Republicans, Abortion, Women's Rights, and the challenges facing them.

[FayeforCure]

I'd be interested to know the numbers on conservatives to non conservatives on adoptions across the board...i think adoptions are off the topic of our governor signing a law forcing women to watch a sonogram before an abortion...it's a chip at the delicate womans rights in this state.

Well since no one has said this yet, but has been abundantly clear for decades now is that the Republican idea of Pro-Life extends from conception to birth only. After that You are on Your Own in the YOYO society that they love.

So making adoption easier? Just isn't in the Pro-Life agenda.

Just like none of the 50+ year old Pro-Life women made their uteri available for any of the snow-flake babies ( over 600,000 frozen embryos that cannot be donated to federally funded stem cell research and are just left to perish in our nation's freezers)

It's shaming women and control of women, that is what the abortion issue is really about:

I Was a "Prolife" Republican... Until I Fell in Love
673
ShareBy Andrea Grimes

February 8, 2011 - 7:34pm

Published under: Access to Abortion | Women’s Rights | access to abortion | anti-choice | Contraception | HR3 2011 | pro-choice | sexually transmitted infections
Andrea Grimes's blog | Printer-friendly version | ShareThis
This is cross-posted with permission from Hay Ladies.

I had a favorite line, in high school, when debating people on the subject of abortion. It was “Hey, that thing in your stomach’s not gonna come out a toaster, right? It’s a baby!”

Oh, I thought I was really, super clever with that one. Because I loved talking about the babies. I talked about the babies at the high school Young Republicans Clubâ€"not only was I the president, but also the founder. I talked about the babies at Club 412, the evangelical punk teen hang-out in Fort Worth I frequented with my friends. I talked about the babies in class. I cried about the babies while I strummed my guitar. I wrote songs about the babies, imagining myself as a broken, murderous whore who regretted her abortions.

I didn’t have an opinion one way or the other on abortion until I started hanging out with right-wing punk rock kids in high school. Then, somebodyâ€"probably one of the older teenage punk rock boys I would later fend off in the back of a car or behind the chapel at church campâ€"handed me a pamphlet with an aborted fetus on the front. The pamphlet told me all about how abortion causes breast cancer and about how women who abort can never be redeemed in the eyes of God and will live with heartache and depression for the rest of their lives, a shell of the beautiful thing they could have been if they’d only carried to term. I was outraged. I couldn’t believe women were killing members of my own generationâ€"my sisters and brothers!â€"just because they couldn’t keep their legs together.

Because while I said it was about the babies, it wasn’t. It was about slut-shaming. I absolutely loved slut-shaming. Because I was saving myself for marriageâ€"well, oral sex doesn’t really count anyway, does it?â€"-I knew that I would always be right and virtuous and I would never be a murderer like those sluts. The issue couldn’t possibly be up for real debate, to my mind: either you were a baby-killer slut, or you behaved like a proper Christian woman and only let him get to third base. Babies were simultaneously women’s punishment for having premarital sex and beautiful gifts from Jesus Himself. That didn’t seem like a contradiction in my mind. It was just another one of God’s perfect mysteries.

After all, I was 16, 17, 18. I knew everything. And what I knew more than anything else was that anyone who got herself into the position of having an unwanted pregnancy was filthy in body and soul. And again, since I would absolutely never have premarital sex, I would absolutely never make the decision to murder my child. Because I was pure, and so were babies, and together, me and the babies and my perfect hymen, we were all going to be fine if we could just fight the ignorant sluts. So that’s what I did. I talked and argued and cajoled and pontificated. I ministered to the heathen nerdgirl sluts in Telnet chats and online bulletin boards. I stood up for what I believed in, which was: If you do not believe like me, you deserve whatever brand of God’s wrath comes your way.

But, you know, to hear me talk, it was all about the babies. The innocent children. The mass genocide! Perpetuated, of course, by millions of American women who I imagined happily scooping out their wombs with ladles before heading back out for another gang-bang. In private, my anti-choice friends and I would laugh and laugh (or, in some cases, LOL and LOL, if we were chatting online) about how stupid women were for having premarital sex. How evil they were for not being able to control themselves. How great I was for not having sex with my boyfriend. How loved and special I was in the eyes of God because I didn’t let my boyfriend, you know, do it with me.

If I’d thought about it any, I might have realized that it takes two to create an unwanted pregnancy. But the conversation was never, ever about men or their behavior. It was only about women.

So, what happened? How did I come to be editing a lefty, pinko-assed feminist blog?

Well, I got off my religious high horse and on to a sex life I enjoyed and found fulfilling.

At college, I met a wonderful, sweet Jewish boy who fell in love with me and who I fell in love with right back. And he didn’t have any hang-ups about sex, though he was also a virgin. And we did all of the things except for The Big Sex, and the more I grew to love him, the more I thought back on those people I knew back home who told me sex was awful and would break me. How could sex with this guy, this absolute sweetheart, break me? And so we had The Big Sex. And it was great and fun and loving, and we kept having all of The Big Sex, for about three weeks, until I realized it was about time for my period.

Suddenly: I was the dirty, filthy slut. I was the horny bitch. I was the callous murderer-in-training. What, did I think my womb was going to grow a toaster if we had a condom mishap?

Of course not. I didn’t think babies were toasters and I didn’t believe I was going to birth a toaster if I got pregnant, so how had I managed to belittle women for years with this condescending, patronizing line about a small kitchen appliance? I was frozen in a kind of moral limboâ€"I couldn’t believe I found myself simultaneously relieved that I could access an abortion if I wanted to, and saddened and stressed out by the possibility of having to make that decision.

So I went right the fuck out and got myself some hormonal birth control, is what I did.

I marched into my college women’s health centerâ€"oh, thank God they had oneâ€"and I got my first pap smear and the Ortho-Evra patch and talked to the nurses about STD’s and pregnancy and how to take care of my body. I had never had any of those conversations with my family or church or friends or teachers back home in Texas. I learned more in a two-hour visit to that college women’s health center than I had in the 19 years leading up to it. And yet as a passionate anti-choicer, I had considered myself an expert on sex and reproductive healthâ€"my own and everyone else’sâ€"because of a few pamphlets and preachers.

Today, I see that nothing about my religious anti-choice views did anything to prevent abortion. They did a lot to shame myself and my friends, but nothing to prevent abortion. Today, I hear anti-choicers talk about the babies and the unborn and the American genocide, but what I really hear beneath all that is slut-shaming and fear of female sexuality. I hear that language clearly because I spoke it once, myself. It is a familiar language to me.

And I even have a little bemused sympathy for old men who try to pass anti-choice legislation. Because they really will not ever have to worry about abortion. And once, I thought I wouldn’t, either. So I see where they’re coming from. I see how blind to the experiences of others they are. Privilege does that to people. If they weren’t so damned full of themselves, and so damned politically powerful, I might even find them funny.

What saddens me more than anything else are women who want to make abortion either so inaccessible as to render it impracticable, or who want to outlaw it altogether. Because I truly believe that most women, anti-choice or otherwise, who’ve experienced even a flicker of uncertainty about a pregnancy in this country since 1973 have been glad, in their hearts, to have a choice. I believe wanting to take that choice away from others is deeply about shame and punishment and judgment, and not about righteousness and love. I believe that because I rarely see those who want to outlaw abortion doing anything to combat its cause: unintended pregnancy, and I see them doing a lot to punish and shame women.

There is nothing “pro-life” about sonogram bills and denying Medicaid funding to (some!) rape victims or allowing doctors to opt out of giving pregnant women life-saving abortions. I know that what has kept me from having to make a decision about an unintended pregnancy is not the prospect of hearing a fetal heartbeat or having to go through a 24-hour wait period, but safe, easy and affordable access to contraception and good, honest medical information disseminated by doctors and medical professionals without religious agendas.

I was a girl growing up in Texas who was failed by abstinence-only education and soured by extreme religious dogma. I don’t want other girls to go through that, too. And so if you’ve gotten through this whole essay, consider donating to Planned Parenthood. Get on a NARAL mailing list. Fight HR3. Stand up against empty religious and political pandering and stand up for real solutions like affordable health care, comprehensive sex education and contraceptive access.

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2011/02/08/i-prolife-republicanuntilfell-love

[uptowngirl]

Faye please provide statistics for your statements. Unless of course it is your own guess (ie; opinon).

Here is one poll showing about even:
http://forums.adoption.com/guatemala-adoption/326978-cashcrew-poll-adoptive-parents-political-party-6.html

Democrat    165     44.12%
Green    1              0.27%
Independent    26    6.95%
Republican    155    41.44%
Other    13              3.48%


in any case, political affiliation is not a question on adoption forms so data woudl be close to impossible to gain. So these little polls are about it.

[FayeforCure]

Faye please provide statistics for your statements. Unless of course it is your own guess (ie; opinon).

Here is one poll showing about even:
http://forums.adoption.com/guatemala-adoption/326978-cashcrew-poll-adoptive-parents-political-party-6.html

Democrat    165     44.12%
Green    1              0.27%
Independent    26    6.95%
Republican    155    41.44%
Other    13              3.48%


in any case, political affiliation is not a question on adoption forms so data woudl be close to impossible to gain. So these little polls are about it.

Sorry uptowngirl, I never said anything about adoption rates........I did say a lot of other things though, that are far more in line with being moderate than you claim to be.

[BridgeTroll]

  Yeah Faye... you certainly are a model of moderation...

[uptowngirl]

I'd be interested to know the numbers on conservatives to non conservatives on adoptions across the board...i think adoptions are off the topic of our governor signing a law forcing women to watch a sonogram before an abortion...it's a chip at the delicate womans rights in this state.

Well since no one has said this yet, but has been abundantly clear for decades now is that the Republican idea of Pro-Life extends from conception to birth only. After that You are on Your Own in the YOYO society that they love.

So making adoption easier? Just isn't in the Pro-Life agenda.

Hmmm you did quote GG's comments and followed with your own. Adoption laws are not created and implemented by Republicans alone. I will give you that the far right does damage to the adoption process by completely trying to exclude a whole group of eligible loving parent based soley on their sexual orientation-but again that is mostly the far right view. So here we are again at the extremist view of one or the other parties.

And Faye there is very little if anything of moderate in your postings '-)

[FayeforCure]

Hmmm you did quote GG's comments and followed with your own. Adoption laws are not created and implemented by Republicans alone. I will give you that the far right does damage to the adoption process by completely trying to exclude a whole group of eligible loving parent based soley on their sexual orientation-but again that is mostly the far right view. So here we are again at the extremist view of one or the other parties.

And Faye there is very little if anything of moderate in your postings '-)

I don't claim to be a moderate, though on many issues I do consider myself moderate.

In recent years, political moderates has gained traction as a buzzword.

Aristotle favoured conciliatory politics dominated by the centre rather than the extremes of great wealth and poverty or the special interests of oligarchs and tyrants.[2]

George Lakoff, author of The Political Mind (2008), argues that moderates do not exist, because there is no definitive political ideology of the moderate.[3] Due to this fact, he believes it is impossible for a group of people to gather as 'moderates' as each would have different views. This means moderate political views to become mainstream would require a big tent form of party.

In recent years, many blogs and other postings have become available discussing moderate political views. Moderate America has attempted to define moderate political ideology in the United States of America.[1] Some bloggers have associated moderate politics with the concept of rationalism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moderate

There is nothing moderate about making one of the hardest decisions in the life of a woman even harder than it already is, or more expensive than it already is.

There is also nothing moderate about making a 13 year old pregnant girl have a baby. In my book that is child abuse.

The easiest solution to all of this is to provide contraception to prevent pregnancies BEFORE THEY START free of charge like they do in other "civilized nations"

[uptowngirl]

where have you been Faye? Contraception is available all over the place for free. No one is "forcing 13yrs olds to have babies", and why should having an abortion not be a tough decision? This is an irreversible decision and impacts not only the woman/girl making the decision, the baby, but also potentially family members, friends, and lovers. It should be a very difficult decision to make, and not just a snap one.

If looking at that sonogram is going to make a woman/girl change her mind-then their mind was not really made up before was it?

Is the extreme left really afraid that women and girls may just decide that perhaps it really is a life once they see that beating heart on the sonogram? Will that stop them from getting the abortion? Or will it just make them feel terrible about getting it? If you feel strongly enough in your convictions that this is not a human life then a little ol sonogram should not matter.

Now if you want to talk about costs- OK. I propose that this could potentially help identify health concerns that would not otherwise be diagnosed or looked at,  I also proposed that it may help with mental issue down the road, which would be much more costly than a sonogram. I also propose that most adoptions will cover all your medical costs, and in some cases living expenses.

What are your concerns about the cost of sonograms?

[wsansewjs]

I want to post this that showed up on my Tumblr.

This just may be the best pro-life message yet.
A worried woman went to her gynecologist and said:

Woman: Doctor, I have a serious problem and desperately need your  help! My baby is not even 1 year old and I'm pregnant again. I don't want kids so close together.

Doctor: Ok and what do you want me to do?

Woman: I want you to end my pregnancy, and I'm  counting on your help with this.

The doctor thought for a little, and after some silence he said to the lady:
I think I have a better solution for your problem. It's less dangerous for you too.

She smiled, thinking that the doctor was going to accept her request.

The Doctor continued: You see, in order for you not to have to take  care 2 babies at the same time, let's kill your present one-year-old. This way,  you could rest a little before the other one is born. If we're going to kill  one of them, it doesn't matter which one it is. There would be no risk for  your body if you chose to kill the one in your arms.

The lady was horrified and said:
Woman: No doctor! How  terrible!  It's a crime to kill a child!

Doctor: I agree.. But you seemed to be OK on killing your unborn child, so I thought maybe that you'd agree to kill the other one.  I believe that what I propose, given your situation, is the best solution.

The doctor smiled, realizing that he had made his point. He convinced the mom that there is no difference in killing a child that's already been born and one that's still in the womb.

The crime  is the same!
 
Love says:
      "I sacrifice myself for the good of the other person."

Abortion says:
      "I sacrifice the other person for the good of myself."

How do you guys feel about that?

-Josh

[buckethead]

mtraininjax, I sure am glad you have great health care. Just hope you never lose it. The big thing now is to hire people part time and give them NO BENEFITS. And at the "unliving wage," many people are offered, they can't afford health care either. So off to Shands, or another emergency room and let everyone else absorb the cost. Or as I am sure would make you happy just die in their bed and leave the poor tax payers alone. OH, and give more tax cuts to the wealthy and large corporations because god knows they shouldn't be punished for making obscene profits while they ship all the jobs overseas.

Well said, except you forgot one thing: Republicans are also trying to shut down all public hospitals, so there's nowhere left to go.

Faye I believe you are onto something here.

Especially with our dear governor.

Solantic provides both drug testing and sonograms, incidentally.

Methinks we are getting to the heart of the legislative proposition.

Pro life for profit and market share.

[DeadGirlsDontDance]

Fine, fine. Make women look at a sonogram. Then, immediately afterward, tell them every potential health risk that an abortion may cause... and then tell them every potential health risk of pregnancy and childbirth, too. If the sonogram truly changed their mind about the abortion, then the drastically increased possibility of a gruesome, painful death won't faze them in the least.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1361154/Abortions-safer-having-baby-new-advice-claims.html

[uptowngirl]

well at least we know once the child's chord is detached from it's mother they are safe, it gives them something to work towards right?

[Dog Walker]

Discussing the legality or illegality of abortion is as fruitless as discussing the legality or illegality of drugs, alcohol, premarital sex, extra-marital sex, or homosexuality.  All of them will occur whether or not they are legal.  The best we can do in all of those cases is reduce the harm.  This is a pragmatic issue at a gov't level.

In any case, I don't have a uterus and am not sure that I or any other male is qualified to have an opinion on the issue.

[buckethead]

Discussing the legality or illegality of abortion is as fruitless as discussing the legality or illegality of drugs, alcohol, premarital sex, extra-marital sex, or homosexuality.  All of them will occur whether or not they are legal.  The best we can do in all of those cases is reduce the harm.  This is a pragmatic issue at a gov't level.

In any case, I don't have a uterus and am not sure that I or any other male is qualified to have an opinion on the issue.

Dog Walker: A sexist? Perish the thought!

I agree with your entire post, except the last sentence. The abortion issue is more about whether (at what point) a human (US citizen protected by the constitution to the right to life) is formed within the uterus. I don't believe being of a certain sex qualifies one over the other.

BTW: A mans right to choose ends at ejaculation within a vagina. Let us suppose the two willing participants differ on what is the proper course of action. The man wishes to refrain from becoming a parent but the woman wants the child. The man has no recourse. He is on the hook, legally.

So much for equal protection under the law.

[BridgeTroll]

For many... the entire abortion issue would go away if the government got out of the business of providing them...

[buckethead]

But all those babies. Who wants 'em?

Government provided abortions are cost effective. How much will each of the unwanted children potentially cost the taxpayer annually? *oh dear*

You can't separate abortion from health care, and health care and government are not breaking up any time soon.