have made the choice to have a abortion you would not be there, well if she had have been hit by a car or something you may not be there either.

By: Crystal

Crystal — Sat, 17 May 2008 00:59:39 +0000

I agree with Curiousgyrl. A woman can be pro-choice but not want to end her child’s life. Wording is key.

By: curiousgyrl

curiousgyrl — Tue, 15 May 2007 16:07:28 +0000

Q: what if your mother was pro-choice?

the right answer is, of course:

A: My mother is pro-choice…

By: Jamie

Jamie — Mon, 14 May 2007 01:02:34 +0000

“speculating about what if I wasn’t is a purely philosophical matter with no practical bearing.”
By your reasoning murderers shouldn’t be prosecuted if there isn’t any chance of a repeat offense. After all, the murder victim is dead and no legal action will bring them back.

By: Vortex(t) :: Talking with my 11-year old daughter about abortion, and other difficult but necessary tasks

Sat, 13 Jan 2007 08:56:29 +0000

[...] Alas, A Blog [...]

By: Southern Discomfort » None of these secrets are mine, but some are apt: Some reflections on Mother’s Day, literature, and reproductive rights.

Sun, 16 Jul 2006 06:13:07 +0000

[...] But this, I feared, would leave me even more open to misinterpretation by by mother than everything else I say already does, despite the fact that we are both pro-choice. I was born before Roe v. Wade, and, given some evidence of my mother’s reluctance about parenting - having her tubes tied right after I was born, giving up custody of me when she wanted to move to St. Thomas, etc. - it has certainly crossed my mind that had abortion been both easily accessible and legal at the time I was conceived, it’s possible I wouldn’t have been born, at least into this body. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t exist; my spiritual belief, while not formally declared within an organized religious context, is that souls not given an immediate opportunity to become embodied drift elsewhere, find other hosts, vehicles, instruments of presence. So if I had been a soul waiting for an embodiment, in the “queue” of my mother’s uterine lining, and she was not ready for me either in spirit or in body, I would have simply moved on. (For an excellent, less esoteric discussion of some of these matters, by the way, see What if your mother was pro-choice? at Alas.) [...]

By: Running With Symbols

Running With Symbols — Sun, 14 May 2006 13:08:13 +0000

None of these secrets are mine, but some are apt: Some reflections on Mother’s Day, literature, and reproductive rights….

Note: This Mother’s Day entry is dedicated to all the women I love: those who are mothers or not, by choice or not. You know who you are. I love the hell out of some Post Secret. (What is Post…

By: It’s All Connected… » Blog Archive » Know Thine Enemy: Fetal Personhood as Metaphorical Thinking

Fri, 03 Mar 2006 02:54:30 +0000

[...] I have wanted to write about this for aÂ while, now, everÂ since I read through the thread called (Very) Basic Economics and Abortion over at Alas, A Blog. Since then, though, a number of things have happened: the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case concerning so-called “partial-birth abortions,” South Dakota has passed the most restrictive law in the country against abortion, Utah has a proposed law that would eliminate incest exceptions in its parental notification law, and I have been in another conversation,Â WhatÂ If Your Mother Was Pro-Choice,Â on Alas, the initial post of which concerned a common strategy used by people who are anti-choice to try to silenceÂ those of us who are pro-choice: what would have happened if your mother had chosen to have an abortion instead of giving birth to you? At one point the thread became a conversation about whether the immaculate conception was an instance of divine rape or not (start reading here). This was relevant because it went to the question of what it means for women to have real choice in terms of pregnancy and childbirth…which also means in terms of when and whether and under what conditions to have sex…and, though I don’t remember that this point was brought out explicitly, to the question of what we model our understanding of women’s reproductive choice on. (I have italicized this because it will become important later on, towards the end of what I want to say.) What I want to do here is to try to tie all these various things together under the title I have given this post because I think it goes to the heart of understanding a rarely articulated aspect of what is at stake in the anti-choice position, whether it is articulated in explicitly religious terms or not, and because, under the general strategy of “know thine enemy,” I think this is an important understanding to reach. It’s going to take a while, and I’m going to have to make a number of leaps,Â to get where I want to go in this, so I hope you will bear with me. [...]

By: Lee

Lee — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 15:13:28 +0000

Well, the male cattle aspect was part of the reason why I thought worship of Ba’aa was patriarchal. I was responding to QGrrrl’s assertion that it was matriarchal, ’cause I’m always willing to learn new stuff, if true.

By: mythago

mythago — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 02:23:19 +0000

Or am I confusing religions here?

No, you’re not. The goal of much of the written Hebrew tradition was to forbid the worship of other gods, not merely goddesses. Ishtar/Astarte/Anat were not part of a matriarchal pantheon, much less matriarchal societies.

The idea of Bull El or Ba’al or being ‘matriarchal’—uh, why do you think these god were represented by male cattle?

By: Barbara

Barbara — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 19:58:43 +0000

As for Nick’s post, as many have already said, we are all the product of fateful events and chance encounters, it’s silly to pretend that adding or deleting the right to abortion achieves some sort of primacy over all the other events of chance that gave us our existence.

Some kids (mine) wouldn’t be here if their mothers had not had abortions.
And I always thought the answer to the “what if . . .” question was Bach, not Beethoven or Mozart (definitely not Mozart). But whether it’s Bach or Hitler or Stalin who would not have been born, there’s no reason to believe that unrestrained procreation is necessary for genius, goodness, or evil, and there’s no reason to believe the opposite. Some things just aren’t related, and if they are, my guess is that the loved child, whether wanted or not, is less likely to be evil and more likely to do good. Bach was great because he was born into an uber-musical family and had talent that someone nurtured (his brother). (Apparently, in the state where the Bach family was centered, “Bach” became slang for musician.)

By: Barbara

Barbara — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 19:43:39 +0000

It seems to me that the disparity in power between God and Mary (even if it is just Gabriel speaking) is at least as great as that between the average high school student and her male teacher. I’m willing to accept that Mary’s fate didn’t involve “actual” rape, but it sure as heck doesn’t constitute unqualified, knowing and informed consent, so I’m going with statutory rape. And I don’t even know Mary’s age at the time but I’m guessing it’s below our own current age of consent. Before we get too wrapped up in how anachronistic it is to apply our own standards, in Mary’s time and place, please remember that according to the laws of the time this action almost certainly would have been considered fornication for which Mary could have been stoned to death were it not for God’s second angel to Joseph. Also, Mary couldn’t consent to any man for anything for any reason. That was her father’s prerogative, and then her husband’s. Ab initio, Mary’s consent could not have been legally valid.

By: Robert

Robert — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 18:48:35 +0000

The Canaanites, Phoenicians, et al, were patriarchal societies. There were feminine elements/deities to the Mediterranean and Sumerian paganisms (Isis/Ishtar) but matriarchy, if it had ever existed (opinions vary), was extirpated long before Abraham came onto the scene.