That's me, a day late and a dollar short. More accurately, a week late. The 34th anniversary of Roe v Wade was January 22, 2007, and feminists were blogging specially on that day. Me, I was too busy bitching about war to notice. Sigh. Bad feminist.
This year's assignment: tell us, and your readers, why you're pro-choice. I spent some time roaming through the blogosphere, reading some of the posts, but Dr Violet Socks' contrarianism is my favorite.
Mine [I prefer to call myself pro-abortion instead of pro-choice]:
Dude. It's my body. Keep your paws and laws off.
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5 comments:
Bit of a touchy subject for me, you realize. Things could have gone differently ten years ago or so. If nothing else, I'm grateful for how that one was eventually decided, not, it was made quite clear, that it was ever my decision anyway. (Tough business--it was certainly a decision that affected me.)
Pro-choice? It's language I hate, and there's enough disingenuousness on either side of that screeching debate. Legal abortions? I vote yes, if for no other reason than shit happens badly sometimes, and limiting options is paternalistic and unwise. And since I do believe a zygote is less than a human being, I can live with the consequences. (To refute John McG a couple of months ago, I made up a statistical analysis to show that you can always find a situation in which the good outweighs the bad. I dawdled too long over it though, and didn't post. Maybe it's still around somewhere.)
But if I'm being completely honest, abortions still make me uncomfortable. It was Clinton who spake, "safe, legal, and rare," right? One of his better lines.
K
qrzddt: quartz insecticide
ilhss: I'll hiss
dwqlkzuj: cujo kazakh ducklings
i understand. being an adoptee from the dark age before legal abortion, i could have turned out differently too. like, not at all. i'm grateful it didn't happen that way.
sigh ... real life interruption. back later.
i used to like the idea of safe, legal and rare too, but the problem with rarity is that each abortion becomes an event, and this gives it weight, and gravity.
which is as it should be, because an abortion is the taking of a life.
unfortunately, the same people who use that as emotional blackmail to further their agendas too often do not give that amount of importance to taking care of the [unwanted] children once they're born. once they're born, these [unwanted] children automatically become the devil spawn of welfare queens.
in a just society, both parents-to-be-or-not-to-be would weigh each others' considerations as well as their own. ultimately if the woman feels strongly enough that she can not or should not bring that child into the world for whatever reason, then she should be able to get an abortion, without fear of harassment or bodily harm.
That catchphrase is one of those things that made a fine sound bite, a good attitude to project, but those things are different from policy. (Gotta love those Clintons.)
Policy-wise, it makes sense to put, within reasonable parameters, these moral-gray-area personal decisions in the hands of hte people who live with the consequences. Certainly we do this at the end of life. (Usually.)
Taking a life? Man, I don't know, I really don't. I'd usually say it's taking less than a life, a potential life maybe.
And I guess that's what bugs me about the argument as a sound-bitten political credo. It's personal, and there's a lot of ambiguity.
K
linuppj: pajamas lineup (or Linus's peanut butter and jelly)
ah yes, but what i'm going to burn in hell for is that i don't mind people taking that life at the clump-of-cells stage nearly as much as i mind the awful stuff that happens to kids whose parents can't or won't take care of them later on.
i agree with you entirely. it's intensely personal and there is a great deal of ambiguity. all the more reason for everybody else [except the ones who are truly affected] to stay out of the decision.
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