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Reasons For The Lowered Abortion Rate
- Available birth control
- Lessened stigma on birth control
- More education about birth control
- More comprehensive sex education than the past
Things That Barely (If At All) Lowered Abortion Rates:
- Pro-Life harassment and violence
- Sidewalk protesting
- Restricting abortions
- Banning abortions
Things That Will Continue To Lower Abortion Rates:
- Even more comprehensive sex education
- Even better birth control options
- Less stigma on sex, sex ed, and birth control
- More birth control options for those without a uterus
- Available and affordable (or free) birth control
Either Way:
- Abortion is not evil.
- Abortion is a responsible choice.
- Abortion should remain legal, no matter what.
- Sentient pregnant person > non-sentient fetus.
- Do not harass those who want an abortion or those who have had one.
- Abortion needs to be de-stigmatized, for the sake of the people who choose it or who need it.
Role reversal. It’s a fantastic way to check if a situation is horribly wrong. A brilliant example of this is found about 3 minutes in on this pretty great video. It follows the point I made in a previous post, but in a new, wonderfully hilarious way. Watch, laugh, be better equipped to deal with anti-choicers.
Nice to have a handy reference poster to deal with our anti-choice, forced birth friends.
How many more examples do we need of the lethal nature of the supposedly “pro-life” position? Let’s clear this up by naming them correctly, for the record, when you hear the term “Pro-life” you need to replace that with “anti-woman forced birth advocate”. Why? Because what forced birthers are about is stripping women of their rights and of their bodily autonomy. Beatriz, like Savita Halappanavar, is being put in mortal peril because where she lives the forced birth brigades ideas are reality, and women really do not have rights.
“The 22-year-old woman suffers from severe and complicated illnesses. Her doctors have told her that she will likely die giving birth, and the unborn child will most likely live only a few hours, but she is prevented by law from having an abortion. “They [the Supreme Court] were not convinced this is the way… they are saying Beatriz is not in danger and she must pursue the natural way of delivery and we must see what happens,” said Mata. “It isn’t just an abortion, it is a necessity,” said Mata, in an earlier interview with CBSNews.com”
Yeah. The all male supreme court has ruled that this woman is not in danger and must continue with birth. Their noble dedication to preserving life is noted.
Beatriz is carrying an anencephalic fetus, which means it has no brain and is only expected to survive at maximum a few hours after birth, even if she carries it to full term. Beatriz has lupus, worsened by a kidney malfunction, and it is very dangerous for her to be pregnant. “The doctors are saying it’s very critical because the lupus may be reactivated and if the lupus is reactivated it is very dangerous for her health,” he added. She is now 26-weeks pregnant, and every day it becomes more risky for her to be pregnant and have an abortion at such a late stage.
This is what happens when legislate against women. Women are endangered and their lives are at risk.
According to a 2012 report from the Central American Women’s Network, 628 women have been imprisoned in El Salvador since its anti-abortion law was enacted in 1998. Twenty-four of these women were indicted for “aggravated murder,” after an abortion, miscarriage, or stillbirth. “The only way now is to go to the international courts,” said Mata. Meanwhile, Beatriz awaits her fate in hospital, separated from her 14-month old son and her husband. “Everyday, the health of Beatriz is [getting] worse. If they wait another week or two weeks, she will be too feeble to endure the operation,” said Mata.
So because of the religiously inspired pro-life fuckwittery of the Roman Catholic Church (this is what a society where they have tangible influence looks like) it is most likely Beatriz will die.
No rant today – this is too outrageous and too cold for a rant. This is an tragic (because it is preventible) object lesson – women die and are dying because they are denied their reproductive rights and rights to bodily autonomy.
That is all.
One of the cheap rhetorical tricks that forced birth advocates often use is the idea that somehow “Science” (ya know science, that vast shadowy monolithic structure) supports their crappy arguments and thus lends weight to their assault on women and their rights. One of the easiest tells illustrating the rhetorical, rather than scientific vein of this particular argument, is that idea that we have a definite grasp of when “life” begins. Unsurprisingly, the anti-choice position relies on a gross simplification of what the bio-medical position actually is on when life begins. The irony is very rich as fetus fetishists often assign the label of “anti-science” to pro-choice people arguing against them and their misguided campaign for life.
I’m not really a fan of arguing from authority (This introduction is a perspective from an evolutionary biologist, for the record.), but I swear, if see one more out of context reference to a embryology text during an argument, I will practice immediate defenestration of the offender in question.
This next quoted section is from Blazer S, Zimmer EZ (eds):The Embryo: Scientific Discovery and Medical Ethics. Basel, Karger, 2005, pp 1– 20 (ed. minor formatting changes for effect)
”
[…]
This chapter began with the central ethical question of ‘when does life begin?’ The evolutionary answer to this question makes it devoid of ethical
implications concerning the sojourn from conception to birth (although it has other, profound ethical implications). Instead, the evolutionary and
genetic arguments presented in this chapter indicate that a more meaningful ethical question is:
Where do we place ethical thresholds in the continual process of human
individuality?
Biology provides no clear defining event to answer this question because diploid human individuality arises gradually during the mitotic phase of our life cycle and not at fertilization. Perhaps there is no single ethical threshold in dealing with the mitotic continuum and the attendant gradual emergence
of functional genotypes and individual traits. Although modern biology does not provide an answer to the above question, knowing what the question should be and what it should not be is the critical first step in any debate. Thus, modern biology, and particularly evolutionary biology and genetics, can play an important role in the ethical debates concerning the passage from conception to birth.
[…]”
So let the record be set straight that science doesn’t not precisely know when “life” begins and that very possibly it is the wrong question to be asking.
Ah, the forced birth lobby has finally pissed off enough women to start the inevitable slapdown of their deplorable, retrograde fundamentally anti-woman position. Let’s keep this video in the “abortion” feed for a long time, in light of that goal, I encourage everyone to share and repost this clip on their blog, so our anti-choice friends know exactly what they are up against.
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