Cans of worms and opeing thereof
Feb. 26th, 2010 06:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trenchkamenToday sucked. This week sucked.
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This woman is brave. She is doing a huge service for women, and for the feminist movement, in telling the truth about her abortion. There is so much gross misinformation being spread about the procedure, and the social stigma is enough to drive the procedure totally out of public discourse outside the context of political speeches and platitudes. And she is being utterly assaulted for her honesty and bravery. She's even an example of a person who fence-sitters feel they can give "permission" to have an abortion--already has a kid (a special needs kid, which takes reserves of energy those without special needs kids simply cannot imagine, and who she prioritizes above an embryo), in a stable relationship, used protection, etc. And the latter two are all well and good--no sane person uses abortion as a primary birth control method. Oh, and her HEALTH IS IN DANGER, another thing people seem to think makes abortion "okay". But for daring to come out and be honest about the procedure, she's crossed the line--people are angry. They think it should stay underground. They think it should be cloaked in shame. They think it's attention whoring and a flagrant display of moral depravity to talk about it.
The abortion pill, what Ms. Jackson is using, (RU-486) is safe, when used properly--it's safer than giving birth, and as safe as a natural miscarriage, neither of which are without risk. Nothing in life is. But it's time to debunk the Right-wing myths about what a 'horrible' and 'dangerous' procedure abortion is, like you can gross women out of it. And no more of this bullshit on how it raises your risk of breast cancer. It doesn't. It just fucking doesn't.
Make your arguments on moral grounds, but don't fucking outright LIE about the medicine behind it.
It's time for people to stand up and defend women who have had abortions. I trust women. I trust them to make decisions about their own bodies and pregnancies, based on their own life circumstances--and those decisions are always hellishly hard. And I don't think they should be sorry or ashamed, which seems to be the only way fence-sitters can stomach the procedure--it's okay if the women feel just horrible the rest of their lives about it, as though by feeling horrible, it shows they still have regard for the sanctity of life. It just doesn't work that way. And I'm also sick of people saying women who choose to have abortions just didn't "think about it enough" or really "know what they were doing". Maybe a few didn't. But most did.
There are stories of women who have had abortions and felt only immense relief. They're not sorry. And they don't regret it. And I bet there are countless more stories from women who don't want to face the harsh criticism of being something people think beyond reprehensible--a woman who had an abortion and isn't wracked with grief.
Stigmatizing abortion, making abortion illegal, does absolutely NOTHING to stop it. It just drives it underground. Read a paper that wasn't written by so-called "researchers" (statistics-benders with horrid research methodology) bought by the Christian right on the subject.
Yeah, my mom chose life. And I'm glad she had a choice. She had me when she was ready, when she was done with medical school and at a place in her life where she could support a child. I think all the "be glad your mom chose life" bullshit plays upon a fundamental human fear of being murdered--bringing up images of your own mother murdering you, a sentient being. But a zygote is not a sentient being. An embryo isn't either. It's potential, a state of flux. But we humans have a hard time conceptualizing Not Being; we equate it with death.
So, Angie Jackson, I support you, and thank you for breaking the silence.
--------------------------
This woman is brave. She is doing a huge service for women, and for the feminist movement, in telling the truth about her abortion. There is so much gross misinformation being spread about the procedure, and the social stigma is enough to drive the procedure totally out of public discourse outside the context of political speeches and platitudes. And she is being utterly assaulted for her honesty and bravery. She's even an example of a person who fence-sitters feel they can give "permission" to have an abortion--already has a kid (a special needs kid, which takes reserves of energy those without special needs kids simply cannot imagine, and who she prioritizes above an embryo), in a stable relationship, used protection, etc. And the latter two are all well and good--no sane person uses abortion as a primary birth control method. Oh, and her HEALTH IS IN DANGER, another thing people seem to think makes abortion "okay". But for daring to come out and be honest about the procedure, she's crossed the line--people are angry. They think it should stay underground. They think it should be cloaked in shame. They think it's attention whoring and a flagrant display of moral depravity to talk about it.
The abortion pill, what Ms. Jackson is using, (RU-486) is safe, when used properly--it's safer than giving birth, and as safe as a natural miscarriage, neither of which are without risk. Nothing in life is. But it's time to debunk the Right-wing myths about what a 'horrible' and 'dangerous' procedure abortion is, like you can gross women out of it. And no more of this bullshit on how it raises your risk of breast cancer. It doesn't. It just fucking doesn't.
Make your arguments on moral grounds, but don't fucking outright LIE about the medicine behind it.
It's time for people to stand up and defend women who have had abortions. I trust women. I trust them to make decisions about their own bodies and pregnancies, based on their own life circumstances--and those decisions are always hellishly hard. And I don't think they should be sorry or ashamed, which seems to be the only way fence-sitters can stomach the procedure--it's okay if the women feel just horrible the rest of their lives about it, as though by feeling horrible, it shows they still have regard for the sanctity of life. It just doesn't work that way. And I'm also sick of people saying women who choose to have abortions just didn't "think about it enough" or really "know what they were doing". Maybe a few didn't. But most did.
There are stories of women who have had abortions and felt only immense relief. They're not sorry. And they don't regret it. And I bet there are countless more stories from women who don't want to face the harsh criticism of being something people think beyond reprehensible--a woman who had an abortion and isn't wracked with grief.
Stigmatizing abortion, making abortion illegal, does absolutely NOTHING to stop it. It just drives it underground. Read a paper that wasn't written by so-called "researchers" (statistics-benders with horrid research methodology) bought by the Christian right on the subject.
Yeah, my mom chose life. And I'm glad she had a choice. She had me when she was ready, when she was done with medical school and at a place in her life where she could support a child. I think all the "be glad your mom chose life" bullshit plays upon a fundamental human fear of being murdered--bringing up images of your own mother murdering you, a sentient being. But a zygote is not a sentient being. An embryo isn't either. It's potential, a state of flux. But we humans have a hard time conceptualizing Not Being; we equate it with death.
So, Angie Jackson, I support you, and thank you for breaking the silence.
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(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-27 01:56 am (UTC)Also, I think you're going to be miserable until you come to peace with the fact that most people are about as sharp as a sack of wet mice, and are unwilling to change their opinions or abandon their dogma, even in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence, simply because they don't want to admit that they are or were wrong. The knowledge of being "right" gives most human beings a profound sense of well-being, and the hardest part of adapting to analytical thinking and the scientific method is building up the emotional capability to admit that you're wrong. Humility is a pre-requisite for the discovery of truth.
Luckily, over time, things tend to get better. Generally speaking, the average attitudes of the nation are much more liberal on the subjects of race, sexuality, gender, religious tolerance, etc, than they were 50 or 100 years ago. This is probably in no small part due to the fact that the old guard has to die off first.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-27 02:26 am (UTC)That's my personal take on it. That, and reading your LJ reminds me of Medea. Just a bit.
On that note, there's also something else in Christian belief I do not like. There's this part where they said that stillborns are stuck in limbo because they're unbaptized. What kind of logic is that?
(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-27 05:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-01 04:02 am (UTC)I can't think of anywhere in the bible that says anything about stillborns either. It's likely one of those things that's part of a specific groups added doctrine. There's a lot of that going around in general.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-02 07:26 am (UTC)it was a theological theory, if you will; a possible logical conclusion for the question of the time which was, given certain premises, what *does* happen to souls which do not deserve hell but have not been baptized and, thus, have not been ransomed by the cross? in order to see its logic, however flawed it might be in the end, you'd have to get into a very early Christian mindset (4th century-ish) which unless you know a lot about both Christianity and history is very hard to do since it's so incredibly different from a 21st-century secular mindset.
and guess what? it was just a placeholder answer, a hypothesis. and now we have set it aside because over time as people ponder things, certain areas become clearer. heck, the Church council at Carthage in 418 wasn't too fond of the idea of unbaptized innocents having a state set aside for them either, and that was when it was just getting proposed. one of the earliest mentions of what we now hold more firmly, as it conforms more closely to what we know is truth, was in the 16th century. more recently, in 1984 Joseph Ratzinger (who is now the pope) rejected the idea that unbaptized innocents could not attain salvation, the 1992 edition of the Catechism affirms his view in different words, and in 2007 (when it really hit the media) a document commissioned by Pope John Paul II stated much the conclusion.
but since we're not exactly sure how salvation works out in all its finer details and hard cases - that's divine business and not ours - in the end, what we have is still just a hypothesis, but a better one, which makes more logical and theological sense. and we're free to agree or disagree. in the end, we trust in God's infinite mercy.
by the way, even if I didn't know beans about Catholicism I could have easily found this information on wikipedia. sometimes it's surprising what other people think we believe.
=^.^=
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-02 12:13 pm (UTC)My response was in relation to the previous commenter's statement that limbo is a "Christian" belief, stating that, no, it's not a general-Christian belief, because only one sect of Christianity believes/d in it.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-27 03:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-27 04:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-28 10:35 am (UTC)I've always been pro-choice (to the point that, its not a replacement for condoms and/or the pill)
I hate the fear of death thing....once your dead you don't really care, seems like to much pressure to care up until the moment it happens then it s just over and you care for nothing....but thats not here nor there.
The religion aspect never made sense to me, if there was theoretically a sole in the aborted cells, wouldn't it just return to its natural state? Cause no matter what sans immortality all souls eventually would leave a body, so wouldn't the natural state to be outside the body? And supposedly closer to the plane of god? So I don't see how that's and argument.
I agree, my mom chose to have me. But it was just that a choice, she really really worked hard to have me. Was it the best time? Probably not. But she still chose it, I wasn't forced on her due to one "mistake" or error. I think I feel strongly about it due to my history of abuse, if i had gotten pregnant from that I would have aborted, no question and no remorse for feeling that way. But, people still will seek to control others no matter how rational the other side is, that is one part that sucks about any type of government or just people in general.
Sorry got a little ranty.