bebinn:

The resolution ”affirms the importance of women’s reproductive rights” and “urges Congress and the states to pursue a positive agenda that reaffirms fundamental rights and improves women’s access to safe and comprehensive reproductive-health care.”

Other resolutions support healthy eating, local farms and purchasing, and increased access to healthy food, especially in inner cities, increased funding for CDBG grants to provide quality, affordable housing, the reauthorization of VAWA including support for undocumented victims, eliminating the backlog of untested rape kits, reducing sex trafficking of minors, and empowering parents to ensure their child gets a good education and transform failing schools.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors sends representatives from cities with populations of 30,000 or more. They use their collective voice to influence national policy by distributing resolutions to the President and Congress.

Perhaps someday they’ll recognize that the health care issues they speak about affect everyone with the ability to get pregnant, not just cis women.

onmostsurfaces:

nessfraserloves:

happyonaccident:

stfuprolife:

epicfreakloser:

nataleehee:

the2ndsaint:

religiousragings:

Just don’t do it.

You’re either pro-choice or anti-woman. There is no “other.”

Can a woman be “anti-woman”? I’m pro-choice and all, but still. I hear so much shit from people who claim to be pro-choice but then bash women for keeping their accidental pregnancies. That’s the point of “choice”. Do whatever the fuck you want, including keeping the child.

yeah, I feel like telling a woman she is anti-woman is actually anti-woman. So fuck that chick dude.

Checked my sources, looks like he’s a dude. Ok.

A woman can be anti-woman.  Look up: internalized misogyny

If people are bashing others for keeping their accidental pregnancies, they’re not pro-choice. 

Pro-life does not equal anti-woman as pro-life is much more than a stance on abortion. Being pro-life is about helping those that don’t have as much as we do or are in bad situations to find help, get out of the situation and lead a better life. Being pro-life is about respecting human dignity in all shapes and sizes. 

Also, having a baby is not restricting your rights. Women are made to give birth! It’s an inherent gift that only women have. Giving up that inherent gift makes you just like the men in the world. Man, Feminism isn’t at all what I thought it was. I thought Feminism was taking your gifts and your womanhood and using it to make a difference in the world. You are not Feminists. You’re selfish and you don’t understand what life is and I feel sorry for you because life is such a beautiful thing. 

Alright. So, as a doula, I feel like I need to respond to this as I value pregnancy and birth MORE THAN MOST PEOPLE — and plan to make my fucking living accompanying people through it.

Being able to have babies is absolutely a privilege and a gift — but it is not a necessity. It is not something everyone wants to do, and it’s certainly not something anyone should be forced into doing.

Going to Disney World is a gift too, but if you’re being bound and gagged and forced against your will, YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE A BAD TIME.

Femininity and womanhood are NOT defined by pregnancy and birth. Femininity and womanhood are an intangible thing that are not “revoked” if one isn’t behaving in a way that is socially deemed “ladylike”. Implying such works to invalidate the identities of trans*women, women who have fertility issues, women without uteri, and women who choose not to have children.

Treating women like incubators and expecting them to do their “womanly duty” and bring gaggles of children into the world is NOT feminism. It’s just misogyny in disguise. My inherent value as a woman does not come from my ability to bear children, it comes from being a fucking human being.

so happyonaccident is saying that giving birth is what women are made for…

Also, if pro-life is really what you pretend, then start acting like it. As far as I see, pro-lifers aren’t doing shit for born people, except stripping women of their rights to basic physical integrity and endangering their health. That’s why they earned themselves the ”anti-choice” label. 

Yeah, ladies, you’re so /selfish/ for wanting to run your own lives and have a say in what happens to your body. And that’s why faux feminists like happyonaccident are anti-choice, because you don’t think pregnant people matter, you think they should sacrifice themselves for the sake of your faulty moral framework. Now that is selfish.

afunnyfeminist:

sanityscraps:

glitter-femin1sts:

We protect the rainforest, whales, trees, and bald eagles because they’re endangered.

“Unborn babies” (fetuses) are not.

And our environment will survive without more of them to later on kill the first four.

Seriously. Plants and animals are necessary for the survival of our ecosystem, and keeping them in balance is important to keeping all living things happier and healthier. Fetuses? Not so much.

-looks at picture- Hey, look, more pro-life garbage calling for the regulation of pregnant people’s bodies. Like they were animals or plants. Charming.

rabbleprochoice:

This argument comes up ALL the time. I hear it time and time again. It’s definitely an anti-choice favorite.

My response is that if we tried to apply that kind of thinking to any other situation that involves risk the whole concept would fall apart.

I like to use driving as an example. People drive cars all the time even though there is a risk of being in a car accident. But we don’t deny those people help when they get in car accidents. We send ambulances, we have guard rails on roads, we give them seat belts and air bags, and we have emergency rooms to try and save their lives. Even when people have been grossly irresponsible and have been driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol, we do not deny them medical care. Why, then, should we do that to people who have sex and get pregnant or contract STIs from their sexual partners?

Our society likes to blame people when they get pregnant and opt for an abortion. Society and anti-choicers tell people who get abortions that they were stupid and irresponsible and should have known better but if you look at how we treat driving compared to sex, it’s just illogical to want to deny help to people who have sex and experience unwanted consequences.

We teach people how to drive with classes. You wouldn’t expect to send someone out on the road without telling them which pedal is the gas and which is the brake. You wouldn’t send someone out on the road without teaching them how to park a car or merge into traffic. Kids are taught to wear their seat belts before they’re able to read. And yet when it comes to sex, we leave people in the dark. We expect them to know how to take precautions during sex without telling them how. We expect them to know the consequences without telling them what they are. People don’t learn how to drive safely without being told how and people shouldn’t be expected to know the consequences of sex and how to protect themselves without being told how.

There are kids in this country receiving absolutely ABYSMAL sexual education. They’re told completely false things, like that abortions increase breast cancer or that condoms are too porous to protect from HIV and that’s if they’re even told anything BEYOND abstinence. We have kids who believe that drinking lots of Mountain Dew will protect against pregnancy. We have kids who think they can get pregnant from oral sex or that having oral sex means they can’t get any STIs.

It would be preposterous for someone to propose that we don’t teach anyone to drive because they might experience a car accident. And yet it’s considered completely acceptable and is heavily supported when it comes to sexual education in the US.

In my driving example, I used drunk driving as irresponsible behavior. Most anti-choicers like to say that having unprotected sex is irresponsible (even though it really isn’t because there are reasons why people do not use protection) which is why I use drunk driving as an example of how people can be irresponsible and yet still receive medical help. The thing that I always have to point out, though, when discussing this with an anti-choicer, is that out of drunk driving and unprotected sex…only one of those things is illegal and deserves to be punished. The other is legal and happens because of lack of education, lack of access to contraceptives, and financial constraints.

This argument is such a fallacy and is so easy to breakdown but it’s also my most favorite anti-choice argument because it gives me the opportunity to point out that the thing that lowers the abortion rate is comprehensive sex education, which so many anti-choicers oppose. Yet when they use this argument I get use all sorts of examples of risky behavior that we make less risky by educating people BEFORE they begin participating in that activity. And sex is the ONLY one we don’t do that for but we expect people to somehow know all the risks or how to be safer.

Love,

Rabble

propaganda-for-life:

You have all my sympathies for wanting a child but being unable to have one. Truly. Let me make that perfectly clear.

However, I, a fertile white woman, don’t owe you shit. So if I get pregnant before I’m ready and need an abortion, you don’t get to tell me I should give the child to you instead. That’s incredibly selfish of you. Go adopt any of the hundreds of thousands of children already waiting to be adopted and stop harassing pregnant people, and maybe try doing something to fix the racism, ageism, and ableism your “solution” encompasses.

keepyourboehneroutofmyuterus:

wearethe1in3:

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.

bebinn:

keepyourboehneroutofmyuterus:

@ShelbyKnox:

California folks! Call your Senators & ask them to vote YES on good #prochoice bill SB 1338! http://ow.ly/aou6j via @Latinas4RJ

Your representatives won’t know what you want unless you tell them. Contact your senators!

prolongedeyecontact:

Trans* Repro Justice: Submission: My two cents that didn’t fit in the ask.

smashesthep:

prolongedeyecontact:

fuckyeahchoice:

Submission:

I’d be wary about labelling people bigots solely because they say “women” instead of “people” in abortion debates. Fact remains that anti-choice activism is rooted in misogyny. By leaping at people’s throats because of a word and an issue they might never have even thought about does nothing to advance our cause. On the contrary, “men can get pregnant, too” IS TRUE, but it being used as an argument for pro-choice has, to me, a whiff of reinforcing patriarchy (“Look, nevermind about women, but what about the MEN?!”).

The primary targets of anti-choicers are cis women, full stop. I use inclusive language as much as I can, but trans* rights are not the main point of the abortion debate.

________________________________________________

Fuckyeahchoice (answer): No. Please. Stop. 

First and foremost, if someone is new to this debate or this topic or this scene or whatever you want to call it, I’m not going to jump down their throat. I will explain the topic as I have multiple times in the best way that I can and hope they’re not too much of an asshole to not be able to say ‘people’.

Second, it is not a ‘what about the men’. That makes me think you don’t fully understand this issue at all. It’s not just women and men who can get pregnant. It’s also intersex people. Non-binaries and a plethora of other identities as well that you’re ‘trying to use inclusive language for’. Poor you. 

You don’t think bigotry against trans* individual has a taste of misogyny? And they’re targeting cis women because they are ALSO excluding trans* people in their debates but their shitty laws are FULLY affecting them, just as they affect cis women. 

This isn’t a matter of ‘trans* rights trumps abortion rights’, it’s a matter of being a decent fucking human being. It’s treating people as they should be treated within a discussion that is just as much theirs. Why battle for the rights of some? Why should only one group of people be recognized? Is it really a victory if it is at the cost of our allies? 

Basically, in summary, if you can’t be bothered to say ‘people’ instead of ‘women’ or recognize that this is not a cis woman issue then I highly doubt you could be contributing anything useful to the abortion debate. 

“By leaping at people’s throats because of a word…”

It’s not just a word, it’s the violent erasure that occurs when they insist on using women, despite knowing that excluding us leads to discrimination towards and deaths of trans* people.

And as FYChoice alluded to, inclusivity is not “men vs women”, it’s “trans* people vs cis people”. The power dynamics are totally reversed, and I have no respect for people that disingenuously cry that this is a “what about the men?!” argument when we’re asking for inclusivity.

“Basically, in summary, if you can’t be bothered to say ‘people’ instead of ‘women’ or recognize that this is not a cis woman issue then I highly doubt you could be contributing anything useful to the abortion debate.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself. This is how to be an ally.

Hi there.

You say, “it’s the violent erasure that occurs when they insist on using women, despite knowing that excluding us leads to discrimination towards and deaths of trans* people.”

That is a wild exaggeration. Words are not violent. Your hyperbole is harmful to respectful debate— furthermore, you set your position up as a strawman for those who disagree with you to easily knock down.

Radical feminists and trans-critical individuals do not wish harm to trans people— really. We really don’t. We instead wish to stand up for females and against gender stereotypes.

Unwanted pregnancy is a uniquely female issue. Neither access to SRS nor a SRS requirement for legal recognition are equivalent to that issue. It is not helpful to conflate the issues— it is confusing and does not help your cause.

Please stand up for female access to contraception/abortion. Be an ally- not all the issues are about you.

Thank you.

Words absolutely can be violent (so can erasure) it’s astonishing you’re ignorant of that fact. And, no, it’s not hyperbole when feminist/prochoice rhetoric that excludes trans* people leads to medical discrimination and [TW] people self aborting with paint thinner post-Roe. This isn’t a debate, it’s my life and health. I don’t debate my rights, especially not with bigots.

Radscum don’t wish [TW] harm to trans* people? Really? Could have fooled me.

Who said a single word about SRS other than you? Both are issues of bodily integrity which is what the core of reproductive rights, including abortion, is about, but that’s not what this post was about. It’s about trans* people affected by antichoice legislation being included in discussions about our rights and our bodies. Not a hard concept, so who’s making straw men now?

And unwanted pregnancy is not an issue just for cis women or “females.” You think abortion restrictions make it hard for you, a cis woman, to obtain safe, legal care? Try being a trans* person whose pregnancy would out them and potentially make them vulnerable to being murdered. Or being a trans* person who is triggered by how medical pamphlets and doctors frame the issue—that can make accessing care near to impossible (like in the story I linked). Or how about the common intersections of being trans*, a person of color, in poverty, and without insurance, a job, or a home? Unwanted pregnancy and antichoice legislation affects us all (some more than others, some differently than others) and refusing to acknowledge that fact is an act of violence.

“Please stand up for female access to contraception/abortion. Be an ally- not all the issues are about you.”

This last part is truly adorable. Allies are outsiders who are not directly (or at all) affected by an issue who are in solidarity with those they have privilege over on a particular axis. Do tell how or why I should be an “ally” to access to contraception or abortion when it directly affects me? As in, I USE it and I NEED it just the same as you. I don’t need to be an “ally” to you or your scummy friends on an issue that’s about me. Contrary to your cissexist beliefs abortion is about me. Contraception is about me. Reproductive rights are about me. Antichoice legislation is my business. Refusing to include me and other trans* people in this discussion isn’t just cissexist, it has devastating consequences. Of course, we’ve already established people like you don’t care.

This is my movement and I don’t find silencing tactics all that radical, in fact they’re downright patriarchal.

You’re welcome.