Tiny Pasture is taking me and other female bloggers to task for suggesting that abortion is just another form of birth control and not the slaughtering of innocents.
And I am flip about it. I think it’s clear why I’m flip, but let me be explicit.
I’m flip about abortion because most anti-abortion folks in this state aren’t themselves serious about ending abortion. They always make it like if pro-choice people were just sorrier, if we just threw ourselves on the ground crying about what a great tragedy abortion is and how it’s always wrong, wrong, wrong, but sometimes we need it, pretty please, they could be moved to maybe let us have abortions when our own lives are at risk (with them getting to determine what “at risk” is) or when we’ve been raped (with them getting to decide if we’ve been “raped” enough). But that’s not true. There isn’t sorry enough.
And if there isn’t sorry enough, I refuse to be sorry at all.
Instead of wasting my time trying to figure out how to be sorry enough to prove to them that I need to be able to control my own body and what happens to it, I’m taking the time to look and see what these anti-abortion folks are actually doing to make sure that women who don’t want to be pregnant can keep from getting pregnant and to make sure that women who would love to have a child can successfully carry that child to term, have it, and raise it and its siblings in a safe and healthy manner.
I think you know what I see.
From most of them–jack shit.
They don’t want abortion, but they don’t want to extend unemployment benefits so that families don’t have to chose between having another kid and having everyone eat. They don’t want abortion, but they don’t want schools to teach kids anything but abstinence. They don’t want abortion, but they want to pass a bunch of legislation making it as easy as possible for men to get out of paying child support. And the worst, they don’t want abortion, you know, except when it’s their precious daughter who needs one or when it’s their wife’s life at stake, and then they want to be the exception to the rule they’d like to force the rest of us to live by.
Well, if I seem unserious about the subject, it’s because I see you for who you are–recklessly unserious about it.
You want to boss women around, but you don’t want to do anything that would actually help a woman choose to have a baby.
So, fuck it. If you’re not going to take the problem seriously, you don’t get to dictate that I do.
Tiny Cat Pants 
Yes and no. Yes, there is no sorry enough. Yes, the charade is always “oh, if only you took our moral concerns seriously and were penitent and grave, perhaps we’d be more inclined to work with you.” Yes, the vast majority of one-note Johnny anti-abortion folks are just that — they do not see nor do they wish to see that there’s a hostile social and economic context (that they themselves have legislated into being, in some cases) that drives the decision-making that they abhor.
But no to the idea of a quid pro quo. I do not give a rat’s ass if a blueprint for socialist utopia sprang forth from Stacey Campfield’s pen tomorrow, making Tennessee a liberal bastion of well-supported schools, living wage floors, and family-friendly workplaces. While I think that would be wonderful and I would expect to see abortion numbers plummet accordingly for all the reasons you address, the state does not have the right to boss my reproductive life, no matter what. The state does not have the right to boss my daughter’s reproductive life, either.
I completely agree, Bridgett, for all the reasons you’ve articulated so well. I’m just so tired of it seeming like the anti-abortion folks are the serious ones and we’re just so problematically unserious.
I mean, who in this state can even say with any certainty that their daughter is being taught how her body works? And they want to cut funding to Planned Parenthood, which leaves any non-school, non-family sex-ed up to the Christian “family crisis” centers, which then means you can’t get unbiased information, you get a church speil.
What if you aren’t Christian?
Which, frankly, makes me hope that someone starts suing under the first amendment. How can the state possibly try to defund a secular institution for the express purpose of turning around and giving that money to a Christian one?
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Q: How can the state possibly try to defund a secular institution for the express purpose of turning around and giving that money to a Christian one?
A: Maybe not why, but how: Because churches that are lobbying to get those dollars don’t have to play this shell game with tax-free dollars that 501(c)(4) organizations like Planned Parenthood have to. Politically active churches are wholly unregulated PACs.
I’ve been saying this to my dad’s peers for a decade–enjoy your deal with the Devil now, because it will bite you in the ass. Once you take money from the government, the government gets to look into what you’re doing with it.
I don’t want churches messing with the government, but you’d think churches would have sense enough to not want the government messing with them.
Why do you hate White, Christian, American babies?
trackback-
Odds and Sods – Snowed in edition
If you’re Flip, can I be Geraldine?
Daisy, I’m not sure why your trackbacks don’t show up on their own. Come on, WordPress. Get it together.
Sarcastro, I hate the White, Christian, Male, American babies. Get it right.
Chris, I’m pretty sure that, if I’m Flip and you’re Geraldine, at some point, we’re going to have to be in that dress together, and I’m not sure that’s legal in Tennessee. And if it is, if it looks like we’re having too good a time in there, you know they’ll move to outlaw it.
I like where you are going with this. if you abort WhChMaAm babies, then we will have a glut of female babies. We can then turn and sell the surplus females to China for 20k apiece as the ‘adoption fee’. As the Chinese policy of aborting more females than males will come a cropper as soon as that generation realizes they can’t find dates for the senior prom.
That should eliminate our trade deficit, spur the economy and get lazy Americans back to work in the ‘manufacturing’ sector. Win-win, baby.
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I love it when you get pissed off.
:-)
Don’t believe in abortion?
Don’t have one.
But you don’t have the right to dictate to other women what they may or may not do with their own bodies.
Aunt B, I believe the reasons for no trackbacks is a Coke-vs-Pepsi type brand-war between Blogger and WordPress. (They show up okay in Blogger, usually!)
I think I am a little bit in love with you…
Sar is right. I read somewhere that China is starting to see a huge increase in teen violence because the boys don’t have any girls to occupy their time.
Until all foster homes are empty, they shouldn’t be worrying about what I do with my body. Take care of the young living souls that are in need of nurturing right now and leave me be.