Tuesday, November 21, 2006

How Feminists Really Feel about Abortion

Ran across this post at Pandagon on Feminists for Life. Amanda likes to take statements from FFL like this:

Women aren’t stupid. We know it’s a baby that is growing just like we did in our mother’s wombs. That is why most women who feel they have emotional and financial support don’t have abortions.

and answer them like this:
It’s true. Women aren’t stupid and the reason they get abortions is because they know what’s growing inside them will turn into a baby one day. And they don’t want to have one, a possibility that FFL denies outright with their attempts to claim that abortions are primarily caused by lack of emotional or financial support. My feeling is they invoke the hazy notion of “emotional support” to explain away why so many women like me have the financial means to have a baby but simply won’t do it—the reasoning then would be that I don’t have the “emotional support”, i.e., if my man was more patriarchal and patronizingly took care of me in exchange for subservience, I would suddenly have a light go on in my head and want babies. But that’s just my guess. Maybe they’ll clarify this in future installments.

I despise what Pandagon calls feminism because it tends to be selfish self-centered BS focused entirely on personal pleasure versus what used to be known as caring about family and society. I think it's very telling when someone says that they want an abortion (but presumably didn't mind the process of creating a baby) because they just don't want kids. It definitely flies in the face of the way NARAL and NOW describe women facing abortion:
While it's critical to promote policies that help prevent unintended pregnancies and make abortion less necessary, NARAL Pro-Choice America also fights to protect the right to safe, legal abortion.

It's a nice, sanitized way of saying what was repeated on Pandagon's site. Here's a few examples in the comments:
CourtneyMD: What the fundies fail to realize is that all abortions are obtained for the exact same reason: because the woman chooses not to carry the pregnancy.

Everything else is merely a circumstance: a circumstance of conception (rape, incest, birth control failure); a circumstance of finances, future plans, relationship, personal health, family completion, etc; a circumstance of embryonic health/viability. A circumstance is merely a set of attendant conditions. Circumstances change, but the basic motivational driver does not: this particular pregnancy is simply not worth the risks and burdens.

Cycles: In the charts above, I don’t see a category for "I don’t like kids." Oh the horror. I don’t like kids. I’m not "Not ready for a(nother) child/the timing is wrong." I’ll never be "ready." The "timing" will always be wrong.

I also don’t see a category for "There are already too many damn kids on the planet."

Patricia: Or, even worse, be happy about it. Trust me, there’s even some who call themselves pro-choicers who will get uncomfortable if a woman is happy about getting an abortion. Many otherwise well-meaning people (*cough*hillaryclinton*cough*) will say that abortion is a "tragedy that no woman wants to experience." No, it’s a twenty-minute surgical procedure* that saves someone from a lifetime of misery.

*Or two days, if one goes the medical route.

ks: Hell, even those of use who already have kids that we planned and adore get told that we’ll ‘change our minds’ when we say that we don’t want more. It’s plain infuriating. People (even family) actually believe that I must not love the kids I have (and had on purpose, at that) because I absolutely will not have another child and I’m quite open about it. I’ve even been told that ‘accidents happen and we’re sure you’ll love that one as well.’ Well, accidents may happen, but if something unplanned does, my husband will be driving me over to the clinic as soon as I see two lines on the stick. Because I will not have more.

So, there you have it. The next time someone tells you that the pro-choice movement is actually about "freedom of choice," think about these women and what they think "freedom of choice" is all about.