pseudomuse:

tinyghostbones:

why is someone’s pregnancy even a public thing like

going up to a stranger and being all ‘WHEN ARE YOU DUE’

What’s even creepier is the idea people get in their heads to touch a woman while pregnant to ‘feel the baby’. Yeah well, you’re also touching the woman carrying said baby and she didn’t give her permission to be accosted asshole, now hands off.

Actually, I’m gonna add some commentary, cause some of these notes…

“women are not a species of goddesses who are above reality get over yourselves shit like this blatantly sodomizes reality and I’m done with it”

Hold on, lemme get my douchebag translator out.

Translation: How dare you demand your physical space be respected and not treated like public property! This scares me, let me wildly exaggerate to justify my actions.

“Yeeeeaaah, if I think a woman might be pregnant and I feel like asking, I’m going to ask. Fuck your chart.”

Translation: I feel like it’s my Right to ask you invasive questions, even though it’s your body and really none of my business. I’m such a rebel!

Ugh.

bebinn:

Color me unsurprised. I do want to highlight this paragraph:

…as misguided as abstinence-only sex ed is, advocates who fight teen pregnancy say education is only one piece of the puzzle. An article published yesterday by the Associated Press quotes a representative from the Mississippi Women’s Fund who says that poverty and class mobility are also big parts of the problem. Young women need to know they will have educational and job opportunities awaiting them if they don’t become young mothers. 

There are plenty of stories (and studies) of people who don’t expect to go to college or get a high-paying job. [Young] parenthood is the end goal they’ve seen all their lives, and it’s not surprising when many of them don’t take precautions to prevent it. By giving kids and teens opportunities for affordable education, they begin to have more realistic choices about their futures.

Side note, from the AP article mentioned:

Some in the small town about 70 miles south of Memphis, Tenn., still think teen pregnancy should be addressed in the home, not the classroom. Harold Smith, a local evangelical pastor, said sex outside marriage is a sin and parents - not educators - should teach children to avoid it.

“You’ve got to spread the gospel,” Smith said. “If they get a hold of God just right, they won’t have (children).”

inherhipstheresrevolutions:

inflateablefilth:

feministdisney:

zobothehob0:

friendlyangryfeminist:

If I get pregnant, I will get an abortion. And you don’t get to tell me that it’s wrong.

Posts like this give the anit-choicers fuel. Abortion isn’t something that should be taken lightly. It is an important decision. You are deciding if…

I would take friendlyangryfeminist’s side here.   If this was any other type of potential future decision that someone was similarly emphatic about, would they necessarily be perceived as “taking the situation lightly” or treating it not as “an important decision” simply because they know what their answer is/would be?  Who exactly is giving fuel to the opposition here by basically saying we all need to follow a script of pretend emotions and waffling that we don’t all universally feel in order to be seen as “acceptable” in terms of needing reproductive health access??

If I said, “If I get pregnant, I know I will keep it and you can’t tell me not to,” is anyone’s first response going to be “But wait you should at least pretend to consider abortion otherwise it’s giving the other side fuel, stop treating this subject as if it’s a joke”  ??  Responses like this only feed fuel to the opposition by assuming that there is a link between wanting an abortion, and being completely unserious/treating it like it’s game at a party.

In all honesty my response is probably the same.  I don’t think I will ever be in a position to be considering it, but if it happened anytime soon, there really is no point in pretending I would consider alternatives.   I wouldn’t, and I know I wouldn’t.    I would agree that a lot of times the dialogue used to discuss these topics is unnecessarily distancing and whatever, but I don’t think this is one of those times.  

Too often there’s this push to create and present the single story of a person who is pregnant and faces dire consequences if they stay pregnant/have a child, and who goes through a ton of agony over the decision, does it, and then feels bad for a while.   But not everyone’s experience is like that- and to say that their experience has to be painted that way in order for the movement to be taken seriously does not actually help anyone, I don’t think.

I knew long before that second line on the test that I’d be getting an abortion. I took it as seriously I would getting a root canal. I booked it, I turned up, I had it done. It did not need agonising over. And after the abortion, my partner and I went shopping in London, because it really wasn’t traumatic or hard or anything negative. Hardest decision was which clinic to go to and hardest part of the day was not being allowed to eat beforehand. And fuck the pro choice people who pander to the other side and refuse to acknowledge that some of us really don’t see it as a big scary hard decision.

^ this is how easy it would be for me too. Hollllla.

I never really thought about it that way, actually. It actually singles out abortion in a negative way instead of treating it like any other medical decision.

sanityscraps:

stfuconservatives:

A new report says that although national teen pregnancy rates are the lowest they’ve ever been (or at least since they started tracking them in 1940), states that have abstinence-only sex “education” have higher rates than states where schools teach you about condoms and stuff.

Can we just declare abstinence-only education a failure and a sham and be done with it?

-Jess

Everybody, look how utterly shocked I am.

Ya don’t say?

face-down-asgard-up:

stfuhypocrisy:

nikosnature:

Pro-Life; Humanizing a fetus, while simultaneously dehumanizing pregnant people.

The problem is that when people try to turn this into a zero sum game where recognizing the humanity of the fetus sometimes takes away from the humanity of the pregnant person, they go on the defensive, and unwilling to listen to rational discourse.

What we should do is break out of this false dichotomy!  We can recognize the humanity of the fetus without taking away from the humanity of the pregnant person.

I advocate for the protection of human life, born or unborn, and that’s what I think we should all strive towards.

That is the pro-life way.

You don’t consider the pregnant person at all. Don’t even try to pretend. If you’re not giving the pregnant person full control over their own body and life, and expect THEM to choose what’s right for YOU, you aren’t considering the pregnant person in the slightest, you’re considering yourself. 

If you wanted to protect the lives of born people, as you claim, you would not be anti-choice. Do you even consider the fact that the majority ( over 60% ) of people who get abortions are already parents with at least one child. And most of those people are in a long-term relationship. Do you stop to think about the lives you would be affecting if these people could not get the abortions they need? Pregnancy and childbirth risk death for the person who is pregnant. They are way more deadly than getting an abortion. The US maternal mortality rate rose to 13  deaths per 100,000 live births in 2004 and continues to rise ( Less than 1 in every 100,000 people die due to complications from abortion procedures. ) And these numbers don’t even take into account the increased risk of homicide and abuse that pregnant people face. People are dying due to complications with pregnancy and childbirth at record rates.

And you claim to be pro-life? What about the lives of these parents? What about the lives of their families and children if they were forced to carry a pregnancy and died as a result?

And what about the fact that for many of these families another child would be the tipping point in terms of their ability to financial support themselves? What about their lives then? Would you take them into your home, pay for their meals, clothes, and other needs? Or would you just pat yourself on the fucking back because at least a fetus made it?

But even if you don’t consider all of the above, consider this: You CANNOT have two entities residing in one body and have both entities have equal rights in regards to the decisions made about that body. One has to trump the other. The pregnant person gets these rights, not the fetus.

Shut the fuck up nikosnature. You are anti-choice, pro-death, and pro-poverty. 

barackobama:

Jennifer wrote in:

The new health care law caused my health care plan to start waiving the deductible for preventative care. Formerly, I would have had to shell out 3,000 before I got a dime covered. Now, I am able to have one physical a year as well as prenatal care.

If it were not for the change in my insurance, I would not have been able to afford prenatal care. I am now expecting my first baby in a month. The baby’s immunizations and well baby visits will also have the deductible waived.

So, thank you. Without these changes, I would have had to put off having a child.

bebinn:

Alaska State Rep. Apologizes For “Permission Slip” Comment—Kinda, Sorta, Not Really

rhrealitycheck:

by Robin Marty

Last week, Alaskan State Representative Alan Dick said he would have a “little more peace” with allowing a woman to terminate a pregnancy if the man who fathered the child signed off on the decision first.

Now, he’s apologizing for the “insensitive” comment.  Except really, he isn’t.

Via the Fairbanks News Miner:

“Last week in a committee hearing on funding of abortions, I made a less than artful comparison,” he wrote in a statement. “I have received several phone calls from women who were offended. I’ve listened to what they said. I realize how what I said could be taken to be hurtful — it was for the women who called — and I apologize.

…

In terms of his position, though, Dick said he’s still unapologetically opposed to abortion but will be more careful about what he says in the future. 

“I have reconsidered my thoughts in light of the comments from those who called and will be more careful in how I phrase my thoughts in the future,” he said.

Apology? Not at all.  He just said that next time he’ll make sure to say it with more tact.

How to contact Alan Dick:

Phone: 907-465-4527 or 1-800-491-4527

Email: REPRESENTATIVE_ALAN_DICK@legis.state.ak.us

See, the problem was that he hurt our feelings, not that he completely disrespects our decision-making abilities, has absolutely no knowledge of abusive relationships or rape, and apparently, now, still can’t grasp any of those ideas.

‘I’m still trying to take your rights over your own body away.. but i’ll do it more /politely/ next time.’ o_o Hooray.

stfuhypocrisy:

keepyourboehneroutofmyuterus:

“These Sluts Vote”

I took this at last week’s “Seeing Red Rally” here in Austin.

There were originally supposed to be three weeks of these rallies, mainly in protest of the de-funding of the Women’s Health Program, though they were about the general rollbacks in reproductive rights in Texas.

THESE RALLIES WILL CONTINUE!

So, if you live in Austin….

TUESDAY, Noon - 2pm, Texas State Capitol

WEAR RED. BRING A SIGN. 

[Please, for my sake, don’t re-blog this and say some shit about how backwards Texas is or how we need to secede from the Union. You know who that helps? Nobody. You know who that doesn’t help? The 130,000 people denied reproductive health by the defunding of the WHP. The people who, seeking an abortion today, will be forced to undergo mandatory ultrasounds, some of them transvaginal ones. All of the hundreds of thousands of people who have and who will lose access to all kinds reproductive health care in this state because of what the GOP is doing here.]

signal boost!

psychrophyte:

Petition: Protect Pregnant Women: Free Bei Bei!

I don’t usually get into the whole “Tumblr Justice!1” thing, but I can’t stand by for this one.

In short, a pregnant woman, Bei Bei Shuai, was lied to by her boyfriend, Zhiliang Guan, in regards to his marital status.  He led her on throughout 8 months of her pregnancy and then abandoned her rather abruptly. He drove her to suicide.  Her attempted suicide -a result of depression- resulted in her baby dying. Now she is facing up to 65 years in prison or the death penalty for “feticide”.  I think most would agree that words cannot describe how fucked up this is, so please sign the petition addressed to Terry Curry, the man prosecuting this innocent woman.