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Letting women die because of unsafe abortions is awesome!
Isn’t is cute when our politicians decide that keeping the zany religious fruit-bats in their ‘base’ happy is more important that saving women’s lives? Just ask our lovely PM Steven Harper all about appeasing the religious zealotry that makes up a portion of his base on how the blood of women will appease their ignoble quest to save ‘life’.
“According to the World Health Organization, 21.6 million women experience an unsafe abortion worldwide each year. The 47,000 who die make up about 13 per cent of annual maternal deaths.
As part of Millennium Development Goal No. 5, which aims to reduce the maternal mortality rate by 75 per cent from 1990 to 2015, the United Nations secretary general came up with a global strategy for women and children’s health. Among other things, it includes saving the lives of women who experience unsafe abortions.”
Letting 47,000 women die from unsafe abortions is par for the course for our noble “pro-life” constituency (because they love fetuses more that women). I may have already commented on this untidy dilemma our pro-life friends find themselves in.
Now what is our besieged PM to do?
Step One – Waffle with vague generalities about consensus.
The PM:
“We’re trying to rally a broad public consensus behind what we’re doing, and you can’t rally a consensus on that issue, as you know well in this country,” he said.
“It’s not only controversial here, it’s controversial and often illegal in many recipient nations.”
Harper doesn’t agree with the suggestion that he is exporting his beliefs abroad to other countries by not funding abortion services.
“We’re really not taking a position on that. We have taxpayers’ money and we have great needs,” he said to Thibedeau.
Step Two – Concede that the anti-choicers have a large home in his base and pissing them off makes Harper have a sad.
“And frankly, there’s more than enough things that we can finance, including contraception, without getting into an issue that really would be extremely divisive for Canadians and donors.”
Step Three – Say that supporting contraception is enough and to those bitchez that do get knocked up, so sorry about your luck… luv Canada.
Melinda Gates:
“One of the things we don’t invest in enough, as a world, are contraceptives. We put women in that situation because they don’t have access and when you talk to them in the developing world, they say, ‘I want that tool, I want that shot I used to get,'” she said.
“We can work upstream on these issues to help women where they are, so you don’t ever put them in that situation, and to me, that’s the smart investment to make.”
So yah, enjoy your unsafe abortions wimmenz cause Canada just ran out fucks to give about your situation.
The NDP Hélène Laverdière critic rightly lambasted Harper and his anti-choice concerns.
“Well, there’s 47,000 women who die each year from unsafe abortions,” she said in an interview with CBC News.
“So, if we want to save every woman, we have to address that issue too.”
According to the World Health Organization, 21.6 million women experience an unsafe abortion worldwide each year. The 47,000 who die make up about 13 per cent of annual maternal deaths.
This from a letter sent to Harper on May 28th:
“Global parliamentarians recommend that women’s reproductive health can only be achieved when the human rights of women, girls and youth are realized.
So if the abortion debate is over in Canada and abortion is a legal and reasonable part of the umbrella of women’s reproductive health, then what exactly is your problem Stephen? Or do women get their rights only when it is politically expedient?
[Source for Quotes: cbc.ca]
A big thank you to Tigger_the_Wing, Back home =^ from the comments section of a blog post on Pharyngula.
Tigger talks about the inconsistency in many of the arguments religious anti-choicers make.
Back to regret:
When we lose someone, the loss hurts; among other reasons because we remember all the time and experiences that we had with them and recognise that we will never repeat those and also because the future we had planned with them, and were looking forward to, is no longer.
When a wanted pregnancy is lost, the loss hurts partly because we have lost the future we had planned; but the personality we were going to share that future with was, after all, a figment of our imaginations. We have very little, if any (depending on the length of the pregnancy) shared past with them to remember and mourn. The regret is for the loss of a potential life arc rather than an actual one. Yet when a baby is born, the future we had planned during pregnancy often turns out very different in the actual living of it, but we don’t usually mourn that loss of the planned future, because we happily adjust our expectations according to the real child we have borne, rather than the imaginary one of pregnancy.(I’ve had a thought – maybe the personal hurt that some people feel when they realise that they have a disabled child (especially Autism-Speaks-Parents) is because they are unable to adjust the plans they had, for the imaginary child-to-be, to accommodate the real child, and they cannot bring themselves to want that child as much as the one they imagined themselves having. That would also explain those parents who control every aspect of their children’s lives: choosing (or at least trying to choose) their clothes, toys, friends, careers, partners… they are trying to turn their real child into the one they imagined they would have).
When an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy is discovered, the pregnant person suddenly finds themselves in a situation where the future they had planned, and were looking forward to, is no longer. That loss hurts just as much as any other; but they can do something about it that restores the original plan. That might be why few people regret elective abortion. It is something that restores their control over their lives and their futures, rather than something which takes everything away.
One thing that might help people become more rational about the whole elective-abortion-equals-murder thing would be to put it in context by speaking out about miscarriage, AKA spontaneous abortion, statistics.
A vast and important part of the experience of people seems to be hidden behind a curtain of shame, and failure, mourning and regret. Every person I have spoken to on the subject knows someone who has had at least one miscarriage. Most, like me, have had several. But no-one mentions it in conversation. It simply gets swept under the carpet and ignored. If one of us doesn’t deliberately ignore the hushing and silencing tactics and raise the subject anyway, it never gets discussed. So no-one knows how prevalent pregnancy loss is. And that isn’t counting the loss of embryos so early that no-one is aware that the egg was ever fertilised.
I’d like to ask these ‘pro-life’ whiners, picketing with their signs, something important (they aren’t actually ‘pro’ anything; nothing they do is actually aimed at changing the status quo; it’s all about them feeling superior without actually having to do anything helpful for anyone). Exactly how do they treat women who have miscarried a wanted pregnancy? How much sympathy and understanding do they give them? How do they commemorate the deceased conceptuses/embryos/fœtuses – all ‘unborn babies’? How many prayers do they offer up each week for the ‘souls of the babies’ lost by members of their congregation over the previous seven days?
And I’d like to ask them who, exactly, is responsible for their loss? For every baby born, at conservative estimates more than one, up to three conceptions were lost.
The truth is that, if they truly believe that not even a sparrow falls without the say-so of their God, that life begins at conception and that every death of an unborn baby is a major tragedy, they should be picketing the churches!
I’d like to ask them why they aren’t angry at God.
When their God kills blastocysts, embryos and fœtuses – ones that would be wanted – by the hundreds every minute of every day, all over the world*; yet they say it is wrong for someone to decide under any circumstances whatsoever to end their own pregnancy, when humans do so at the rate of just 83 a minute**?
When 33 mothers die, every hour from complications caused by pregnancy and delivery***? (I was nearly one of those appalling statistics, back in 1984, when they were even higher.)
When, of the 15,000 babies born every hour, 634 won’t live to celebrate their first birthday****?
If no-one ever had an elective abortion again, anywhere in the world, 44 million elective abortions wouldn’t happen each year. But at least 22 million of those embryos and fœtuses would die, through miscarriage, anyway. And more would die because the person carrying them would die.
By successfully ending elective abortion worldwide, you’d save, at best, 12-22 million lives a year. Meantime, over 150 million embryos and fœtuses, most of them very much wanted, would die before being born, through miscarriage.
You think life begins at conception, and want to save unborn babies? Stop wasting time and money picketing abortion providers and trying to make people who have had elective abortions feel ashamed or guilty.
Sponsor research into preventing spontaneous, not elective, abortion. Make pregnancy safer.
Save over seven times as many lives.
Thank you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*Worldwide births, 15,000 per hour, 250 per minute; spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) and failed implantation rates, conservative estimate 60-75% of all fertilised eggs = 22,500 – 45,000 per hour, 375 – 750 per minute (various implantation estimations, several sites)
**Elective abortion rates 42 – 44 million worldwide per year, 4,800 – 5,000 per hour, 80 – 83 per minute (Guttmacher Institute)
***”Every day, approximately 800 women die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth.” (WHO)
****Worldwide infant mortality, 37.61 deaths/1,000 live births (UN)
PZ Myers discusses abortion and how asinine the anti-choice positions actually are. From the article Abortion rights are human rights.
[…]
However, the equivalence of mother and fetus is an untenable proposition. A mouse has more complexity and autonomy than a fetus, and we don’t even hesitate when the choice is between the life of a mouse and a human being. We don’t even argue about it. And to argue that a single-celled zygote or even an embryo with a few dozen cells at implantation is anything but a negligible component of any moral equation is utterly absurd. It’s a fantasy of the deeply ignorant, the kind of people who think the babies on Pro-Life Across America billboards are actually accurate representations of the age-specific fetus, to think that there’s something cute, adorable, personable about a self-organizing mass of cells.
So I have to agree, and think the only reasonable conclusion, is reflected in this memorial to Dr George Tiller, the man murdered by an anti-choice fanatic.
Dr. Tiller listened to his patients, he trusted their decisions, and he knew that the people he was helping deserved his ear and his trust. He treated his patients like people (which really shouldn’t be such a radical position but, because of how anti-choicers have shaped the narrative around abortion, it is). He believed that those he helped were more important than the fetus inside of them. That is not a morally-bankrupt position. THAT IS THE MORAL SIDE.
Trusting patients, seeing them as individuals, believing in their abilities to make decisions for their own specific lives: THAT IS THE MORAL SIDE.
Thank you for everything you did, Dr. Tiller. Thank you for everything and everyone you championed. Thank you for risking your life to provide your patients with a safe and legal medical procedure. Thank you for doing so with no regrets, no animosity, no judgement, and no apologies.
You, sir, were a moral man on a moral mission. And I won’t forget it. WE ARE THE MORAL SIDE.
Well said. Also, a brief summation from the comments section of that same post which bears repetition; many thanks to mythbri for making clear and concise argument:
This conversation has been had over and over again with other similar commenters here. Is any further evidence necessary to demonstrate that there are non-religious folk who are still anti-choice (even though both of these commenters seem to be in the “I’m pro-choice, but” category)?
…
jimashby
Here is why I despise “I’m pro-choice, but” people more than people who are just plain anti-choice:
You are setting arbitrary conditions on my humanity.
Do you understand this? Do you get that I am a person with bodily autonomy 100% of the time. Not just for 20 weeks. Not just for two trimesters. Not even 99.95% of the time.
I am a person (with all the rights that entails) 100% of the time.
That does not magically change when or if I become pregnant, and honestly, it scares the SHIT out of me that anyone thinks that it does.
You know why the anti-choice and the “I’m pro-choice, but” positions are necessarily misogynistic? Because you are making the assumption that there are women out there that are making choice that you don’t approve of, and that your opinion of their choices is even remotely relevant or worth respecting.
You think that it’s okay for a woman’s choice about her own body to be irrelevant. You’re okay with the fact that arbitrary “viability” restrictions on abortions DO cause women to have children they don’t want. You’re okay with the fact that these arbitrary restrictions DO cause women to lose their health or their life. And while you’ll probably claim that you’re not “okay” with these things, this is the fucking reality of the situation. Okay? Your wishfulness for a perfect legal solution does not magically make this solution the reality, and if you’re aware of that and are okay with the collateral damage this causes to some women who slip through this imperfect and wrong system, then I’ve got nothing further to say to you.
You know why I despise you “I’m pro-choice, but” types? Because I don’t see you doing anything to curb the erosion of reproductive rights that we face in the U.S. I see you shrugging your shoulders and saying “That’s plenty of time” or “They can always go somewhere else for an abortion.”
You know why I despise you “I’m pro-choice, but” types? Because in these discussions, there is barely a smidgen of difference between you and an anti-choice type.
Deal with it.
Make no mistake, the pro-life-forced-birth lobby are advocating slavery for women. Dianne, in a comment on Pharygula, captures exactly the position our anti-choice friends would like to put women in.
Query: Why are they talking about the circumstances of the conception as though that matters? A forced pregnancy is slavery, regardless of the circumstances that led to the pregnancy. In the US, at least, people are never, under any circumstance other than pregnancy, required to give use of their body to another under any circumstance, even to save the life of the other person. Why are fetuses granted more rights than living people?
It is nice when the anti-woman, fetus-fetish brigade starts getting worked up. The thin veil of “protecting life” is torn away leaving only the desperate misogyny that is so typical of the anti-choice zealots. This from the Feel that pro-life love! Tumblr.
damnsoprochoice:
jojobear11:
J: Lol, people who think bodily autonomy is more important than the right to life.
DPC: Lol, people who think it’s okay to use someone’s body against their will and think that anyone will benefit from forced pregnancies and birth. Lol, people who think think that an embryo is more important than a grown person. Lol, people who think being born is a right.
DPC: I can lol all day.
J: Forced pregnancies and birth? Hahaha don’t get pregnant then asshole. No one said the unborn were more important, but keep putting words in someone’s mouth to make yourself look less like the stupid selfish cunt that you are. Saying being born isn’t a right doesn’t make any sense. You’re just making up stupid shit now.
DPC: Oh shit happens, peopel get pregnant. Abortion is a legitimate way of dealing with it.
DPC: And oooh, name calling. Fiesty.
DPC: But I’m not putting words in your mouth, you are making the embryo more important than the born person because you don’t give a fuck about how hard and debilitating a pregnancy can be for people, and you certainly think people should suffer through just so that itty bitty baby can be born and solve nothing. Just so that you in 20 years can go “I don’t have to provide for you, go fucking work or something you lazy ass”.
DPC: Being born isn’t a right, it’s a privilege. Now go kiss your mother for suffering for you.
DPC: Not just “name-calling”, but an insult that implies that being a woman and not self-sacrificing is a horrible thing. Unsurprising considering who it’s coming from.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
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