Abortion Rights
I am pro-choice for moral reasons. You get one kind of social reality when women can control their reproductive situation, and hence their sexual one as well. You get a vastly different one when they can’t, and I consider the latter to be morally abhorrent.
Many of my female colleagues would prefer the entire matter be left up to them. There's no reason people without ovaries need to know about any of this, and it concerns a situation we don't face and have no experience of. But like many other self-important people with a high opinion of my opinions, I'm going to add a few more lines anyhow.
When I've made the point about the immorality of interfering with female control of female reproductive functionalities, I've obtained the response "The argument that you are making is that it is greater evil to force someone to carry a child to term against their will, than to allow them to kill that child. In other words, that this is a case of justifiable homicide?"
Not quite. It is greater evil to force a whole lot of somebodies - to the point of defining what it means to be that particular kind of somebody - to carry a child against their wills, hence categoricallly oppressing that entire category of somebody - than to allow them, collectively, to decide whether or not to abort. Those who are appalled usually aren't generally opposed to all cases in which humans intentionally end a human life. They'll reconcile themselves to the necessity of war and the military, even though the enemy soldier isn't often out there by choice. They'll say it's okay for people to kill in self-defense or in defense of others. Many have no problem with capital punishment. But they apparently have problems with moms doing what a mom's got to do on occasion. Doesn't mesh with their idea of motherhood and femininity, I guess.
Some folks tend to think of abortion as modern and technological and hence a departure from what's natural. But 12,000 years ago when Gina the hunter-gatherer reached puberty, she may not have had access to abortion but she also wasn’t going to be expected to raise any babies all on her own (it was the entire tribe’s responsiblity) nor was she a minor dependent on the largesse of adults but instead a regular contributor like any other adult. So pregnancy had vastly different consequences. It certainly wasn't shameful and didn't constitute a threat to social viability or a barrier to subsequent choices.
Some rank and file right-to-lifers actually do find abortion itself an upsetting idea, but their leadership is transparently motivated by a desire to return sexuality to the adversarial polarized patriarchal format, and that's the be-all and end-all of their purpose.
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My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback. eBook version and hardback versions to follow, stay tuned for details.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for GenderQueer now and for Guy in Women's Studies once they come out.
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This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
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Many of my female colleagues would prefer the entire matter be left up to them. There's no reason people without ovaries need to know about any of this, and it concerns a situation we don't face and have no experience of. But like many other self-important people with a high opinion of my opinions, I'm going to add a few more lines anyhow.
When I've made the point about the immorality of interfering with female control of female reproductive functionalities, I've obtained the response "The argument that you are making is that it is greater evil to force someone to carry a child to term against their will, than to allow them to kill that child. In other words, that this is a case of justifiable homicide?"
Not quite. It is greater evil to force a whole lot of somebodies - to the point of defining what it means to be that particular kind of somebody - to carry a child against their wills, hence categoricallly oppressing that entire category of somebody - than to allow them, collectively, to decide whether or not to abort. Those who are appalled usually aren't generally opposed to all cases in which humans intentionally end a human life. They'll reconcile themselves to the necessity of war and the military, even though the enemy soldier isn't often out there by choice. They'll say it's okay for people to kill in self-defense or in defense of others. Many have no problem with capital punishment. But they apparently have problems with moms doing what a mom's got to do on occasion. Doesn't mesh with their idea of motherhood and femininity, I guess.
Some folks tend to think of abortion as modern and technological and hence a departure from what's natural. But 12,000 years ago when Gina the hunter-gatherer reached puberty, she may not have had access to abortion but she also wasn’t going to be expected to raise any babies all on her own (it was the entire tribe’s responsiblity) nor was she a minor dependent on the largesse of adults but instead a regular contributor like any other adult. So pregnancy had vastly different consequences. It certainly wasn't shameful and didn't constitute a threat to social viability or a barrier to subsequent choices.
Some rank and file right-to-lifers actually do find abortion itself an upsetting idea, but their leadership is transparently motivated by a desire to return sexuality to the adversarial polarized patriarchal format, and that's the be-all and end-all of their purpose.
-----
My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback. eBook version and hardback versions to follow, stay tuned for details.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for GenderQueer now and for Guy in Women's Studies once they come out.
-------
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts