This may come as news to many–but it’s not to me. There is a valiant history of women defending the pro-life position. In fact there was a time when feminists actively campaigned for the criminalization of abortion in support of women’s rights.
One pro-life feminist, Rachel MacNair, calls abortion a “battery”–“Surgery done on a healthy body is mutilation, and such surgery done without adequately informed consent is a battery.”
This is not currently the mainstream consensus, but it once was. Discussing and debating this from every angle will be very important. I for one support getting full information about abortion and what it does out there.
Furthermore, I also acknowledge that where there is the presence of this choice, it holds a magnetic pull for short-term “resolution” of “the problem.” I would not have been immune to it–but supporting women means doing so within the context of our reproductive capacities, not outside it, demanding invasive surgery to eradicate a natural outcome of having sex.
Here ends my rant for today.
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Brigitte adds: Allow me to join you in his defence. He’s not the first to make that point, and he won’t be the last one, either. Forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy against her will (say, after a rape) isn’t fair, even if in many cases having an abortion wouldn’t really “solve” that woman’s problems. But neither is pressuring her to have an abortion against her will. And those who think women in Canada today are almost never pressured into having unwanted abortions are deluded.
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One of my friends, a far-left Dipper, posted this story on Facebook with some vitriolic comments for the MP. As I clicked the link, I wondered, “What did this MP say?!” You can imagine my face when I realized, as far as I can tell, the MP echoes my own views on abortion.
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Right Brigitte! Killing a child through no fault of their own is perfectly fair. Giving a child a death penalty when you wouldn’t even give a rapist the death penalty. That is fair. God forbid we “force” a mother to not kill her child.
I say that we throw off all these “unfair” laws that “force” parents to not kill their children. Lets also end these “unfair” laws that “force” people to not kill each other. How about also “unfair” laws that “force” men to not rape women.
All these “unfair” laws that “force” people to not hurt others. The outrage! The horror! Le revolution!
I also acknowledge that where there is the presence of this choice, it holds a magnetic pull for short-term “resolution” of “the problem.”
This is very true and a point I’ve made many times in talking about this subject. The “choice” gets women in their most vulnerable state to make an irreversible decision that she will often regret bitterly later. You don’t hear of too many cases where women kept their babies and later wished they’d had abortions.
I think the logic in the ‘forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy .. and … pressuring her to have an abortion .. ‘ is perhaps wanting a little review. “Choice’ has become a ‘sacrosanct’ entity in our time. It is not to be questioned. It is a given to be unchallenged. It is only to be supported. A person can only become involved with choice if one is working to make choice a full choice but choice itself stands alone and all else is dependent on it.
This idea of choice existing alone is accompanied by the idea that a person stands alone, independent of all else and is full and free if allowed to do so. This is not new thinking. However, everyday we see that we are not independent of all else. Everything affects us and we affect everything. John Donne tried to live out the idea that he was independent of all else and the arbitrator of experience and in his attempt to do so he discovered; ” No one is an island, entire of itself; everyone is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thy own were; anyone’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.”
Hmm. So, I’m not a woman because I never want to be pregnant or experience childbirth? People are not subject to their bodily functions, reproductive or otherwise under ANY other circumstance in order to prove they are a part of said specific, visible group. That is because there is MORE than just the physical when identifying a group. There is the social, mental, moral and medical, as well. To reduce women to no more than the physical, especially when no one else is restricted to such, makes women equivalent to fetuses and denigrates women (non-obliviate, thinking and feeling individuals) and the role that they play in pregnancy while granting fetuses (obliviate, non-thinking, non-feeling humans) an elevated role during pregnancy. PLers would make the female gender the ONLY group subject to such a rule. Therefore, it is PLers such as yourself that make me less inclined to experience it NOT more inclined to do so OR remain the same. The misogyny that is apparent in the PL movement, even your own, makes me SO glad that I am Pro-Choice, just like my mother always has been and always will be.
The death penalty is in NO way related to the Pro-Choice movement. But, let’s pretend and take a look at it, as if it is. Who initially infringes on a woman’s rights during pregnancy? A *fetus*. Who initially infringes on a person’s rights during the execution of a crime, the criminal. Therefore, if one is pro-death penalty, one cannot be Pro-Life, which I’ve found most PLers are. If that were not the case, ALL other instances of right to bodily autonomy, the right to determine, with ongoing, explicit and informed consent, WHO uses the body that one owns, when it is used and HOW it is used would be eliminated in the event that someone else would die. Yet, only ONE PLer has ever advocated for such. However, when the death penalty IS eventually applied, any infringement of rights that they have been incarcerated for has LONG since passed. Which means that the rules that keep the death penalty from being murder is essentially the legality of it, UNlike the case with abortion. Also, the death penalty is not punishment (neither is abortion, but, in the case of abortion, no one has ever CLAIMED it WAS). It only works as negative behaviour modification (aka punishment) if one can LEARN from it (which one can’t when they are dead) or if it reduces the number of crimes committed in the region where it is permitted (which has NOT been the case as shown by crime rates in the United States compared to other Western Countries). Therefore, it only punishes the innocent families left behind, just like reducing abortion by making it a morally BAD option punishes the innocent, seeing as pregnancy and sex are not crimes.
Btw, it is very convenient that a man weighed in on this situation while sitting in a position of male privilege, aware that he will NEVER be guilted or shamed for believing himself more than just a physical body. THAT is the issue that those who attacked him HAD with him. Nice try.
Btw, I am aware that you don’t want to make abortion illegal. Please keep that in mind while reading my previous post. When it seems certain that that IS what I’m referring to, make yourself UNcertain of it, very quickly.
Is the principal question one of fairness or one of justice? Whether one views it as “forcing” a woman to carry a pregnancy to term depends on how one answers that question.
If you belong to the fairness school of thought, as Brigitte and Ali9Heaven appear to, then the question is settled by whether the the raped and pregnant woman feels happier (or relieved or somehow better off) as a result of eliminating the unborn child.
If you belong to the the justice school of thought, that is, if you believe in “establishing in human relationships the harmony that promotes equity with regard to persons and the common good,” then even the word “force” is no longer descriptive of the situation. Killing an unborn child only continues, as the rape did, to disrupt and corrupt human relationships and certainly contributes nothing to the common good.
Ali9Heaven, your parallel with the death penalty assumes that the fetus is in some way guilty. The fetus is only in the womb in the first place because of its mother and father’s actions (or in the case of rape, because of the rapists actions), and through absolutely no fault of its own. Whether the mother has a right to terminate her pregnancy or not cannot reasonably rest upon the fetus’s having done anything incorrect.
Also, recognizing that the ability to have children is a feature of womanhood is hardly tantamount to deeming the desire to do so a necessary one. While I must take issue with your accusation that pro-lifers discriminate against and de-value women in the first place, given that you find this deeply problematic, I must ask why you find it acceptable that we discriminate against and de-value the unborn. In the end, the reasons you have mentioned (cognitive abilities, etc) are just as arbitrary as sex or gender for defining an individual’s value.
Yes men are pressuring women to have abortions in Canada. It happened to me. I think this whole issue is polarizing women and men. No wonder people are turning to “alternative” lifestyles. I can only describe it as a nightmare that has never gone away.
At least women considering abortion should be informed they are ending a human life. All organs, including the heart are formed by 8 weeks. There are other options including adoption. It’s almost impossible to adopt in Canada now.
Actually, no, it doesn’t. You missed my *entire* point. Is the criminal in the act of commissioning a crime *at* that moment *or*, even *if* he was, is he being given the death penalty for that specific action? No and definitively no. Intent and cause are not being considered, here, just as in the case of the fetus.
A fetus is neither innocent nor guilty. If innocence or guilt were determined by physical action, alone, then a fetus would be guilty. Because the fetus is the one to initially infringe on the most fundamental right of all, the right to bodily integrity. Good thing that innocence or guilt are not determined by physical action, though. Otherwise, *every*one who commits an action, whether intentionally or not, would be guilty of doing so.
After all, if intent and cause *were* relevant, then the woman who was attacked by her son-in-law while he was sleepwalking (true case) be*cause* she tried to wake him up, would never have been able to use self-defense. Actually, she was *well* within her rights to use deadly force.
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My mother had an abortion. Then she had my brother. I find her to be *far* more loving towards us than my PL aunt is to her children. In other words, what you stated, by itself, has *nothing* to do with interrupting relationships. I know my mother loved me because she *chose* to have me. Besides *many* women regret their pregnancies. Even *wanted* children are abused, after all. Also, ever heard of Andrea Yates?
Forcing a woman to continue a pregnancy, is continuing rape. (And, by focussing on abortion, as you have done, you have revealed that it is the only action that you consider immoral in exercising the right to bodily autonomy, since you have generally failed to turn every other exercise of that right into a single issue, such as you have done with this one. Which leads to the guilting and shaming of women, alone. Guilting and shaming and an agenda, which is exposed by your inconsistent ideologies, to fit women into your own narrowly preconceived roles for them, are BOTH forms of force, one by emotional means, the other by denial of all or part of a woman’s desires and wishes with respect to her reproductive biology.) The *only*difference is location and the fact that the former is far more physically damaging, life-threatening (the second leading cause of death in women worldwide, now, due not to lack of actual risk but to medical treatment which means nothing when prescribing a form of medical treatment) and of longer duration. They are both just as emotionally traumatizing. The thing is, even without intent or cause, as soon as someone says no, and the violation continues, sex is considered rape and one may *still* use deadly force. If one were to think rationally, forcing a pregnancy on a woman should be the most heinous crime if one disagrees with rape. You cannot, rationally, be against rape and for forcing a pregnancy on women, either emotionally or logically.
Btw, someone who forces an abortion on someone else is *not* Pro-Choice. PCers are opposed to *force*, forcing pregnancy or abortion, not one action or the other, themselves.