I had an abortion when I was 19 years old. I have tokophobia. I don’t want to be pregnant, I don’t want to give birth. I just wanted to finish my studies (now I’m almost done!).Mom was disappointed. Dad said that even if it was my body, I “had no right”. Tell me, have you ever felt like you weren’t a human being? Have you ever felt like an object? Have you been told that you have no rights? That basically your body is not yours? I have.Sorry, but I’m not sorry. I am the 1 in 3.AMAZING.
You can say “killing a life” and “murdering a child” a million times until you’re blue in the face, but your emotionally charged buzz-words aren’t going to suddenly make me go “OH, YOU KNOW WHAT, I DON’T REALLY WANT CONTROL OVER MY BODY.”
Call it whatever the fuck you want. I don’t give a shit if you start calling it an adult.
It’s still my uterus it needs to live in, and if I don’t want it there — it’s gonna get the fuck out.
This a million times.
I was searching around in the Pro-Life tag and found some appalling things on both sides of the issue. I’m not saying that the Pro-lifers are completely in the right here, and the Pro-choicers aren’t completely in the wrong. This isn’t about my personal views on the issue. I was completely aghast at the lack of intelligent conversation going on. This issue is, in my opinion, a very important topic in today’s politics that should be handled with maturity and respect for both parties. This can be a very emotional issue for women who have suffered abortions or rape, and so it should never be trivialized. I can’t stand some things about the Pro-life side, namely the blatant abuse of gory images used to “scare” people onto our side. I am equally appalled at the Pro-choice side’s accusations of being women hating anti-feminists.
Okay, this part is my personal views.
I am Pro-life by my own choice, not because just I am Catholic, and not because that’s my family’s opinion. I did my own research on the subject and came to my own opinion. I do believe that a fetus is a human life. It is it’s own person and not the property of it’s mother. Sure, women can make choices with their own bodies, but your child is not your body. Yes, I think it’s murder. I believe that the intentional extinguishing of a human life is murder. I think that even in cases of rape abortion should never be used. Trying to “solve” one violent crime with another will lead to nothing but more depression and pain. Something as beautiful as a new life coming out of something as grotesque as a rape should be treasured, not destroyed.
I am a woman and I am Pro-Life.
You know what? Yeah, pregnancy is beautiful. Giving birth to a child is beautiful. It’s beautiful, life-changing, and ecstatic.
But it’s also this:
[N]ine months of nausea, back pain, migraines, fatigue, constipation, aching bones and joints, heart burn, achey breasts, indigestion, hemorrhoids, incontinence, varicose veins, muscle cramps, dizziness, mood swings, congestion, bleeding gums, and the possibility of preeclampsia, high blood pressure, gestational diabetes, hyperemesis gravidarum, chronic hypertension, anemia, deep vein thromosis, placenta accreta, placental abruption, and miscarriage, or exacerbation of problems before pregnancy, like asthma, diabetes, heart trouble, epilepsy, eating disorders, HIV, as well as having to take time off work, possibly be on bed rest, be unable to do a lot of things you need to do, pay for prenatal care, then give birth, risking hemorrhage, tearing, more incontinence, postpartum depression…
…now coupled with this:
Rape Trauma Syndrome, similar to Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, can last from days to years. Along with the physical injuries, the survivor suffers numbness, shock, flashbacks, recurring dreams, anxiety, panic attacks, behavioral and mood swings, and hyperarousal, when they can’t stop scanning for danger, are extremely jumpy, and sensitive to sensory input. They can literally shut down and repress the memory, leaving it to surface in other disturbing and intrusive ways. They can be triggered by sights, smells, physical sensations and sounds. To avoid these, they can become withdrawn and isolated from friends and family at a time when they need the most support.
A compounded reaction is when symptoms of RTS are included with symptoms of previous problems, like drug/alcohol abuse or mental illness. This can lead to even more severe reactions, like depression, psychotic behavior, temporary dissociation, and suicidal behavior. A silent rape reaction is when symptoms from previous abuse or assaults arise, leading to increased anxiety, stuttering, fear, loss of self-confidence or self-esteem, self-blame, and paranoia.
This, in addition to the wide range of emotions a victim feels after an assault: fear, shame, guilt, anxiety, worthlessness, powerlessness, despair, fury, confusion…the list goes on. That’s not even taking into account the physical problems: bleeding, bruises, cuts, soreness, STDs, the effects of any drugs or alcohol used during the assault, gynecological and intestinal problems, sleep and eating disturbances (too much or too little), headaches, and - as if that weren’t enough - pregnancy, to top it all off.
After reading all that, it would defy common sense to slap the label of “beautiful” onto any and all pregnancies and births. At this point, demanding that a rape victim treasure the subsequent and sustained violation of their bodies is either the height of arrogance, or of willful ignorance. You do not speak for rape victims, and you do not get to tell them the “right” way to heal. If they choose to keep the pregnancy as part of their healing, that’s because they know themselves, and they know what will help them. If they choose to have an abortion, that’s because they know themselves, and they know what will help them. You do not know.
As an aside, fetus is in your body. That’s where the “my body, my choice” part comes in. Why is this so difficult to grasp? There is a person. They have an embryo/fetus inside their body. They do not want said embryo/fetus inside their body. Ergo, their body, their choice. Fetuses don’t have rights, and they certainly don’t have the right to use someone’s body without their consent.
ETA: “Trying to “solve” one violent crime with another will lead to nothing but more depression and pain” Thank you, pro-life person, for once again comparing pregnant people who have abortions to criminals and murderers and deciding that you get to determine what’s best for them. x.x
I don’t really understand how there can be a difference between “Pro-choice” and “Pro-life”. If you are logically consistent “Pro-choice” then you are also “Pro-life”. No human being has the right to choose whether or not another human being should live or die. It should really be called “Pro-abortion” because if you are really “Pro-choice” then you take both choices into account, not just the mother’s.
There is no choice on the part of the fetus because it’s not sentient. It has no self-awareness, no consciousness, and no wants. It doesn’t even have the capacity for such things until very late in the game. The choice is entirely the pregnant person’s - you know, the one carrying and birthing? The one donating the use of their body for 9+ months? The one with responsibilities to their job and family and self?
Yeah, that one.
Gee, thanks for stating the obvious. Of course the fetus cannot consciously make a choice.
By that same logic we should just decide whether mentally handicapped people should live or die. Apparently because they cannot make a conscious choice of their own that makes them not human and not self-owners.
The pregnant person has self-ownership of their body, but they don’t have self-ownership over the fetus.
Oh, that’s real nice, comparing people with intellectual disabilities to fetuses. I’m wondering now if you know a single person with ID, or…anything at all, really, about intellectual disabilities. Or maybe your comprehension breakdown is with the concept of consciousness. Either way, not only is your comparison medically incorrect, as a person with ID has much greater cognition than an embryo/fetus (I’m still boggling a bit over that attempted comparison), and incredibly disrespectful to people with ID who have careers, friends, family, hobbies, goals, and aspirations, you’re still missing the point of the pro-choice argument.
A fetus is physically dependent on a person; a person with ID is not. While they may be socially dependent in some areas, they do not require another person to eat and breathe for them. Not only does a fetus require these things, it has to reside inside another person’s body to survive. While it has different DNA, it is not separate from the mother. You’re making the classic pro-life mistake: mixing up “human” and “human being/person.” An embryo/fetus is human, but it does not meet the requirements for personhood. It is a potential person, and at this point, has no rights.
(ETA: At this point I reread the assertion that the OP knows what is and isn’t logically consistent, and laughed a little. I’m sensing more parroting than thinking logically.)
All that aside, even if it was a person and did have the same rights as born people, it would still not have the right to use another person’s body against their will. Frankly, the idea of granting such a right is abhorrent.
Since a fetus is not a person, and has no rights, it does not have the right of self-ownership. But if a pregnant person has the right of self-ownership, then being forced to be pregnant against their will is a direct violation of their rights. Even if they do not have the right to the death of the fetus, they have the right not to be pregnant. If we had the technology to ethically support an embryo/fetus until its full development, perhaps we could change the debate. As it stands, however, the rights of the pregnant person trump any rights that a fetus could possibly have.
If the fetus is not a person then your argument is solid. However, I reject that premise and your definition of personhood.
The premise is flawed because the fetus IS a person if the mother chooses it to be so as seen in a case where an expecting mother is killed or a victim of violence that claims the unborn child’s life. By that logic an OBGYN could not be held liable for malpractice. This logic also claims that unborn children are subhuman. They do not posses the rights of humanity and so they must be an inferior class. If you are judging a life at when cognitive brain power really starts to form, why don’t you go all the way up to 3 or 4 years of age? I think the fact that independent cells that are able to live without the mother’s support as seen in premature births is proof enough that life starts at or before the 3rd trimester. A human with a heartbeat should be enough to be considered a life. This starts before the end of the 1st month. By the logic of “it’s the mothers body”, a patient would be a hospitals “choice” as to weather they should cut off their life support or feeding tube.
You cannot give two beings residing in one body the same rights. To give one rights, you must remove some of the other’s.
Double homicide in the case of pregnant people is still something being debated today. I don’t support it, because it is inconsistent with the idea of fetal personhood, but I do support harsher penalties for someone who murders a pregnant person. In a case where a person murders another who is happily expecting, they should face the consequences of the future they took not only from the person they killed, but the future imagined by their loved ones for them and their baby. That would also apply to mistakes made by OB/GYNs.
I’ve said before that a pregnant person doesn’t have a right to the death of the fetus, but a right to their own body. It’s only because of the technology and medical procedures in use today that the death of the fetus is inevitable in an abortion. At the point when an abortion of a viable (read: healthy, not just past the viability mark) fetus would occur, it’s safer to take it out intact. However, the vast majority of abortions performed past viability are performed because the fetus is already dead or will not survive (look up anencephaly, hydrocephalus, and neural tube and heart defects).
What’s up with all the bad analogies lately? A toddler is self-aware. There’s also no reason to kill a toddler to preserve someone’s right to bodily autonomy and integrity. A hospital is not a body. I mean, come on. We’ve had our bodies compared to boats, cars, and now hospitals? We are people, okay? Like, I get that it’s super-convenient for the anti-abortion side to entirely erase the fact that their precious fetuses are being housed inside a person, but enough with the dehumanization. A hospital doesn’t have bodily autonomy because it’s not a fucking body. It’s a building. You can’t just throw the word “choice” at everything and expect it to stick.
God, I’m fucking tired of these pseudo-intellectuals.
I don’t really understand how there can be a difference between “Pro-choice” and “Pro-life”. If you are logically consistent “Pro-choice” then you are also “Pro-life”. No human being has the right to choose whether or not another human being should live or die. It should really be called “Pro-abortion” because if you are really “Pro-choice” then you take both choices into account, not just the mother’s.
There is no choice on the part of the fetus because it’s not sentient. It has no self-awareness, no consciousness, and no wants. It doesn’t even have the capacity for such things until very late in the game. The choice is entirely the pregnant person’s - you know, the one carrying and birthing? The one donating the use of their body for 9+ months? The one with responsibilities to their job and family and self?
Yeah, that one.
Gee, thanks for stating the obvious. Of course the fetus cannot consciously make a choice.
By that same logic we should just decide whether mentally handicapped people should live or die. Apparently because they cannot make a conscious choice of their own that makes them not human and not self-owners.
The pregnant person has self-ownership of their body, but they don’t have self-ownership over the fetus.
Oh, that’s real nice, comparing people with intellectual disabilities to fetuses. I’m wondering now if you know a single person with ID, or…anything at all, really, about intellectual disabilities. Or maybe your comprehension breakdown is with the concept of consciousness. Either way, not only is your comparison medically incorrect, as a person with ID has much greater cognition than an embryo/fetus (I’m still boggling a bit over that attempted comparison), and incredibly disrespectful to people with ID who have careers, friends, family, hobbies, goals, and aspirations, you’re still missing the point of the pro-choice argument.
A fetus is physically dependent on a person; a person with ID is not. While they may be socially dependent in some areas, they do not require another person to eat and breathe for them. Not only does a fetus require these things, it has to reside inside another person’s body to survive. While it has different DNA, it is not separate from the mother. You’re making the classic pro-life mistake: mixing up “human” and “human being/person.” An embryo/fetus is human, but it does not meet the requirements for personhood. It is a potential person, and at this point, has no rights.
(ETA: At this point I reread the assertion that the OP knows what is and isn’t logically consistent, and laughed a little. I’m sensing more parroting than thinking logically.)
All that aside, even if it was a person and did have the same rights as born people, it would still not have the right to use another person’s body against their will. Frankly, the idea of granting such a right is abhorrent.
Since a fetus is not a person, and has no rights, it does not have the right of self-ownership. But if a pregnant person has the right of self-ownership, then being forced to be pregnant against their will is a direct violation of their rights. Even if they do not have the right to the death of the fetus, they have the right not to be pregnant. If we had the technology to ethically support an embryo/fetus until its full development, perhaps we could change the debate. As it stands, however, the rights of the pregnant person trump any rights that a fetus could possibly have.
[BREVITY]I still need some clarification on your first point: separation of sex and reproduction. I mean, obviously, we’re on the same page, but I think only up to a certain point. I’ve largely come to hold the belief that a biological parent should be able to give up rights to parenthood, including child support, if ze chooses (where that leaves the other parent and child is another issue - one that doesn’t seem to have an answer just yet).
However, I’m not sure what you mean by the right to not become a biological parent. What you described are fucked-up, but very real situations that need to be addressed. What I’m wondering is how exactly you think they should be dealt with. If someone becomes pregnant by raping somebody or otherwise coercing them, how does the right of the victim not to be a biological parent come into play?
We agree on the rest of the points, though I have very serious doubts about the competency of the judicial system in determining who is fit to be a parent.
ETA: Roe v. Wade did not guarantee the rights you listed, unfortunately. The legality of abortion is still largely left up to the states, and as we’ve seen recently, there are many ways to remove reproductive rights other than outright banning them.
You’re right that Roe v. Wade wasn’t all-encompassing. While I deal with a lot of US stuff I’m Canadian myself, and because many things are integrated across the country for us abortion isn’t nearly as big a problem. At least here, abortion rights are relatively guaranteed and primarily government-funded.
The first two rights are granted by abortion access, the third has to do with judicial inequity so it’s not so much that women were given a right as they’re not subject to discrimination, and the fourth is really an issue of biology for women, but of legality for men. Women don’t need the right to know if a child is theirs, because if they gave birth they pretty much know 100%. Men, not so much.
I agree that the judicial system isn’t very good at determining who is a fit parent. The exception was mainly there because invariably someone would pipe up with “but what if she was trying to get the kid away from an abusive father” or something. The key is that it should only be voided by a genuinely pressing reason, like a father with a repeat history of IPV and child abuse. It’s not about the justice system saying “yes”, it’s about being able to protect the child if that’s absolutely necessary.
When I say that it’s someone’s fundamental right not to be a biological parent, I mean that it’s their right not to have any child containing their genetic material brought into the world without their affirmative consent. Unfortunately, this is the point where things get tricky.
The separation of sex and reproduction is basically a person’s right to have as much sex as they want, with whichever consenting partners they want, without any expectation of reproduction. Thus, consent to sex does not equal consent to reproduction. It’s really just a clear answer to the “if you don’t want to deal with the consequences, don’t have sex” crap.
Your second paragraph will take some explaining. In all of these cases, there has been breach of trust. My personal belief is that most of these cases should be considered rape under the law. (That is, misrepresenting reproductive status, or sabotaging birth control. Two of the remaining three are clearly rape either way, and that only leaves the “condom in the trash” (et cetera) case.) We’ll focus on those cases for now.
If someone is convicted of rape, they are generally sent to prison. This, from my perspective, inherently voids their right to bodily autonomy. Reproductive rights only function in the negative, they are the right not to have a child if you don’t want to, not the right to have a child if you do want to, so they don’t apply directly here. In this case, the right to abortion is predicated on the right of bodily autonomy. Her body, her choice. Because her conviction inherently voids that right from my perspective, it also voids her control in that area.
As I’m sure you can see, this is very iffy ground from a moral standpoint. My perspective is that if a woman is a convicted rapist, and is carrying a child conceived from that rape, it would not be morally indefensible to order her to terminate the pregnancy. If her bodily autonomy is already voided (by throwing her in prison for several decades) it cannot be considered.
Perhaps this is a better way to put it: A large number of the rights you enjoy as a citizen of the US can in fact be removed by due process. I seem to recall something about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. Two of these three can clearly be voided through due process of the court. Liberty through prison, and life through execution. If someone’s very right to life can be voided, how can we claim that someone’s right to bodily autonomy cannot, if due process is followed? A woman’s right to choice is not more sacrosanct than her right to freedom and her right to life. If we can, through due process kill the woman in question, it cannot then be called morally indefensible to order her to terminate a pregnancy.
This might seem appalling to you, but if you consider it carefully the logic is there. I believe that this is something that would have to be approached with great care, and I’m not even entirely sure I would be willing to place that on my shoulders. I’m not directly advocating this, saying “we should do this”, but I’m saying that the concept is not inherently indefensible. Keep in mind that the core of this is two things. One, the woman has been convicted of rape. Two, the pregnancy is known to be caused by the rape. Ironically, in the more ridiculous cases (the one which could not be necessarily called rape) this is not an acceptable path because a rape has not occurred.
I don’t think that my opinion on how these things should be dealt with should carry very much weight, honestly. I think that’s a decision for people far more knowledgeable than I in the specific legal areas involved. I believe that it needs to be examined by impartial and skilled lawyers and scholars of law and ethics (not the same scholars, obviously, because we all know how well law and ethics go together) who are not bowing to the feminist establishment or for that matter any other establishment. Ideally, they would find a way that is effective, but also legally and morally defensible.
The issue with this is that it’s a problem with no real good answer. The current system is clearly inadequate, but we don’t necessarily have an adequate solution, only better ones. Issues of biology can wait until men have at least the basic right not to be held responsible for raising and caring for a child that they did not honestly and affirmatively consent to creating. Once that is done, we can move on to examining solutions which provide more genuine rights, rights of action rather than rights based in legal documents.There’s no point trying to figure out how to interest black kids in college when they’re still told they can’t even drink from the same fountain as the whites. Before true equality can happen you have to start with the basics.
Thank you for actually asking polite questions rather than simply screaming insults and accusations mixed with buzzwords. It’s really nice when someone actually seems interested in learning, or at least gathering information to form their own position with. I’ve tried to be informative, but it’s a bit late so I know it’s rather rambling. I’m happy to offer clarification, explanation and answer any other questions.
Where did you hear that reproductive rights only function in the negative? Reproductive rights include the right to the timing, number, and spacing of children, as well as the choice of how to give birth. I believe everyone has the right to have children; the right to parent is a different matter. I think people should have the right to attempt to parent, at the very least, as well as the right not to parent. (Only legally, obviously. If a child doesn’t wish to have a relationship with an absentee father years after their birth, I believe that does void the father’s right to attempt to parent.)
You and I disagree on the right to bodily autonomy. I do not believe any circumstance warrants the removal of rights to your own body. Those rights are the most basic, and the most powerful and meaningful. Your body is your own; it is not public property, nor is it property of the state, to do with as it will. I believe anyone who grants the government the right to kill them is a fool, so the comparison to capital punishment does not hold, either. (I also believe the same of the draft, for all sexes and genders) By removing the right to bodily integrity, you also remove the right to psychological and emotional integrity. The three are inherently linked. Without the right to bodily autonomy, you do not have the right to bodily, psychological, or emotional integrity. Without those three, what rights do you really have?
I look at this the same way I looked at the right to not be pregnant vs. the right to the death of the fetus. You have the right to your own body, but you do not have the right to anyone else’s. Since there is currently no way to support a 7-week embryo or 18-week fetus, the death is inevitable once it is removed, and the only safe (and sometimes ethical) way to remove it is by causing its death. This is not morally wrong, to me, because there is no consciousness at that point.
I understand where you are coming from when you talk about the right not to have your genetic material reproduced against your will. I always suggest reading the book The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler. Many of the girls who were forced into pregnancy, then into giving up their babies, suffered lifelong trauma and doubt about themselves and the babies who disappeared. They had carried these babies in their wombs for 9 months, endured harsh and demeaning conditions in maternity homes, where they were hidden away, then denied the right to attempt to parent their children. Some did bemoan the fact that a person who was half of them was now out in the world, their whereabouts and wellbeing unknown.
So, I get that. But, that still does not trump the fundamental right to one’s own body, and it does not give one the right to order the death of a fetus.
Yes, it’s “unfair.” The biological differences between those who can bear children and those who cannot make it impossible to give completely equal rights in terms of childbearing. When it comes to harm done, it is undoubtedly skewed in favor of the person who can be pregnant: it is their body which is being acted upon.
