Isn't it lovely to live in a sexist culture where women aren't considered real humans?

[amilyn]

I've been meaning to post a link to this for a while now. cereta made a post that has spawned lots of thought and discussion that I think is important.

Comments

Re: Why I Am Part Of The Problem

[amilyn]

I don't like this idea that *either* you care about women *or* you care about unborn life, and you can't do both

I think the reason it's so often framed this way is that, at the end of the discussion, the woman who is already HERE either a) has agency over her life and body and mind and choices, OR b) she is bound--even with perhaps a few exceptions--to sacrifice the above to a creature that is growing in her body and cannot live outside of her body.

And I agree that the health of the offspring or potential offspring is important....it's just hard.

I mean, it really does become binary at that point. I do care about the health and safety of the pregnancy and fetus....but I admit I care MORE about the women who are HERE, the women who are, if there are not choices available, held hostage by that unborn life.

Now, I recognize that it is, in ways, an oversimplification, because this issue is complex beyond words. BUT...if we're going to say that the woman does not get choices, are we going to arrest women who do terminate pregnancies? What ARE the "mental health contingency" measures and who determines them--someone not inside her head and not her? Are we going to punish her (legally or otherwise) for "endangering" the fetus by endangering herself--driving dangerously, drinking, doing drugs, fighting, eating junk food, not eating, working (with or without knowledge) near toxic substances, etc.--or do we allow those choices, even knowing she's planning to carry the pregnancy to term and then bringing a possibly (or probably) damaged child into the world to be supported by the State?

I WANT women to have options and, in my view, any restriction on those options reduces a woman to the status of brood mare/incubator.

I mean, there were, in the past 8 years, steps taken to restrict women's access to certain health options (medications, tests) because an official movement was made to treat all women as pre-pregnant...JUST IN CASE.

If women can't choose not to have a baby once pregnant...how does one convince anyone to let that woman choose surgical sterilization (which MANY MANY places still won't do until she's of a certain age, "You might change your mind" or unless she has a man to concur that HE doesn't want her to have babies within their relationship (because HE should get to decide? ...mean can have vasectomies without approval from their wives/girlfriends...)...and what if she has no intimate relationship with a man? I've known several women who were denied tubals because of their age, relationship status, etc...at least two of whom then got pregnant because they had been denied the sterilization option of their choice...

It's just all hard and full of slippery slopes, all of which were forged by tectonic movements of MILLENIA of oppression of women and which we've inherited and trying to find a modern, woman-empowering set of rules within a patriarchal system...it's hard.

And I'm NOT angry with you. I don't think you're hateful or unthinking, and I'm just babbling and trying to explain the thinking that allows me to place the unborn blastocyst or zygote or fetus at a distant last behind the woman without whom that unborn could not survive...and whose body and mind and spirit will be irrevocably changed by the process of incubating that unborn. I think that is what, ultimately, makes it binary for me, as much as I want to say otherwise in order to be concilliatory or "balanced" as seen by the current rheotoric.

But I'm glad you're commenting and I hope you'll continue commenting.

Re: Why I Am Part Of The Problem

[lydiabell]

It's just all hard and full of slippery slopes, all of which were forged by tectonic movements of MILLENIA of oppression of women and which we've inherited and trying to find a modern, woman-empowering set of rules within a patriarchal system...it's hard.

This is exactly it. Trying to deal with the subject of abortion without understanding the influence of millenia of patriarchy strikes me as sort of like trying to deal with many of the conflicts in, say, modern Africa without understanding the influence of colonialism.

I'm not one of those people who thinks that only women should discuss abortion, but I do think that only people who understand about the oppression of women can discuss it in any useful way. (Frankly, I think that includes some men and excludes some women.)