Rusty wire hangers and a dark corner
Legalizing abortion will result in THOUSANDS of abortions more per month!
This is, of course, what the conservative “ghod fearing” bigots would have you believe. That by legalizing abortion, we’d witness pregnant women all over the country, stampeding towards the first legal abortion clinic to open. That most women are just positively chomping at the bit, straining on their leashes, and would gladly stick bent, rusting wire hangers up their vaginas to try and turn the fetuses (fetii?) inside them into something resembling a bloody mashed potato.
That’s, they’ll tell you, how it’s turned out for aching teeth, right? Your tooth aches? You have a dentist pull it out. You’re pregnant? Well, by ghod! If we legalize abortion, you’d terminate your pregnancy the first chance you get!
Setting aside everything else, I really am baffled that there are women who back people who think like this. Forget the legal and moral arguments: how can anyone tolerate people who would think of them this way? What does it say of the people who march against legalizing abortion (causing massive traffic jams in the process), when—through their actions—they’ve implicitly agreed with the people who think that the only thing keeping them from aborting a pregnancy is the fact that’s illegal here?
No wonder bigots are always smirking: They’ve probably realized the irony of it all, and are laughing inside for being able to play all their followers for chumps.
But that’s probably giving them credit for more intelligence than they’re due.
Another thing I’ve noticed is that, in every country that’s tackled legalizing abortion, the ones with the loudest voices are the men. What the hell do we men know about pregnancy, anyway?—let alone giving birth. From what I’ve learned growing up, a man’s role in pregnancy is simply to help a woman get started, then get the hell out of the way. Once a woman’s pregnant, a man is relegated to the uncomplicated (though admittedly arduous at times) task of keeping the mother healthy and with a roof over her head.
So, why, oh why, are you women content in letting the least qualified people decide this issue for you?
No, no, let’s not count even the doctors. They may know how your body functions more than you ever will (though, from my experience with more than a couple of medical people, caring about you is a different thing altogether); the fact that it’s your body makes your voice the only thing that should matter.
Not the voice of some well-meaning old biddy, who’s way past child-bearing age, and is simply looking for something to do. Not that of a crummy politician who’s out to please everyone of voting age by promising them everything in the vaguest terms possible, giving them the chance to weasel out of anything at a later date.
No, not even the voice of a geeky blogger, whose only qualification is the fact that he’s a father.
Why are you letting the opinion of others dictate yours? Be it the opinion of your friends, your family, or even your cult: no opinion should weigh more than your own, because, otherwise, you’ve given up the one thing that (occassionally) sets us humans apart from lower order animals.
Why ignore facts and rational arguments in favor of the conditioning that’s been forced upon you, starting from when you couldn’t even realize that they’re violating you? Why limit yourself to knee-jerk reactions, before you can really think about an issue, without resorting to arguments that have been made for you?
Here, then, are the facts, as I see them. I’ve tried to be as objective as I can in presenting these; hopefully, you’ll try to be as objective as you can in reading them.
Abortions Happen¶
Not some deep philosophical musing; merely a statement of an otherwise—non-controversial fact. Abortions have happened, are happening and will continue to happen. Evidence of the truthiness of this statement is often presented on primetime news (usually when people are sitting down for supper, too).
Abortions happen for a variety of reasons; not all of them happen because the mother is living off of the streets, barely able to feed even herself. There’ve been plenty of middle-class folks who’ve terminated a pregnancy, and the news back when I was young were peppered with speculation that such-and-such local celebrity managed to squeeze in having an abortion during a trip overseas.
Being illegal has not stopped the number of abortions performed in this country; if anything, the numbers have gone up in recent years, along with the number of unwanted pregnancies. Note, however, that I am not implying causation—not even correlation. Again, merely statement of facts.
Unwanted Pregnancies are Real¶
The people who tend to be shocked that a pregnancy can be undesirable are almost always people who have never been raped, nor have had a family member go through such an ordeal. Or have never gone through a day wondering when they’re going to eat next. I like to think of them, and the rest who can't accept unwanted pregnancies as fact, as sheltered, escapist juveniles (regardless of their actual age) insisting on trying to live in a world of fantasy, where everything is sweetness and light.
Except this post is supposed to be about facts.
It's no secret that there have been rape victims who become pregnant and later on decide to see their pregnancies through. What's less well-known is the fact that these women are actually few and far between; they make better newscopy, and so are the ones who end up being interviewed by our favorite “unbiased” news outlets. No major news outlet wants to be branded as pro-abortion, and news editors know that they'd end up being labeled precisely so, if they ever dared to present stories of rape victims who would rather (understandbly) terminate a pregnancy resulting from rape.
And so we’re conditioned to think that the natural and “right” reaction to pregnancy-by-rape should be quiet and defeated acceptance, as if what happened was the rape victim’s fault. We’re conditioned to look upon those who fight back against what happened to them as “evil”, and if, ghod forbid, ever they should think that they have the right to do what they want with and to their bodies, then they are reprimanded (or worse, banished), for they were not properly appreciative of a “gift”.
Again, let me point out that the ones doing the judging in all but a few of these cases have not gone through what the victims have.
Focusing on the stories of those who conform to our society’s idea of what is acceptable, with more than subtle hints of praise, and then condemning people who make decisions based on their situations, is far removed from the objective reporting just about all journalists everywhere vehemently claim to uphold.
Forbidden, Unless Explicitly Allowed¶
Ask random strangers if they'd consider holding people at gunpoint for
their money. No particular reason; just for kicks. Most of (I’m
tempted to say all) the people you’d ask would say they won’t do it.
Why not? Because there’s a law against it,
dumdum—you wanna go get locked up?
Well, what about if, say, you lost your lunch money and you’re
really hungry. Still no? Why not? Because that’s not a good
enough reason!
, they’d say (and you’d probably agree).
Well, what is as a good enough reason? What if, say, your family’s starving, because you were kicked out of a job that wasn’t very good in the first place; plus, the damned government’s obviously not going to do anything to help little guys like you, because, hey, it’s their job to tell unfortunate folks to fuck off, right? Would you do it then?
Well…
People are always anxious to point out that the laws against crime X are the only reason there aren't more people going around committing it. Whatever happened to the Christian belief (you’d hear this view espoused pretty much every Sunday in pretty much every church in the country) that people are basically good? Why are these supposed model Catholics passing judgment on everyone else? Isn’t this the type of behavior that John the Baptist and Jesus rallied against?
My point—and I know I took my sweet time getting to it—is that just because something is legal (or, at least, doesn’t have laws against it) doesn’t have to mean that one is obliged to do it. Simple enough a concept, right?
Is it a wonder why I’m sitting here, scratching my head, wondering what the fuss is all about. Because, from where I’m sitting, the whole issue against legalizing abortion is the thought I posited earlier: Why are well-meaning old biddies and the slimy politicians behind them assuming that, should abortion be legalized, there’d be a sudden influx of abortees lining up on the first legal abortion clinic (and any subsequent ones)?
More importantly, why should YOU care, if you never plan on undergoing said operation?
A friend of mine has noted that abortion is illegal and that lawmakers want it to stay that way because it’s against the established morals of society. This is a democracy, after all: the will of the people above all!
Except we know this isn’t true, even without the usual hypocrisy that goes on in every representative government. What the people want is rarely what the people get: just ask everyone who has long wished income taxes to disappear.
Morals and ethics change—they have changed, repeatedly. If you don’t believe me, read Leviticus and tell me why we aren’t setting up unchaste wives in a public plaza somewhere and stoning them to death.
It can be argued that one of the government’s jobs is to guard and guide public mores. But mostly, they were set up to serve the people and, as such, they have a responsibility to engage their constituents in honest, open discussion when a sizable bloc deems itself disenfranchised.
For it is nothing less than that: a disenfranchisement of a entire generation as soon as it found that not only can they hold opinions unsanctioned by their parent’s religion, they’re figuring out that they, in some cases, they should.
I am calling for women’s voices to be heard, for it is their voices, above all, that should be heard. I demanding that my government give back what it has, unchallenged, legislatured away: that of a woman’s right to choose for herself.
A minor update of sorts: I posted a sort-of mini-FAQ regarding this post. See Rusty Hangers: Behind the Scenes.