Save me from poking the not-so-sleeping bear of my fundamentalist relatives on facebook!
There are always at least a few in every family, aren't they? For every amazing relative like my mother in law, who grew up in the same conservative and rural town as I did, and is now one of the most loving, accepting (not tolerant, fuck tolerant, but ACCEPTING of everyone as just exactly who they are) person that I know, there's one like her sister.
Nice lady, but she married an extremely conservative American fella and moved there with him, raised her two kids there, and they've all got the same fundamentalist overly evangelistic smile sweetly and talk about Jesus while jamming their particular brand of religious dogma right down your throat and camping out with it in the middle of your bedroom.
(My particular brand of religion isn't really the topic of conversation, but the thirty second version for anyone who doesn't know is that as long as you're not hurting anyone--and hurting yourself counts as hurting someone--then whatever you believe, and however you want to practice your faith is all right by me. As soon as what you believe and how you practice your beliefs starts hurting people, then we have a problem.)
Anyway, surprisingly enough, the AH's aunt and I get along, but I have a bad feeling I'm gonna break that streak one of these days with her, along with a handful of others. Possibly soon.
Because among my conservative relatives, abortion is the latest issue of choice for them to get all facebook posty about.
And okay--I need to double back a second. Their facebook, their choice to post about stuff. I'm not gonna be the guy who stomps into their posts and tells them what they're doing wrong with their lives, or that they're stupid stupid heads who are stupid or whatever. Their space, their opinion. If someone says something hateful? I'm gonna call them on it. And I do. But if they're posting about something they believe in... I don't go in there and start shit. It's their space, and they can post what they like there.
They post their pictures from their religious blogs against Planned Parenthood, and I post the pie chart that shows how much of the Planned Parenting funding goes toward abortions, and how much of it goes towards a bazillion different kinds of women's health care, particularly for people who are low-income and wouldn't have access to those services. I post the links about marriage recognition, and how it's been legal here since 2005, and Canada's still standing. You get the idea.
What I don't usually do is take their links or their posts and comment directly on them. They do their thing, and I do my thing, and it usually works out reasonably well... or at least I haven't had a screaming cage match on Facebook in awhile.
But. There's this thing.
There's this article that just about every pro-life person on my facebook has posted. It's about the trial of Doctor Kermit Gosnell, and the allegedly (I say allegedly because I haven't read up on it, and it's a legal proceeding that's still, well, proceeding, not because I'm claiming that it's not true) horrifically awful things that went on at his clinic. And apparently the trial hasn't been getting a lot of news coverage, which is part of what the article is about, saying that the media is censoring any coverage about the trial.
(And okay, sidenote again, but that's just confusing for me too, because in Canada, we have media blackouts during trials, and very little information is allowed to come out while the trial is still in process.)
So I don't know much about this case... I don't know much about the trial, or what's going on with it exactly, and it sounds like the details are horrifying and disgusting and appalling and just plain fucking sad.
And the pro-life family members I have are demanding an end to the censorship, and using this trial and this doctor as an example of why abortion should be banned.
I think it's an example of why it should be legal. And protected. And made more available, not less available. Why it should be a medical procedure that's performed in hospitals, not excommunicated out to clinics that can be made into targets and places for the righteous to gather and condemn the people who need those services.
I think that what happened is what happens when you make it almost impossible to get the medical care that people need. They get desperate. They end up going to places and people who are a last resort, because no one else will help them. This is the outcome of a broken system.
Assuming he's guilty and that all of this is true (what with this still being in process and therefore alleged), the doctor is responsible for his actions. The responsibility for creating a situation where people end up putting themselves in the hands of someone like him? That's on everyone who's ever voted for a pro-life candidate, everyone who's ever pushed to make it harder for women to get the medical care they need. Banning abortion will not end abortion. Ever. If someone wants and needs one badly enough, they will find a way. And that means more Doctor Gosnells. More back alley clinics of horrors. More people taking advantage of desperate women.
And I want to say that. I really kind of do. Even though it'll spark off a shit show. Even though I don't think it'll change anyone's mind, or affect anyone's opinion.
Before I had the aliens, I worried about what having children would do to my political views. I was worried that I'd turn all conservative, that I'd turn pro-life, that I'd be annoying people who were childfree and preaching the OMG EVERYONE MUST HAVE BABIES!1! gospel to all and sundry.
It didn't happen. If anything, I'm more pro-choice and more supportive of people who are childfree than ever.
Because it's motherfucking HARD. I had to use science to create my little people. I wanted them a whole hell of a lot, and it was still hard. There were portions of my pregnancy where I didn't feel like I was allowed to complain because it would be ungrateful, because I'd wanted them so badly and worked so hard to build them. But that's crazy talk. Because being pregnant is hard. Having babies, raising children into decent human beings is hard. And it's allowed to be frustrated about it and even complain about it.
And it's not that people who choose not to have kids aren't up for the work of it all, or that they can't hack it. Whatever. That's bullshit. It's that it's their choice whether or not they want to. Or it should be, anyway. Parenthood should always be a choice, if at all possible. Not an obligation, not a duty, not something that you do because someone's bullying you or guilting you or anything you into it. And that's not always the way that it is, and that makes me so goddamned sad, and angry, and like kicking the kneecaps of people who won't let it be like that.
Because. Pro choice. Which means choice. The choice to have the baby, to not have the baby, to never have any babies ever, to change your mind about whether you want to have babies or not, because some people think they want to, and end up deciding no, not for me so much, no thank you. And some people go the other way. And it should never be anyone's business besides the people who are going to be creating the little person in question. And the veto always goes to the person whose uterus it's going to be occupying. Always.
This is, of course, in Jay's perfect world. You should see the sky there, it's beautiful.
So... I don't know. I don't know whether to post or to not post, or to rankle my conservative relatives or live to fight another day. But I do know that I am not going to do the silence=acceptance thing around them. I won't go into their space and push my opinion on them when they're stating theirs. But I'm reserving the right to be able to use my space to assert mine.
Nice lady, but she married an extremely conservative American fella and moved there with him, raised her two kids there, and they've all got the same fundamentalist overly evangelistic smile sweetly and talk about Jesus while jamming their particular brand of religious dogma right down your throat and camping out with it in the middle of your bedroom.
(My particular brand of religion isn't really the topic of conversation, but the thirty second version for anyone who doesn't know is that as long as you're not hurting anyone--and hurting yourself counts as hurting someone--then whatever you believe, and however you want to practice your faith is all right by me. As soon as what you believe and how you practice your beliefs starts hurting people, then we have a problem.)
Anyway, surprisingly enough, the AH's aunt and I get along, but I have a bad feeling I'm gonna break that streak one of these days with her, along with a handful of others. Possibly soon.
Because among my conservative relatives, abortion is the latest issue of choice for them to get all facebook posty about.
And okay--I need to double back a second. Their facebook, their choice to post about stuff. I'm not gonna be the guy who stomps into their posts and tells them what they're doing wrong with their lives, or that they're stupid stupid heads who are stupid or whatever. Their space, their opinion. If someone says something hateful? I'm gonna call them on it. And I do. But if they're posting about something they believe in... I don't go in there and start shit. It's their space, and they can post what they like there.
They post their pictures from their religious blogs against Planned Parenthood, and I post the pie chart that shows how much of the Planned Parenting funding goes toward abortions, and how much of it goes towards a bazillion different kinds of women's health care, particularly for people who are low-income and wouldn't have access to those services. I post the links about marriage recognition, and how it's been legal here since 2005, and Canada's still standing. You get the idea.
What I don't usually do is take their links or their posts and comment directly on them. They do their thing, and I do my thing, and it usually works out reasonably well... or at least I haven't had a screaming cage match on Facebook in awhile.
But. There's this thing.
There's this article that just about every pro-life person on my facebook has posted. It's about the trial of Doctor Kermit Gosnell, and the allegedly (I say allegedly because I haven't read up on it, and it's a legal proceeding that's still, well, proceeding, not because I'm claiming that it's not true) horrifically awful things that went on at his clinic. And apparently the trial hasn't been getting a lot of news coverage, which is part of what the article is about, saying that the media is censoring any coverage about the trial.
(And okay, sidenote again, but that's just confusing for me too, because in Canada, we have media blackouts during trials, and very little information is allowed to come out while the trial is still in process.)
So I don't know much about this case... I don't know much about the trial, or what's going on with it exactly, and it sounds like the details are horrifying and disgusting and appalling and just plain fucking sad.
And the pro-life family members I have are demanding an end to the censorship, and using this trial and this doctor as an example of why abortion should be banned.
I think it's an example of why it should be legal. And protected. And made more available, not less available. Why it should be a medical procedure that's performed in hospitals, not excommunicated out to clinics that can be made into targets and places for the righteous to gather and condemn the people who need those services.
I think that what happened is what happens when you make it almost impossible to get the medical care that people need. They get desperate. They end up going to places and people who are a last resort, because no one else will help them. This is the outcome of a broken system.
Assuming he's guilty and that all of this is true (what with this still being in process and therefore alleged), the doctor is responsible for his actions. The responsibility for creating a situation where people end up putting themselves in the hands of someone like him? That's on everyone who's ever voted for a pro-life candidate, everyone who's ever pushed to make it harder for women to get the medical care they need. Banning abortion will not end abortion. Ever. If someone wants and needs one badly enough, they will find a way. And that means more Doctor Gosnells. More back alley clinics of horrors. More people taking advantage of desperate women.
And I want to say that. I really kind of do. Even though it'll spark off a shit show. Even though I don't think it'll change anyone's mind, or affect anyone's opinion.
Before I had the aliens, I worried about what having children would do to my political views. I was worried that I'd turn all conservative, that I'd turn pro-life, that I'd be annoying people who were childfree and preaching the OMG EVERYONE MUST HAVE BABIES!1! gospel to all and sundry.
It didn't happen. If anything, I'm more pro-choice and more supportive of people who are childfree than ever.
Because it's motherfucking HARD. I had to use science to create my little people. I wanted them a whole hell of a lot, and it was still hard. There were portions of my pregnancy where I didn't feel like I was allowed to complain because it would be ungrateful, because I'd wanted them so badly and worked so hard to build them. But that's crazy talk. Because being pregnant is hard. Having babies, raising children into decent human beings is hard. And it's allowed to be frustrated about it and even complain about it.
And it's not that people who choose not to have kids aren't up for the work of it all, or that they can't hack it. Whatever. That's bullshit. It's that it's their choice whether or not they want to. Or it should be, anyway. Parenthood should always be a choice, if at all possible. Not an obligation, not a duty, not something that you do because someone's bullying you or guilting you or anything you into it. And that's not always the way that it is, and that makes me so goddamned sad, and angry, and like kicking the kneecaps of people who won't let it be like that.
Because. Pro choice. Which means choice. The choice to have the baby, to not have the baby, to never have any babies ever, to change your mind about whether you want to have babies or not, because some people think they want to, and end up deciding no, not for me so much, no thank you. And some people go the other way. And it should never be anyone's business besides the people who are going to be creating the little person in question. And the veto always goes to the person whose uterus it's going to be occupying. Always.
This is, of course, in Jay's perfect world. You should see the sky there, it's beautiful.
So... I don't know. I don't know whether to post or to not post, or to rankle my conservative relatives or live to fight another day. But I do know that I am not going to do the silence=acceptance thing around them. I won't go into their space and push my opinion on them when they're stating theirs. But I'm reserving the right to be able to use my space to assert mine.