Just Smith.

 brute-reason replied to your post: 

Can we please stop bleating that tired old slogan? It’s not nearly as neat and logical as it sounds.

It might surprise some of you to learn this, but a large number of people who oppose abortion don’t say it should be illegal solely to upset women. They wan’t it outlawed because they believe a fetus is a human life, and that abortion is therefore murder.

They don’t specifically have anything against women. It’s not that they’re saying “oh, men can perform abortions, we just don’t like women to be in control of their bodies”. They’re anti-abortion - anti-murder, in their eyes - not anti-women.

Your response to that?

“If you don’t like murder, don’t do it”.

“You’re allowed to believe in Thou Shall Not Kill, but it’s wrong to impose that on the rest of us”.

“It should be a woman’s right to slaughter an innocent if that’s convenient for her. If you’re anti-infanticide, you’re anti-woman”.

That’s frankly ridiculous. You can be fully in support of equality and still hold the belief that no gender should be allowed to kill babies. Simply because baby-killing is usually more convenient for women than for men, you’ve decided opposing it for everyone is anti-woman. It’s not; it’s anti-murder. They’ve got the wrong definition of murder, but murder is what they’re trying to stop. It has nothing to do with how they feel about women, or how passionate they are about equality. 

Pro-life feminists exist. They may be a little confused about biology, from your perspective, but otherwise you have a great deal in common. You have more in common with a truly egalitarian pro-lifer than you do with the average pro-choice Tumblr feminist. Please, show them some respect.

I’ve recently reblogged your post on this, but I don’t think you addressed my reply. Now you’re replying to an ask, which (I would guess) was itself inspired by that post, so we’ve got there in the end.

The Askbox isn’t large enough, so I’m hoping a submission can fulfill the same purpose.

Absolutely - things like this are why I turned Submissions on in the first place.

First off, your quick reference links to ‘Calling Out 101’, ‘Deadbeats’, ‘Child Support’ and ‘lies’ are broken.

Thank you for notifying me, they should be fixed now.

Secondly, for the argument presented on your ‘Utilitarianism’ page under ‘Abortions’, you don’t adequately address the issue of a woman’s choice in regards to her body, and how that plays out in suffering. Specifically, I mean the suffering from having another’s will forced upon your body. You do not place it into consideration for the second issue. To demonstrate:

Situation number 1:

Man wants child, women doesn’t.

Potential suffering:

Don’t have abortion - woman suffers a pregnancy and childbirth (unwillingly), and is also psychologically etc. damaged by being forced into parenthood.

Have abortion - (lesser suffering of having to abort [willingly]), man suffers not getting a child.

Best outcome: Have abortion

Situation number 2:

Woman wants child, man doesn’t.

Potential suffering:

Don’t have abortion - woman suffers a pregnancy and childbirth (willingly), man is psychologically etc. damaged by being forced into parenthood.

Have abortion - (lesser suffering of having to abort [Unwillingly]), woman suffers not getting a child.

Best outcome: ???

The ‘best outcome’ for the latter depends on how much value one places upon a woman being forced into doing anything with her body. Forcing a woman to carry a child to term is obviously bad, because carrying a child to term is more painful and arduous than having an abortion, and on top of that, it is unwilling. However, if the carrying is willing, and the abortion is unwilling, the pain of the abortion could, depending on the psychological damage weighted to willingness and unwillingness, be worse than the pain of the willing carrying of the child.

You’re right. I wrote that post in the second-person, persuading a woman to have an abortion, and so I suppose the issue of whether she was willing or not couldn’t have been included. I was looking to show her that abortion was the best option, which would have made her willing, and so her will couldn’t be included in the calculations, because the calculations were meant to determine if she was willing or not! The fact that she is unwilling doesn’t turn abortion from a good decision into a bad one, because the fact that it was a good decision should have made her willing. 

I am not arguing that we should tie the woman down and cut the fetus out of her with an axe. I am arguing that she should, morally from a utilitarian perspective, get an abortion herself. Her will doesn’t come into that calculation, because it is a product of the calculation itself.

Instead of arguing that men should have rights to a woman’s body. I believe a better focus is on the legal sector, and how men should have the right to forfeit parental rights and responsibilities prior to the child’s birth, and how a man should have equal rights to a child in a custody dispute, should he wish to do so. (Assuming, of course, that the man has not forfeited rights and responsibilities prior to the birth.)

I’m not arguing that men should have rights to a woman’s body, I’m arguing that women shouldn’t have automatically have rights to a man’s genetic child, even against his will, even if her decision to have the child causes it suffering, especially when we consider that it is easier for her to not have the child than to have it, especially when we consider that this is a temporary decision and that she can easily have a healthy child with a willing man at a slightly later date, whereas the other option is permanent and can cause great suffering. It would be wrong for the man to tie her down and bring out the axe, but it is also wrong for her to force him into parenthood. I am merely attempting to show that she is morally wrong to exercise her free will in this particular way, not arguing that it would be morally right to take away her free will altogether. There is a big difference.

Read the last two paragraphs of this post. I explain that I am talking morality, not legality. I explain that it isn’t just child support that matters. Though I do believe being able to forfeit rights would be a good thing, I dislike it being held up as a perfect solution, because being able to give up financial responsibility will not stop many unwilling fathers from suffering. It’s a step in the right direction, but people need to stop implying that it makes everything okay. Nobody has a right to stop a woman using her body to cause suffering, but she doesn’t have the right to do it, and she may be eligible for retrospective punishment as a result. That’s as far as my argument would stretch. Now, I’m just trying to show that the moral right to choose is limited. I’m not proposing any legal prevention.

Replying to: http://just-smith.tumblr.com/post/38680048606/on-abortion

I seem to have misinterpreted you somewhat, and our stances lie closer than I originally thought. Anyway, I’ll try to reply to your points in order.

That you don’t know of rabid pro-lifers really says nothing. I don’t either, but it’s probably a case of like begets like. My friends are mostly ideologically on similar levels to me, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the case was such for you too. We do know they exist, with all the anti-abortion activism in places like the U.S.A or Brazil.

It’s not just my friends, I live in a liberal area. There is an abortion clinic just down the road and I’ve never heard of any protests there of any kind, such as you hear of happening all the time in the U.S. My friends don’t actually tend to agree on political issues; I spent the other night in the pub with a die-hard secular socialist and a fierce nationalist who loves the monarchy and the armed forces, two people who were on opposite ends of the political spectrum. I know of racist people, sexist people, homophobic people, all sorts of people with very conservative political opinions, so it isn’t just that I don’t know of people I don’t agree with. The opposition to abortion, like opposition to gun control or a nationalised health service, just doesn’t exist where I live like it does in America.

Abortion may be the safer procedure, and may only exist as an option to childbirth, but that still does not give society the license to make a default choice in place of the individual. That would still infringe on her freedom of choice and bodily autonomy, and even though the choice is between abortion and childbirth, that does not mean that the choice should not be hers. 

As I explained, there is more than one individual involved. Society can restrict our bodily autonomy if we would use it to hurt others. That abortion is safer wasn’t a major argument for this case, but a specific counter to claims that forced abortion would put the mother in medical danger. I agree that it being safer doesn’t itself imply that we should have the right to do it, and that’s not what I was arguing. I only brought up the point because it is effective as a specific counter-argument, not as a major general argument.

That the choice is between abortion and childhood is important though. If you look at abortion as an independent procedure, with the option to either have one or not, it seems worse. If you look at it as the mere absence of childbirth, it seems much more justifiable. It is easy to argue that a woman shouldn’t have a child, but hard to argue that society should make a woman have an abortion. If a man could self-destruct his genetic material inside the woman if he didn’t wish her to have it, you’d think that was his right. If he could magically make the pregnancy disappear, as if the sex had never happened, you’d think that was his right. It’s easy to show that in many of my examples it is morally wrong to carry the baby the term. When you look at abortion as the mere absence of pregnancy, it therefore seems like a valid solution. Childbirth is the active process, the mother is the agent performing it and causing harm by doing so. We can conclude that this act is wrong, and therefore we are justified in preventing it. If you look at abortion as the act on its own, however, this changes the entire scenario. If you are discussing forced abortion as an independent act, that can either be done or not done with no other consequences, it is easy to say it is wrong. However, it is wrong to view it in this vaccuum. It is wrong to address the situation in this format. Abortion is really just the absence of childbirth, the passive process. It has no meaning beyond the context of this act, and so can’t be assessed as an independent act itself. To state the case in that way is to warp it to favour your argument, and ignore the true context we are dealing with. Abortion can’t be analysed in a vaccuum. There is no such thing as ‘(passively) not having an abortion’, except ‘(actively) having a child’. If we can conclude that it is wrong to have the child, then it is also wrong to not have the abortion.

Now I agree that the father facing costs over a choice he could not make is wrong (though the mother faces similar costs, being the primary caregiver. Kids are expensive). Nevertheless, the financial abortion (and subsequent full abdication of parental rights) sounds like a good idea, as it gives the man a similar choice to the one the woman has. Whether to become a parent or not.

However, I feel it is somewhat disingenuous to argue on the suffering of three parties. If we are arguing within the pro-choice framework, the child is not a factor in that sense. Since we can stop the child from ever living while remaining consistent with our moral framework, the child’s fate is not yet a moral question.

Now, the question becomes rather different when the fetus becomes a living being that morality can be applied to. Then, I’m pretty sure we’d support the child’s right to live regardless of the circumstance (disregarding situations like euthanasia).

The difference between our arguments seems to be perspective. I’m arguing on what should be legal, whereas you’re arguing what is moral. Your example of child support to a rapist is certainly morally repugnant and a gross miscarriage of justice, and I support the idea of financial abortion, especially if the cost of the abortion is paid for.

I agree that your examples of the hypothetical mother’s actions are morally wrong, but I’m not arguing morality here. Bad parenting isn’t illegal. If I had children, I could raise them to be a bunch of racists who wear crocs, and it would certainly be morally wrong, I’m not arguing against that. But law isn’t just about morality. It, it its ideal form, is about morality that is practical and reasonable to enforce. That’s it. I’m arguing financial autonomy because that fits the criteria of what can be legislated in a manner that makes a good law. Emotional trauma… not so much.

On the freedom of choice, I don’t think she should be punished. Freedom of Choice includes the right to make bad choices. As for moral obligation… not so sure about that either, but I don’t think it’s ultimately that relevant. If both parents have the right to terminate their parental obligations and rights, anything beyond that point is, and should be, beyond the bounds of the law. My alternative, in this case, seems to be mostly the same you’re offering.

Firstly, since I made this account just to say this, I have no concept of Tumblr etiquette, or where to make this kind of argument. “Submit” seemed appropriate.

I’ve read a significant number of your posts, and agree with most of it. However, I think your arguments on abortion are misguided, and here is why.

I made that argument well over a year ago, and to my knowledge you’ve been the first person to properly address it. I feel like I should thank you for that, because I don’t really agree with the argument myself. It was a thought experiment. It was a question: if these are the principles we’re working with, why not this solution? The problem was that nobody answered the question, and so I was given no reason to abandon the thought experiment, and so it survived. I was looking for it to be defeated, but it survived, and so I’ve had to hold this uncomfortable conclusion for far too long. This isn’t some agenda of mine that I’ve twisted the facts to fit. I’ve just noticed that other positions have twisted their logic, straightened it out a bit, and been led to this alternative. It’s not my agenda, and I don’t like it, but it’s where the reasoning led me.

It assumes that the suffering of abortion is always less than the suffering of pregnancy and childbirth. This might be somewhere in the neighborhood of true, were it not for the fact that rabidly pro-life people exist. To make the argument of lessened suffering ignores the fact that significant moral opposition to abortion exists.

I would guess that this varies hugely from country to country. Where I live, I know of nobody with that level of opposition. Abortion is legal and freely available to me, and even the most conservative people I know would not begrudge me it. This argument concerns hypothetical situations, and discusses what the ideal compromise would be. In my view, creating a society where abortion is accepted and available has to take priority over deciding whether anyone is morally obliged to have one, and so if these problems did exist in this hypothetical I would deal with them first before moving on to the secondary concerns.

However, I have always lived in a pro-choice society, and in the Tumblr feminist community in which I operate it is by far the dominant ideology. As I am criticising the flaws in that ideology by demonstrating the contradictory nature of its own arguments, I have had to assume its premises as universally accepted. I am assuming the pro-choice platform as the default, because in this community it is. Obviously, in other societies there is strong pro-life opposition, and this - a problem for both my position and the pro-choice one - must be dealt with as a priority before arguing over the details.

Even if I am to conclude that the pro-choice movement is contradictory, I will still always side with it against pro-life criticism; it is only after our common enemy has been vanquished that I will make objections of my own. My argument aims to discuss whether abortion should ever be mandatory, and to do so I have assumed that it is at the very least permissible. My hypothetical discussions take place in a context where this is known to be the case, and so strong opposition to abortion as a whole is more fundamental problem to that which I am currently seeking to solve, and is thus one which would have to be solved before this discussion could even take place.

In addition, to the best of my understanding, abortion does have medical problems, though rare. Ironically, these include difficulties conceiving again. So no, a woman who has an abortion does not always have another chance to have a child.

The World Heath Organisation notes that abortion in developed countries is “one of the safest procedures in contemporary practice”. In fact, I only mention this because it is such a common pro-choice argument: abortion has virtually no risk compared to childbirth, and so it is always to be preferred. This is in response to pro-lifers attempting to portray abortion as dangerous and terrifying. When done correctly, with modern medical technology, it is anything but. Childbirth, on the other hand, is paraded by pro-choicers as a form of torture! I’ve seen them write long posts about all of the complications it can bring, and then deny that abortion carries any risk at all. Less pain, less danger, less hassle all around. 

Abortion, then, might have medical problems and discomfort involved, but not when compared to the alternative: a long pregnancy, followed by childbirth, followed by the rearing of an infant. You can’t look at the risks of abortion on its own, like you can either have an abortion, or have a child, or have neither. It’s not like that. You can either have an abortion, or you can have a child, and so the ‘costs’ of abortion must always be analysed in that context: it’s the termination of a pregnancy, the prevention of a birth, and that’s something we need to take into account.

Secondly, whilst we’re being utilitarian and just weighing up the comparative costs, I’ll remind you that the unwilling father faces significant costs as well. If we are taking abortion to be safer and easier than childhood, that’s both parents who have been spared. If the abortion is wanted because the child has medical conditions or can’t be properly cared for, caring the pregnancy to term creates costs for all three parties, and an early abortion spares them all. Ignoring the rare minority of cases in which there are complications, the mother’s desire to have a child isn’t even sacrificed, because she can always have one with a consenting man, or wait for the current one to be ready. If she does that, then everybody wins.

Of course, if we’re in a society where abortion is a horrible and dangerous business,  I would never argue for this. As with your above mention of strong pro-life anger, these hypothetical cases take place in a context where the pro-choice position has been realised: abortion is easy, safe, and legal. As I am critiquing the pro-choice stance, I am allowed to assume their premises and bring them down from within. Obviously, if these premises aren’t realised, then a different argument is needed. In that case, I would join with my pro-choice colleagues and work until those premises were established, because both of us need them before we can build our more complex conclusions. If abortion was 100% risk-free and instant, if a man could simply choose to press the self-destruct on his genetic material, I think you’d support his right to do so (preventing suffering for all three parties, whilst freeing the mother to have healthy children with somebody who will appreciate them). The issue, then, is where to draw the line. Where does abortion get too dangerous? There is a good argument that it could be incredibly risky, just so long as it is relatively safer than the alternative. In modern, developed societies, though, it is pretty darn safe.

That ties into my other arguments. Firstly, the immense impracticality of your proposition. Again, the pro-lifers would flip shit, because suddenly the decision to abort is out of the woman’s hands. Your idea would force someone who thinks that abortion is murder to submit to a surgical procedure to kill her child (in her view) because the man does not want the kid. If you think this will ever go through anywhere, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you.

Finally, I object to the moral premises of your argument. While I see the utilitarian point of view that mutual consent to childbirth creates the least suffering, it also violates the woman’s right to bodily autonomy. In child support, only the man’s right to financial autonomy is violated, and we don’t have that in the first place (taxes, to start). Your argument is simply an overextension of utilitarianism to create a situation where we sacrifice bodily autonomy upon the altar of “least suffering”. I agree that the current system is unequal, but this is not the solution.

uglyorangecouch:

stfuprolife:

stfuprolife:

1. An estimated 19-20 million unsafe abortions take place every year.  97% of these are in developing countries.
   
   
2. Despite its frequency, unsafe abortion remains one of the most neglected global public health challenges.
   
   
3. An estimated 68,000 women die every year from unsafe abortion, and millions more are injured, many permanently.
   
   
4. Leading causes of death are hemorrhage, infection, and poisoning from substances used to induce abortion. 
   
   
5. Access to modern contraception can reduce but never eliminate the need for abortion. 
   
   
6. Legalisation of abortion is a necessary but insufficient step toward eliminating unsafe abortion. 
   
   
7. When abortion is made legal, safe, and easily accessible, women’s health rapidly improves.  By contrast, women’s health deteriorates when access to safe abortion is made more difficult or illegal.
   
   
8. Legal abortion in developed countries is one of the safest procedures in contemporary practice, with case-fatality rates less than one death per 100,000 procedures. 
   
   
9. Manual vacuum aspiration (a handheld syringe as a suction source) and medical methods of inducing abortion have reduced complications. 
   
   
10. Treating complications of unsafe abortion overwhelms impoverished health-care services and diverts limited resources from other critical health-care programmes. 
    
    
11. The underlying causes of this global pandemic are apathy and disdain for women; they suffer and die because they are not valued.

[source]

*This applies to anyone with a uterus.

Just in case anti-choicers missed this the first time around.  I will continue posting this over and over again.

(Source: stfuprolifers)

saynathespiffy:

Like if someone is pregnant and doesn’t want to be.

just-smith:

Studying the Philosophy of Religion, my classmates and I applauded the logical rebuttals of many theological arguments by one Immanuel Kant, whose sensible objections made him (in our eyes) the embodiment of secular scepticism. Imagine our surprise, then, when the last of the arguments for the existence of God was attributed to the very same individual - it was if we had been betrayed, and he was a hypocrite.

He wasn’t. Last week on the BBC panel show Have I Got News For You, Conservative MP Louise Bagshawe made a case for the ‘First Past the Post’ electoral system, claiming that the majority of countries in the world employ it and are fine. Her team captain Ian Hislop promptly turned around and attacked the fallacy of this Argument From Majority, suggesting that the fact that many people in the world are starving would be equally a ‘pretty solid argument for not eating’. Hislop then admitted that he was unsure why he’d attacked his teammate, as he mostly agreed with her.

But it is the duty of every rational person to criticise such fallacious premises and inferences, even when we agree with the conclusion. This may be seen as treachery against their cause, but if they support a nonsense argument simply because it supports said cause then they are in fact selling out to a greater extent, turning their back on logic. If any campaigner wants to retain any form of respect in debate, they would do well to prune the weeds from their own side before attacking similar flaws in the other.

I myself have criticised an argument on here against verbal sexual harassment, which invoked the clichéd rule ‘if you would feel uncomfortable doing it with your mother watching, then it’s still wrong without her’ - this is ridiculous, especially when when it concerns the world of sex. Within the same Religious Studies course we tackled abortion, and as a biologist I became pro-choice almost immediately - the strength of my passion at an early age had actually led a previous teacher to reject an poster on the topic, which she assumed the quiet young boy before her must have printed directly from the internet - a belief I retain to this day. But when I see my fellow feminists on Tumblr arguing ‘if you don’t like abortions, don’t have one’ for that cause, I discover that bad logic can offend me whatever the intent.

Now for the case. Previously I have argued (not on here) about the names of the Pro-Life and Pro-Choice movements themselves. Obviously both are classic examples of labels which manipulate connotations - both seem like a good thing, and suggest that the other movement is Anti-Life or Anti-Choice respectively. My argument pointed out that, whilst the Pro-Choice movement definitely wasn’t Anti-Life, the Pro-Life movement was actually Anti-Choice. I thought this that showed that, whilst both sides sported positive labels, the Pro-Lifers were the only option who could also sport the implied negative one - thus placing them in the wrong.

But I was the wrong one. I’d assumed that being Anti-Choice in this topic was necessarily a bad thing, but it isn’t - and especially when compared to being Anti-Life. If you believe fetuses are just very young human beings, for whatever reason, then Anti-Life is exactly what abortionists are. From that perspective these people are literally killing babies, and so saying that you don’t want to force it and only fight for the ‘choice’ isn’t going to console them at all.

Imagine if this debate was over a more widely recognised form of infanticide. Being Pro-Life is a justifiable position, but being Pro-Choice really isn’t. ‘If you don’t like killing babies, don’t do it’ is as disgusting in terms of logic as it is in content. These sort of arguments would work for actions which don’t hurt others (‘If you don’t like gay sex, don’t have it’ for instance) but in this case there is an unwilling victim - the fetus, whose preference would always be to survive. Whether you believe it has the right to fulfil this preference or not, this argument is stupid and and awful defence of the Pro-Choice movement.

The name of the movement itself now looks hard to justify, as freedom to be immoral has never been a good thing. ‘Pro-Choice’ when it comes to murder really isn’t that far removed from being ‘Pro-Murder’, and so to make such a distinction is bizarre. I don’t think abortion is murder, but those who do aren’t going to appreciate any claim that ‘choice’ is automatically objectively the best option, because it really isn’t. This logic is the same was every other crime. ‘If you don’t like it, don’t do it’ does not make sense. Promoting choice for choice’s sake does not make sense. I love the conclusion, but the argument? Sorry.

The ‘if you don’t like abortions, don’t have one’ put down is most frequently used against men, intentionally being ironic in pointing out that men can’t, and suggesting that they therefore have no place in this discussion. This is another problem when misunderstanding pro-lifers: saying ‘abortion is a woman’s issue, as a man you shouldn’t have an opinion’ and expecting that to be logical. It might be when you’re pro-choice, but again this is neglecting that fact that pro-lifers are going to see the issue differently. 

From a pro-life perspective, men who believe that fetuses should have human rights definitely have just as much right to voice their opinions as women who disagree, because for them this becomes a murder case - independent of any gender bias. Suggesting to them that they shouldn’t intervene on the basis of their genitals is as ridiculous as claiming women can’t criticise men choosing to practice a similar infanticide. Gender is irrelevant in this objectively abhorrent crime. Murder is not a ‘women’s issue’.

Although women are the ones who have to go through childbirth, which I do not doubt is painful (and potentially even fatal), to pro-lifers the greater victims in the case against abortion are their unborn children. These children can be both male and female, and so men and women are equally entitled to come to their defence. We were all fetuses once, and so it is ignorant to assume men should be excluded from a debate on fetus rights. So neither argument brings anything to the discussion. Neither argument makes sense to anybody who doesn’t already agree with its conclusion, meaning that it is nothing but circular logic, preaching to the choir. 

Remember: these people already think that you’re evil, and so it doesn’t help your cause to make them think that you’re stupid as well. Before you address their position, for goodness sake try to understand it first. There are logical arguments you can make, such as in demonstrating that a foetus is not alive, and that abortion is not murder; but until you have established such fundamentals, these details are nothing but a shot in the foot.

feminismfreedomfighters:

woahdoublekelsey:

You go on about pregnancy and children being gifts.

If they’re gifts, why do you treat them like a punishment?

“you had sex, deal with the consequences” Consequence of having sex = being pregnant and having kids. THE SAME THING you are telling me are wonderful gifts.

Have you ever gotten a punishment or a consequence you loved and saw as a gift? No, I don’t think so.

Pregnancy should be a happy experience, when you’re proud to show off your belly, proud to have a baby shower and hold it at night.

It shouldn’t be you sitting at home crying and worrying about how you’ll raise it, crying because you’re giving it up, worrying about how you will pay the bills for your pregnancy.

A child should be wanted, a person you wanted to have in your life. A person you look forward to raising in a financially stable home, in a loving home with a full family.

A child shouldn’t be a person you can hardly take care of because it’s a “consequence” a child shouldn’t be a person you look at and feel a pang of “you’re my consequence” A child should be able to live in a home where it has a fully family able to support and love it.

So please, don’t be hypocrites and keep calling a baby a “gift from god” when you turn around and call it a “consequence of your actions” gifts=/=consequences

Touche.

Don’t be a hypocrite?

So you establish that parenthood should never be a punishment for having sex.

You say that we should always have a choice.

You say that every child should be a wanted child.

You say that we should never be forced into parenthood against our will.

You say that we should be financially and emotionally ready before we have children.

You say that anything else would be unfair on both us and the child.

This is an emotional and social and psychological argument. It has nothing to do with any body parts. But if you are a member if the typical pro-women movement, you will ignore all of the above statements when it comes to men/people without uteri. If I don’t have a uterus, my completely separate right to have sex without being punished disappears. If I don’t have an irrelevant body part, it’s suddenly just to thrust an unwanted child on me and cause suffering for the both of us. That’s what we call a double standard. If you’re going to base your arguments on uteri, then you can exclude those without them. But if you’re basing your arguments on feelings and sexual freedom, never exclude men, because when you do you imply that men don’t have or deserve this like women do.

Men have feelings too, men want to love their children when they can, rather than have a miserable consequence when they can’t, men want to have sex without punishment. But the system you support says that they get no choice whatsoever, and so any argument based on these things is completely pointless, because you don’t even believe in it yourself.

(Source: take-this-t0-y0ur-grave)

feministslut:

i-sauntered-vaguely-downwards:

mnmplease:

I swear, if I see one more post that states, or have one more person tell me, that “anti-choice” is equivalent to “anti-feminism,” I will explode upon them.

I dunno about anti-feminism… but… no you can not be anti-choice for all pregnant people, or even most pregnant people, and be a feminist. They’re majorly, majorly conflicting ideas. You can not lobby to take away the rights and body autonomy of an entire group of people comprised mostly of women (not all folks who can and do get pregnant are women and not all women can get pregnant) and reduce them down to incubators for the state and literally force them through pregnancy AND be a feminist. You can not effectively condemn nearly 70 thousand people, mostly women, every year to death via back alley abortions (newsflash, abortion rates do not go down in places where abortion is made illegal) leaving, in many cases, their other children behind, not to mention the rest of their family, and call yourself a feminist. That’s a problem. You can’t be for gender equality and at the same time try to take the rights away from a fuckton of women.

And that’s not even getting into the misogynistic attitude of the anti-choice movement in general. Reducing a pregnant person (very often a woman) down to a belly and a pair of hands in posters. That’s fairly dehumanizing. The movement itself it full of tons of misogyny… so is the anti-choice movement anti-feminism… not really, but it’s sure full of a lot of anti-feminism.

You can be pro-choice and make your own choice not to never have an abortion and be a feminist… that’s your choice… but you can not lobby with the anti-choice movement and try to take away a ton of woman’s rights and be a feminist. That’s a contradiction.

There are problems galore with the way that we treat women, especially single, pregnant women, in this society, but abortion is a disgusting, ineffective way of dealing with it.

Actually it’s a really good way of dealing with being a single (or not) pregnant person and not wanting to be pregnant. Have an abortion… boom, not pregnant anymore. It’s really effective. Not to mention it’s a sugary, a medical procedure and literally the safest sort of surgery you can get in the US.

It covers up the problem instead of solving it, and in the process ends thousands of lives.

NO! No it really, really, really dosen’t. You know what kills people, actual legal, thinking, conscious, aware people? Banning abortion. For real. Abortion rates don’t go down, that’s been proved already, but folks who need abortions are forced to get one in an unsafe manner and they die of infection, sepsis, complications, tons and tons of shit. THAT! is what kills people. An abortion involve exactly one person (that would be the pregnant person not the fetus who is not legally a person) and kills exactly zero people (there is a very, very small number of deaths from complications during the surgery as there are with any medical procedure but the rates are the lowest of any surgery).

You can have your opinion about the morality of abortion, and I can have mine. I will never go to a rally and tell women they are going to Hell, but I will never tell someone that it is OK to commit an act that I see as murder.

You can see it that way but you really need to learn the definition of murder? And if you’re using the definition you seem to now you probably need to include things like taking out a kidney (murder of the kidney) or masturbating into a sock.

We do not need to shame women. We need to support them.

This I totally agree with. Probably in a different context than you do though since you seem to be all about shaming women who have an abortion or want one (calling it murder would be an example of this judgmental shaming)

I have offered emotional support to unwed mothers. My family donates money to clinics that help mothers take care of their children when they cannot afford Healthcare. Please do not tell me that I am shoving my beliefs down others’ throats, when all I have ever wanted to do was provide help.

The stigma that follows these women is that they are sluts. They are thrown out of their homes. They are denied care. They are told that they are in the wrong. Often, they are the only ones who are forced to deal with the issues of pregnancy, while the fathers claim that they “can’t handle this right now,” and hundreds abandon their families and even escape child support. THESE ARE THE PROBLEMS WE NEED TO BE ADDRESSING.

Yeah and for some women in these situations (and note not all pregnant folks who want or get an abortion are in this sort of situation, plenty are married, plenty have kids, plenty, most actually, aren’t teenagers and are living by themselves anyway) a great way to address these problems is to have an abortion. Not ever pregnant person though would be helped by that and that’s okay. Being pro-choice I do not go around saying ‘EVERY PREGNANT PERSON MUST HAVE AN ABORTION NOW’ I don’t. That’s silly. But I want pregnant folks, pregnant women, to have the option. I want it to be avaliable. I want them to make that decision if they want to and I want abortion to remain safe and legal. For some people it is a necessity.

Some people do not want children. Some people do not want to be pregnant. Some people can not be pregnant without the risk of it doing emotional or physical harm to them (I am one of those people. I am not emotional equipped to deal with being pregnant right now… it’s not the baby part it’s literally the pregnancy part). Some people can not financially support a pregnancy. Not the baby, none of this is about having a baby. It’s all about being pregnant. Some people… some women can not be pregnant for a shit ton of reasons, others don’t want to, and abortion should always be an option for them.

Abortion does not help these women.

See above because… yes it could. Not in every case ever, but yeah it could help them.

Having an abortion could keep someone working, could keep them in college, keep their lives at roughly where it is right now which may be what they need or what they want. Yes. Abortion can help women. And pregnant folks in general.

It forces a second level of shame upon them.

Not always… that would be people like you saying things like this.

I know women who have been shunned because they refuse to get an abortion. I know women who have felt forced to, in their own words, murder their children, because of social standards. There are only two kinds clinics out there for pregnant women: abortion clinics and anything-but-abortion clinics. There are precious few who offer real help and support. 

Yeah and that’s messed up and it’s not right and things need to be fixed. Contraception needs to be more accessible, more readily avaliable, more affordable. Sex ed really needs a revamp in schools. Tenn and young adults and adults and everyone need to be better educated about sex. Abortion needs to be accessible, available and affordable. Various stigma against women need to go away.

No one should ever be forced into an abortion.

No one should EVER! be forced into pregnancy either. Not ever. Banning abortion forces women (and potentially anyone with a uterus who gets pregnant) into pregnancy.

What we, as women, as alleged feminists, should be doing, is HELPING these women. We should be changing this horrific stigma, not telling others that they are pushing down women by disagreeing with an act that is doing nothing to help women anyway.

Once again, yes abortion can help women, if they make that choice, if they think ti would help them. If I was pregnant right now (not a women but I can still get pregnant) and I had an abortion yeah… it would help me a whole fucking lot. I can not be pregnant right now. For emotional and financial reasons that I don’t actually need to justify. And having an abortion would help me way, way more than being forced to carry a fetus to term. And I know for a fact I am not the only one.

You can believe in abortion or you cannot, but don’t you dare shame me for my thoughts and feelings.

Don’t you dare shame me for this. 

Well I’ll call you out on everythign you said that was bullshit and/or wrong.

^all of this. 

Okay, so do people want to understand the pro-life position?

It’s pro-life. Not anti-women.

It believes that fetuses are alive - living human beings, with human rights. Therefore, it believes that terminating that life is murder.

It is essentially just an anti-murder stance. It just makes the biological mistake of seeing abortion as murder. It says that women shouldn’t murder their children, and it also says that men shouldn’t murder their children. If it were just anti-women then it would say that men should have the choice, but it doesn’t say that. It doesn’t give anyone the choice. Because it doesn’t believe that anybody should be able to choose to murder.

No, saying ‘I don’t want to force people to have an abortion, I just want to give them the choice’ will not touch these people. What you are saying there is ‘I don’t want to force people to murder, I just want to give them the choice’. Choice is not some intrinsically good thing.

These people just don’t understand why a fetus isn’t a person, and that’s the only issue you need to explain to them.

No, that scientific mistake is not misogyny. Its consequences may disadvantage women more than our movement does, but in their eyes it is worth this because it saves many more lives than it takes. It saves the lives of unborn children. Women, and their rights, do not come into this. The pro-life position is about the children, and their right to life which trumps anybody else’s right to choice or a lack of suffering. It isn’t anti-woman, it is pro-child.

Just point out why a fetus is not a child, and the rest will follow automatically. But don’t go saying that pro-lifers are misogynistic or can’t be feminists, because that’s simply not true. All they are is misguided.

(Not to say that the OP’s points suggesting that the pro-choice movement is misogynistic aren’t equally ridiculous. If anything the pro-choice movement is unfairly biased in favour of women).

(Source: aryatheunderfoot)

permutationofninjas:

bebinn:

Being pro-choice means more than supporting the right to an abortion. Being pro-choice encompasses all reproductive decisions, from contraception, to sterilization, to IVF, to adoption and surrogacy. It means supporting and respecting people’s choices of where and how to give birth, or whether to give birth at all.

It means acknowledging the variety of life experiences, and working to break down barriers, such as poverty, location, and lack of education, that impede people’s right to control their reproductive destinies. It means working to ensure that no matter what sexual orientation or identity, everyone has equal access to support for their choices.

It means understanding that many are not given choices, or that their choices are limited by their situation. It means helping those people in any way, from offering them a ride to the hospital, to lobbying for their rights in the capitol or online.

It means fighting for everyone’s rights before, during, and after pregnancy, as well as the rights of those who will never be pregnant.

Unfortunately, whatever the party line is there seems to be a complete lack of fighting for the reproductive rights of men, only women.  The many who are “not given choices” include every single male in North America.  I’ve never heard a pro-choice person actually bring up the issues that males face except when someone points out that they don’t, at which point we get a bunch of heartfelt statements about how they really really honestly do care and it’s terribly important.  (Assuming they’re not just plain bigots, in which case we get a whole bunch or rhetoric about how reproductive rights only really apply to people with internal genitalia.)  They then go right back to ignoring the issue until someone points it out again.

It’s very hard for me to not find this hollow.

permutationofninjas:

feminismfreedomfighters:

“If you’re not ready to be pregnant, don’t have sex.”

feministsunited:

perspicaciousdrivel:

Using this logic we can conclude…

If you’re not ready to get food poisoning, don’t eat.

If you’re not ready to get mugged, don’t ever leave your house.

If you’re not ready to get fired, don’t hold a job.

If you’re not ready to die in your sleep, don’t sleep.

If you’re not ready to face the worst possible results of carrying out basic human functions, obviously the answer is to avoid those basic human functions at all costs…

The title is exactly what my sex ed teacher told the class.

If you’re not willing to be forced into parenthood, don’t have sex.  See how this logic is “totally not OK” when pushed at women, but nobody gives a shit when it’s men in the crosshairs?

Reproductive rights are for everyone regardless of their genitalia and gender expression.  Too bad people don’t seem to see it that way.

An easy way to see if you’re pro-choice, or pro-women.

(Source: somethinglickedthiswaycums)

I’m pretty sure that my girlfriend couldn’t just go and sign me up to adopt a baby. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t let her make the decision to be a father on my behalf. That’s a pretty massive decision to make, and it shouldn’t be made for anybody else. It certainly shouldn’t be forced on anybody else. I’m pretty sure that, for adoption, there are laws which acknowledge that. Pretty sure doing such a devastating thing to someone, if she manages to forge my signature or something, would be a criminal offence.

But if she offers to put the child in her womb for a bit beforehand, she can do what she wants with me. My right to choose goes out the window, simply because she wants to go through some pain. If I try to take that pain away from her and stop her from inflicting pain onto me, so that we can reassess the situation later and make a decision which doesn’t forcibly change anyone’s life against their will (which, you know, is not cool), I am evil. It’s fine that she’s taking away my right to decide about my whole future, or to protect my first child to be born into an unwanted home because I want to love it and be a great father and I’m currently unready and unable. But if I lay a finger on the sovereign power she has over all three of us, given simply because she’s the one with the uterus free, I definitely hate women.

I want to stop her from painfully putting my innocent baby through her vagina, because that would break my heart, but you know, who am I to want that? I’m practically just a bystander here. She’s the one who deserves the choice on behalf of all three of us, because she’s the only one who counts.

So why is my consent and choice actually valuable in adoption, but pointless in natural births? Well, there’s only one difference. My girlfriend not only wants the baby, but she wants it inside her. That apparently means that she must automatically get her way. The fact that I don’t want the baby, and don’t want it inside anyone, is irrelevant. I no longer matter.

Because, you know, we have the right to do whatever we like with our own bodies. We have the right to hurt other people with our bodies, and if we psychologically torture a man and he tries to stop us peacefully, or if we are about to cause considerable pain to a newborn child and their father rushes in to protect them, then they are disgusting. How dare they take away our absolute freedom? After all, they are proposing a solution that is horrible. It actually saves us on a net amount of suffering, but it’s awful because it takes away our freedom. You know, that freedom that we have to hurt other people without being stopped. It’s a basic human right, or something.

Yeah, men and babies don’t have that right. It’s their fault for having a different body to us, so basically they deserve the suffering they get as a consequence of our uncontrollable actions. That’s life.