(Untitled)

[kitsune_den]

This was originally written in response to pythia_akrypta's post on the South Dakota anti-abortion law issue. Like pythia, my feelings on this issue are so complex and conflicted that I feel a similar difficulty towards putting them into words. Because of that, this post will be very rambly, and I can't guarantee that my arguments are going to be

Comments

[unforth]

It is my deep suspician that most women who have seriously thought about the abortion issue are conflicted about it in some way. There is so much to take into account, but I feel that the problem with anti-abortion laws isn't on the individual level. Each person has to decide what is right for them, and some will decide that they are comfortable having an abortion, and some will decide (for any number of reasons) that they are not. However, the law in the U.S. is supposed to be representative of freedom of choice and action, and therefore, whatever we decide, the law should protect us, and that's why I feel that abortion MUST be legal - when it is legal, the choice still exists, and those who find it objectionable for whatever reason (moral, religious, etc.) can choose not to, but when it is illegal, that choice is taken away from all of those who would have opted to have one.

[lillornyn]

Before I start, I'd like to disclaim that I have no intent on arguing any point for or against the current political issue. Rather, something you said triggered a question in me, and I'm curious to hear your response.

When people refer to fetuses as resembling "parasites", I think I understand why they say that and where they're coming from. That said, it seems to me (and I admit my perceptions as both a man and someone who has never been a parent may be *radically* skewed here) that a six-month old infant is every bit as dependent on and demanding of the mother as the fetus was during pregnancy. Honestly (and here's where my ignorance of parenting comes into play) it seems like the infant might be more of a parasite, since it actively requires the attention and care of the parents, while the fetus is just sort of along for the ride (I know that's an oversimplification, but I hope you take my meaning

[kitsune_den]

A parasite, by definition, is an organism that grows in and feeds upon another organism while contributing nothing to the survival of its host. It cannot be removed from its environmental conditions and survive. A six-month old baby can be cared for by multiple providers, can be moved about, can survive in an environment entirely removed from the person who birthed it. I tend to be against late-term abortions because at that point the fetus could be removed from the person's womb and potentially survive and continue development. Frankly, I think we as a society are a lot less concerned about the welfare of many six-month old babies (many of whom are not provided for adequately) than we are about potentially aborted fetuses

[lillornyn]

I wasn't trying to be coy, honest, and neither was I really questioning your ideas (I find that I agree with you almost point-for-point).

I meant to ask a related question on the subject, namely, why you thought birth has such a strong consensus despite it being a rather arbitrary marker (and what you thought about it). When I said "on the surface, that answer seems obvious," I meant that birth probably has such a strong consensus because A) it's such a dramatic event, and B) because of the definition of parasite, as you outline in your first paragraph. But as I also said, I suspect that the situation is really more complicated, as you point out with late-term abortions, etc.

I didn't even mean to imply that you believed fetuses to be parasites (another point on which we agree). Mostly the question just occurred to me, and finding myself in strong agreement with your post (as well as the fact that you admittedly know a great deal more about the issues involved than I do) I thought I'd ask you for your thoughts on the tangent.

[drydem]

I wouldn't normally comment from over here, but this is an issue that I feel strongly about so I will. I consider myself anti-abortion and pro-choice. Both opinions come from life experiences that influenced me greatly. When I say I am anti-abortion, it is because I believe that abortions(especially the surgical kind performed in the US, opposed to the chemical kind that can be performed in Europe, but are not legal in the US) are traumatic procedures that end in the termination of a potential life and in the psychological scarring of the woman involved, as well as those around her. When I first moved to Bloomington, I shared my small apartment with a close friend from childhood. She got an abortion partway through that year and I spent two months comforting her because her boyfriend (who worked as a guard at a battered women's shelter)abandoned her. It was a difficult time, as she did not leave the apartment and so I have come to see how painful and traumatic abortion can be, and thus think it is an unpleasant option

[ombriel]

If girls were taught at a young age that their body is theirs to do with as they please...

Moreover, if society didn't tolerate and, in its complacence, tacitly condone men's violence towards women's bodies in the form of rape and domestic abuse...

[drydem]

fuck yeah. It's one of the biggest problems in the world, the constant threat of one half of the world against the other.

[kitsune_den]

"in the psychological scarring of the woman involved"

While I don't deny that this occurs in varying degrees for women who have had abortions, neither do I think it is an inevitability. I think that the expectation of scarring is a construction that may actually contribute to that self-same scarring.

[swan_tower]

I still have difficulty getting regular access to reliable and convenient methods of birth control

Really? I'd be curious to know what kind of difficulties you run into -- whether you're having problems I'm not, or whether our definitions of problems differ.

[kitsune_den]

Remember that I've gone from being insured to being uninsured to being insured again. When I'm uninsured I go through Planned Parenthood, and have to pay out of pocket for both birth control and my yearly exam (a yearly exam is required to be perscribed BC). While this isn't a great financial hardship, it is a dent (about $400/year), and it's something I have to take care of monthly because I don't often have the disposable cash to take care of on a yearly basis. When I'm insured I go through whomever can draw upon that insurance, but I still have a copay. This also has meant that I'm changing brands of BC every year to two years, which is unreliable and increases the chance of BC failure and the need for alternative methods. So, my access is neither reliable nor convenient, and I'm one of the luckier ones.

[swan_tower]

I guess I see your point there, but at the same time, I'm not sure (without more information) that I'd call the situation a problem. I think it's probably a good thing to require a yearly exam, though I admit I don't know if it's medically necessary. I also don't feel the cost of birth control pills is unreasonably high, though again I don't have the data to know how much it's inflated for the profit of the manufacturer. And there are cheaper, less complicated alternatives (i.e. condoms), though you could certainly argue the finer points of reliability and convenience.

The problem as you describe it seems to be more a problem of our health care system as a whole than of birth control specifically. (Leaving aside, of course, idiotic situations like the insurance companies that wanted to cover Viagra but not the pill -- fuck that noise.)

[dillochan]

But many women and girls are not even as aware of the options that are available regarding BC. Thus, if she has these problems (and I share her pain in this, though I've stuck to the same type of BC for years) what do those that have even less reliable information have to fall back on?

As to the yearly visits to the doc, that is because BC has known specific side effects that can cause serious health risks (which is why they require a Pap smear every year).

[gandolfcnc]

According to the Supreme Court of the US in the Case Roe v Wade Human beings conceive human beings. At the moment of conception a human being is conceived. So, legally, in the US, humanity is at the point of conception. This was the Supreme Courts acceptance of the scientific evidence. The findings in Roe v Wade were not relative to the humanity of the being conceived, but the point at which that being had "rights" and protection of those rights under the law