How...fair.
I just got a phonecall, asking "my opinions." It was one of those "Press 1 for this, press2 for that."
Most of the questions would narrow down... for example, "Are you republican? Press 1 for yes press 2 for no." "Are you democrat? Press 1 for yes, 2 for no, so on and so forth.
One question... "Do you consider yourself to be pro-life?" I pressed 2. And that's as far as it went.
Yes, I see their assumption that if you're not "prolife" you're "prochoice" but there are some people out there who are actually proabortion. Few and far between, but they do exist.
I don't like the idea that I'm now lumped in with them. That you're either prolife, or you're proabortion. I'm prochoice meaning that I believe everyone has the right to decide what's best for them. While at this point in my life, the odds of my getting pregnant are very slim, if I were to get pregnant, I'd have the baby. However, there were many points in my life where I can almost garentee I would have had an abortion, so who am I to tell anyone what would be best for them?
Every day the wheel turns to make us women not only become second class citizens, only worthy for what our wombs can produce, but they're making sure that as many people as possible feel this is the only moral choice to make. Girls and young women are being fed on a diet of, "It's cold blooded murder! The only morally upstanding choice to make is to be entirely pro-life. Anything else and you're just in favor of murdering innocent babies!"
The problem with this is that we now have to make a choice. What is more important, a fetus that may or may not become a human being able to survive away from the host (mother) and who may or may not grow up to be a human being. Vs. a woman who is a human being, able to survive quite nicely whether she has a fetus inside of her or not.
While abortion might be a horrible idea for you, personally, do you really have the right to determine that the life of a fetus takes priority over the life of the woman who carries it? Because you can't tell me for one fuckin' second that if you make abortion illegal that all of us women are going to toe the line, have babies, and love every moment of it. Abortion will still happen, but it will be safe for the rich and dangerous for the poor. And yes, there will be women who will feel forced into having babies.
Ah yes, I see you billions of folks waving your hands frantically and saying, "What about adoption?"
What about it?
Yes, adoption is a wonderful thing. Women who give up their babies for adoption are wonderful human beings, blah blah blah. I will never knock adoption for either the adoptive parent or the birth mother. However it is not a blanket solution. And before you start accusing me of being unfair, I'm adopted. And yeah, I get the, "Then you should be grateful to your birthmother that she didn't have an abortion!" all the time. And my opinion on that?
"Thanks a lot you assholes."
Don't shove that burden on my head, thank you very much. I don't recall having any choice in the matter or not, yet this burden has been thrown at me all my life. All my life I've been expected to hold this faceless woman on some type of holy pedestal. There she is, the woman who could have killed me, but noooo, she didn't! Isn't she wonderful? On top of that, I've always been told that I should be on my knees thanking God that my parents adopted me. (Funny though, this worship attitude for my parents has come from everyone but my parents themselves. They take the attitude that since I was too young to have a choice, I don't "owe" them for taking me in.)
Well, guess what? Had she decided to abort me, I wouldn't be around to care much one way or another, so it's a moot point. Being adopted doesn't automatically mean I must be prolife. In fact, I can give you a lot of examples in which adoption isn't the great solution everyone thinks it is.
There is absolutely no such thing as a "One-solution-fits-all" for any pregancy. Deep down we know that. But the moral majority (which, as I often say, is neither) doesn't like that idea, so they put it in black and white. An unborn fetus is more important than a human being. Particularly a woman. The moment you start telling women what they can and cannot do when they are pregnant, you have just put the life of the unborn above that of the host.
And, if some of these fanatics get their way, the most reliable forms of birth control will soon be illegal too. The real fringe wants most types of the pill to be illegal, all IUD's, the patch, etc. I've even heard of lunatics saying that since sperm are techically "alive" that spermacide should be abolished too. What's that? Some of you are laughing? Saying to yourself, "Oh, Darq, those people are so far in left field, no one takes them seriously."
Well, a couple years ago, I never ever would have believed S.D. could get away with what they did, so I'm not so sure. What seems crazy today could very well become law tomorrow.
ANY time laws are made which take away the rights that a human being has had, you send a clear message to that human being. "You are no longer considered as high up on the social ladder as you were. We have determined that you are unable to decide what's best for you by yourself." And in this case, you tell your daughters and your wives that what their wombs might produce takes priority over their own lives.
I don't have any children. There have been times when this has made me wonder. Times when I've thought that maybe I made a mistake. While I've rarely thought of myself as "bad" for not having children, I also haven't ever thought I deserved a medal for not having them. I don't buy into the Vehment movement and I understand that as I get older it will be the children of others who have to help care for me. I just always figured I didn't do any harm by not having kids, 'cause I sure don't seem to see a shortage of them running around.
However, little by little I'm starting to feel that yeah, I did the right thing. That I saved my daughters from living in a world where they would become slaves to their wombs. That I saved my sons from having to deal with a world that would rather see their wives and daughters die before they would let them decide to end a pregnancy.
I grew up in the '60s & '70s. A very weird time a lot of people say, but it was an exciting time too. I grew up thinking I was so lucky to be a girl. There was nothing I couldn't do if I wanted to and if I were physically and mentally able. To me, more doors were open being female then they were being male. Women who were good with a screwdriver were considered handy. Yet, if I wanted to put on a dress and curl my hair, that was fine too. The world was mine, and all I was limited by was myself, not society.
It's rather sad that I'm now 44 and I'm watching all of that crumble before my very eyes. Sure, some might say, "But Darq, it's only this one issue, no one is saying women can't become doctors or lawyers, that women can't do anything they want in life, all we're saying is that if you don't want to have babies, then you can't have sex!"
Nope, sorry, it doesn't work like that. Once you start putting one type of being above another, the easier it gets to start pushing that person further and further down the line. If you start telling a woman that the fetus she carries is more important than she is, that she can't be trusted to make the choice that's best for the products of her womb, then it gets all too easy to start thinking that maybe women aren't quite as good in other areas. You make it so a woman has only two choices, abstenence or babies ('cause no form of BC is 100% effective, and on top of that, the fanatics want to take away the ones with the best sucess rates) it gets too easy to turn women into second class citzens.
I'm prochoice because I believe that women have the right to control their own destiny. I'm not sure if God considered abortion to be murder or not. From the evidence I've seen in the Bible and in nature itself (which, if you believe in God, you believe God really is "Mother nature") I don't think God does. But, if he does, then he'll deal with those who have had abortions when the time comes. It's not my place to play God.
Most of the questions would narrow down... for example, "Are you republican? Press 1 for yes press 2 for no." "Are you democrat? Press 1 for yes, 2 for no, so on and so forth.
One question... "Do you consider yourself to be pro-life?" I pressed 2. And that's as far as it went.
Yes, I see their assumption that if you're not "prolife" you're "prochoice" but there are some people out there who are actually proabortion. Few and far between, but they do exist.
I don't like the idea that I'm now lumped in with them. That you're either prolife, or you're proabortion. I'm prochoice meaning that I believe everyone has the right to decide what's best for them. While at this point in my life, the odds of my getting pregnant are very slim, if I were to get pregnant, I'd have the baby. However, there were many points in my life where I can almost garentee I would have had an abortion, so who am I to tell anyone what would be best for them?
Every day the wheel turns to make us women not only become second class citizens, only worthy for what our wombs can produce, but they're making sure that as many people as possible feel this is the only moral choice to make. Girls and young women are being fed on a diet of, "It's cold blooded murder! The only morally upstanding choice to make is to be entirely pro-life. Anything else and you're just in favor of murdering innocent babies!"
The problem with this is that we now have to make a choice. What is more important, a fetus that may or may not become a human being able to survive away from the host (mother) and who may or may not grow up to be a human being. Vs. a woman who is a human being, able to survive quite nicely whether she has a fetus inside of her or not.
While abortion might be a horrible idea for you, personally, do you really have the right to determine that the life of a fetus takes priority over the life of the woman who carries it? Because you can't tell me for one fuckin' second that if you make abortion illegal that all of us women are going to toe the line, have babies, and love every moment of it. Abortion will still happen, but it will be safe for the rich and dangerous for the poor. And yes, there will be women who will feel forced into having babies.
Ah yes, I see you billions of folks waving your hands frantically and saying, "What about adoption?"
What about it?
Yes, adoption is a wonderful thing. Women who give up their babies for adoption are wonderful human beings, blah blah blah. I will never knock adoption for either the adoptive parent or the birth mother. However it is not a blanket solution. And before you start accusing me of being unfair, I'm adopted. And yeah, I get the, "Then you should be grateful to your birthmother that she didn't have an abortion!" all the time. And my opinion on that?
"Thanks a lot you assholes."
Don't shove that burden on my head, thank you very much. I don't recall having any choice in the matter or not, yet this burden has been thrown at me all my life. All my life I've been expected to hold this faceless woman on some type of holy pedestal. There she is, the woman who could have killed me, but noooo, she didn't! Isn't she wonderful? On top of that, I've always been told that I should be on my knees thanking God that my parents adopted me. (Funny though, this worship attitude for my parents has come from everyone but my parents themselves. They take the attitude that since I was too young to have a choice, I don't "owe" them for taking me in.)
Well, guess what? Had she decided to abort me, I wouldn't be around to care much one way or another, so it's a moot point. Being adopted doesn't automatically mean I must be prolife. In fact, I can give you a lot of examples in which adoption isn't the great solution everyone thinks it is.
There is absolutely no such thing as a "One-solution-fits-all" for any pregancy. Deep down we know that. But the moral majority (which, as I often say, is neither) doesn't like that idea, so they put it in black and white. An unborn fetus is more important than a human being. Particularly a woman. The moment you start telling women what they can and cannot do when they are pregnant, you have just put the life of the unborn above that of the host.
And, if some of these fanatics get their way, the most reliable forms of birth control will soon be illegal too. The real fringe wants most types of the pill to be illegal, all IUD's, the patch, etc. I've even heard of lunatics saying that since sperm are techically "alive" that spermacide should be abolished too. What's that? Some of you are laughing? Saying to yourself, "Oh, Darq, those people are so far in left field, no one takes them seriously."
Well, a couple years ago, I never ever would have believed S.D. could get away with what they did, so I'm not so sure. What seems crazy today could very well become law tomorrow.
ANY time laws are made which take away the rights that a human being has had, you send a clear message to that human being. "You are no longer considered as high up on the social ladder as you were. We have determined that you are unable to decide what's best for you by yourself." And in this case, you tell your daughters and your wives that what their wombs might produce takes priority over their own lives.
I don't have any children. There have been times when this has made me wonder. Times when I've thought that maybe I made a mistake. While I've rarely thought of myself as "bad" for not having children, I also haven't ever thought I deserved a medal for not having them. I don't buy into the Vehment movement and I understand that as I get older it will be the children of others who have to help care for me. I just always figured I didn't do any harm by not having kids, 'cause I sure don't seem to see a shortage of them running around.
However, little by little I'm starting to feel that yeah, I did the right thing. That I saved my daughters from living in a world where they would become slaves to their wombs. That I saved my sons from having to deal with a world that would rather see their wives and daughters die before they would let them decide to end a pregnancy.
I grew up in the '60s & '70s. A very weird time a lot of people say, but it was an exciting time too. I grew up thinking I was so lucky to be a girl. There was nothing I couldn't do if I wanted to and if I were physically and mentally able. To me, more doors were open being female then they were being male. Women who were good with a screwdriver were considered handy. Yet, if I wanted to put on a dress and curl my hair, that was fine too. The world was mine, and all I was limited by was myself, not society.
It's rather sad that I'm now 44 and I'm watching all of that crumble before my very eyes. Sure, some might say, "But Darq, it's only this one issue, no one is saying women can't become doctors or lawyers, that women can't do anything they want in life, all we're saying is that if you don't want to have babies, then you can't have sex!"
Nope, sorry, it doesn't work like that. Once you start putting one type of being above another, the easier it gets to start pushing that person further and further down the line. If you start telling a woman that the fetus she carries is more important than she is, that she can't be trusted to make the choice that's best for the products of her womb, then it gets all too easy to start thinking that maybe women aren't quite as good in other areas. You make it so a woman has only two choices, abstenence or babies ('cause no form of BC is 100% effective, and on top of that, the fanatics want to take away the ones with the best sucess rates) it gets too easy to turn women into second class citzens.
I'm prochoice because I believe that women have the right to control their own destiny. I'm not sure if God considered abortion to be murder or not. From the evidence I've seen in the Bible and in nature itself (which, if you believe in God, you believe God really is "Mother nature") I don't think God does. But, if he does, then he'll deal with those who have had abortions when the time comes. It's not my place to play God.