"I'm glad you've decided not to kill it"

Posted on July 15, 2005 by Nick Kiddle

In the comments to Pro-choice and pregnant, Robert said

Oh, and congratulations on the baby. I’m glad you’ve decided not to kill it.

Ignoring for the moment the question of whether that was intended as deliberate provocation, I wanted to address the question of whether it’s even accurate. I’m not sure it is.

“Decided not to…” implies that the possibility has been given some consideration, however fleeting; I might say, for example, “I thought about buying the Kaiser Chiefs album but decided not to.” If the option hasn’t been consciously considered and rejected, it doesn’t really make sense to imply a decision has been made. I wouldn’t say that I’ve decided not to move to Milton Keynes, become a chartered accountant or take up underwater basketweaving, and nor would I say that I’ve decided not to terminate this pregnancy.

Before I became pregnant, I spent a long time considering the possibility of having a baby. I passionately wanted a family, and although I don’t believe there’s anything special about biological, as opposed to adoptive, parenthood, I decided the simplest way to have a baby of my own was to give birth to one. So to say that I “decided not to adopt” is completely reasonable: I considered the possibility and rejected it.

The decision to become pregnant was less positive: the timing never seemed to be quite right and I wasn’t sure I had the right to inflict myself on a child. I hesitated, and circumstances came together to help me decide. I had the opportunity to have unprotected sex at the appropriate time of the month. I took it, and three nervous weeks later a blood test confirmed my pregnancy.

Abortion never entered my mind as a possibility. Pregnancy was something I’ve longed for, hoped for and occasionally put myself at risk in search of for most of my adult life. Now that I finally have what I always wanted, why should I consider throwing it away? If the pregnancy had been especially difficult or scans had revealed a problem with the fetus, I might have had to examine the option, but so far everything has gone smoothly and I’ve had no reason to consider abortion.

So why does Robert think I “decided not to kill” my baby? Does he believe that every woman, pro-life or pro-choice, who sees a pregnancy through to the end has decided not to have an abortion? If it’s unreasonable to say that a woman at the farthest extreme of “fetuses are people too” pro-life philosophy has decided not to kill her baby, what makes it more reasonable to say it about someone who made a deliberate choice to become pregnant but respects the choice of other women to avoid pregnancy?

There’s another distinction to be made here, as important as the one between a wanted and an unwanted fetus: the distinction between wanting to do something yourself and supporting the right of others to do it. I am pro-SSM, but I wouldn’t even consider marrying a woman. I believe in free speech, even speech that I personally consider repugnant. And I am pro-choice, despite the fact that my choice was made long ago.

Why do I support a right I have zero desire to exercise for myself? All sorts of reasons. People I care about may well make a different choice, and I want it to be open to them if they need it. I don’t want to live in the kind of world where women can be forced to sustain a pregnancy against their will to satisfy someone else’s idea of morality. I want the world to know that I’m having this baby because I deeply and passionately want it, not because I couldn’t get rid of it.

Being pro-choice doesn’t mean you think abortion is wonderful. It doesn’t mean that when the doctor’s receptionist confirms a very much wanted pregnancy you immediately think “of course, I could always have an abortion”. It simply means you believe the decision whether to become pregnant or the decision whether to continue with a pregnancy is the woman’s to make as she sees fit.

Posted in Abortion & reproductive rights | 251 Comments

Interesting links from here and there

Posted on July 14, 2005 by Ampersand
  • Hermit shells face a housing shortage. A proposed solution: artificial shells for Hermit crabs. I can’t decide if this is parody or not. Via Majikthise.
  • Excellent letter to Paul Krugman regarding his recent anti-fat editorial. Via Big Fat Blog.
  • Federal Immigration Officers think up a policy guaranteed to kill immigrants – a sting operation disguised as an OSHA (occupational safety and health administration) meeting, putting the lie to decades of effort by OSHA to convince illegal immigrants that they can talk to OSHA without fear. These racist, evil fucks deserve to be shot – no, to be buried alive in an industrial accident – but since the Bush administration is in charge, probably they’ll be given raises.
  • Reseach study ironically shows that one-third of all research studies are wrong.
  • “I understand that you’re upset,” one officer said, “but there’s no ramp, so you shouldn’t be in here, and the restaurant has the right not to serve you.”
  • Often, the self-proclaimed nice guy wants special credit for just for being nice. It’s as if he wants you to exclaim, “Oh, you poor fellow. What a burden it must be to treat women as you’d like to be treated. Above and beyond, old chap. Above and beyond!” I’m all for niceness, but I consider it a basic moral requirement for all humans, not a special bonus feature.
  • A propos of yesterday’s female genital mutilation vs. plastic surgery thread, I bring you, courtesy of Knotted Knickers, the jaw-droppingly sadistic Designer Laser Vaginoplasty. I invite you to scrutinize the countenance of the gynecologist/pyschopath who performs these mutilations, and ask yourself, “is this the face of a man who should be anywhere near my pussy with a laser?”
  • I remember being young and naive and truly shocked at how girls who were just harassing me with a tenacity that would get them promoted in the SS could turn around and demure and flutter around popular boys like they were born to toady. And you find yourself thinking, “Man, if those guys only knew…” And from that moment, you can see how sexism perpetuates itself. Because if the boys didn’t know consciously, they knew subconsciously. Girls who show immense ruthlessness and power to the nerds and geeks and then toady to the jocks are reinforcing the power of the jocks. That they can expect their lessers to enforce the status quo for them is the jock privilege.
  • Should a temporary majority of 50.7 percent have control over the entire United States government? Should 49.3 percent of Americans have no influence over the nation’s trajectory for the next generation? Those are the stakes in the coming fight over the next Supreme Court justice. The much-maligned “outside groups” preparing for battle over President Bush’s choice deserve credit for openly acknowledging this struggle for power.
  • The trouble with being stuck with the whole “women want to be equal” instead of “let’s revolutionize this society so it’s better for everybody,” is that you get stuck, again, with “male” being the norm. So instead of revolutionizing the workplace so we’ve got onsite childcare, or better, can have kids hanging out acting as interns at the workplace and functioning as members of society instead of subordinates, we just figure, hey, the parents will work and just hire somebody to take care of the kid, like a wife.
  • In contrast to the existing explanations, this study shows that suicide terrorism follows a strategic logic, one specifically designed to coerce modern liberal democracies to make significant territorial concessions. Moreover, over the past two decades, suicide terrorism has been rising largely because terrorists have learned that it pays.
Posted in Link farms | 32 Comments

Could The Republican Party Oppose Factory Farming?

Posted on July 14, 2005 by Ampersand

In The American Conservative, a former Bush speechwriter, Matthew Scully, argues that animal rights – and, in particular, fighting the modern, super-cruel factory farms – should be a conservative cause.

I just used the phrase “animal rights,” but that’s actually a phrase Scully would have problems with. He argues that the left is mistaken to put the issue in terms of animal “rights”; instead, he argues, the issue should be seen in terms of human obligations to animals, without getting mired down in a discussion of rights.

…We are told to look away and think about more serious things. Human beings simply have far bigger problems to worry about than the well being of farm animals, and surely all of this zeal would be better directed at causes of human welfare.

You wouldn’t think that men who are unwilling to grant even a few extra inches in cage space, so that a pig can turn around, would be in any position to fault others for pettiness. Why are small acts of kindness beneath us, but not small acts of cruelty? The larger problem with this appeal to moral priority, however, is that we are dealing with suffering that occurs through human agency. Whether it’s miserliness here, carelessness there, or greed throughout, the result is rank cruelty for which particular people must answer.

Since refraining from cruelty is an obligation of justice, moreover, there is no avoiding the implications. All the goods invoked in defense of factory farming, from the efficiency and higher profits of the system to the lower costs of the products, are false goods unjustly derived. No matter what right and praiseworthy things we are doing elsewhere in life, when we live off a cruel and disgraceful thing like factory farming, we are to that extent living unjustly, and that is hardly a trivial problem. […]

I have to admit that my reflexive reaction to this is to say “forget it, Conservatives would never, ever, ever endorse fighting cruelty if that meant going against the interests of profit.” Indeed, the author himself pegs this response, although he says it’s an unfair stereotype:

I am asked sometimes how a conservative could possibly care about animal suffering in factory farms, but the question is premised on a liberal caricature of conservatism…the assumption that, for all of our fine talk about moral values, “compassionate conservatism” and the like, everything we really care about can be counted in dollars. In the case of factory farming, and the conservative’s blithe tolerance of it, the caricature is too close to the truth.

He proposes new federal laws mandating decent treatment of animals in factory farms:

We need our conservative values voters to get behind a Humane Farming Act so that we can all quit averting our eyes. This reform, a set of explicit federal cruelty statutes with enforcement funding to back it up, would leave us with farms we could imagine without wincing, photograph without prosecution, and explain without excuses.

The law would uphold not only the elementary standards of animal husbandry but also of veterinary ethics, following no more complicated a principle than that pigs and cows should be able to walk and turn around, fowl to move about and spread their wings, and all creatures to know the feel of soil and grass and the warmth of the sun. No need for labels saying “free-range” or “humanely raised.” They will all be raised that way. They all get to be treated like animals and not as unfeeling machines.

This is an issue in which both Democrats and Republicans, like the larger society, have favored averting eyes rather than addressing the issues.

I’d certainly favor the law Scully suggests – but how many politicians, of either party, would? This law would almost certainly piss off voters suddenly facing a huge inflation in meat prices, and pissing off voters isn’t how successful politicians usually operate. (Full disclosure: I eat cheap meat from supermarkets. But I’d gladly pay more for meat, if in return I got assurance that the meat industry as a whole was being reformed as Scully suggests.)

I also wonder how much traction his arguments will find among libertarian conservatives. A new federal law, and using the government to tell farmers how to run their own farms, seems to me exactly the sort of thing that pisses off a significant portion of the conservative base.

I think that Scully is right to make it clear that factory farming is a justice issue. But there’s a curious lack in his article, as well; a text search shows that the word “capitalism” doesn’t appear once in the article. Neither does the word “market.” What’s driving factory farms isn’t the inherently cruel nature of some humans (although you might think so, reading Scully’s account). What’s driving factory farms is the free market; and his unwillingness to address this obvious fact is part of what makes Scully’s argument so “conservative.”

Nonetheless, I hope his approach is more successful than PETA’s has been.

Via Ambivablog.

Posted in Whatever | 34 Comments

Rehnquist Hospitalized

Posted on July 13, 2005 by Ampersand

UPDATE JULY 13, 2005:

While it’s unclear whether this means another vacancy will occur in the Supreme Court, it’s evident that Rehnquist’s days are numbered, at least with regards to his service. This comes as a frightening, while not unexpected blow to liberals around the country.

For obvious reasons, a concurrent vacancy with O’Connor’s is filled with concern and ‘what if’s with regards to the appointments that are to take place. News has been released that late last night Rehnquist was rushed to the hospital for a spiked fever, likely relating to the thyroid cancer.

July 13 (Bloomberg) — U.S. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who is fighting thyroid cancer, was admitted to the hospital last night with a fever, the Supreme Court said.

Rehnquist, 80, was taken by ambulance for observation and tests to Arlington Hospital in Virginia and remains there today, court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said.

In another blog article earlier this month I created a liberal ‘cheat sheet’ for the potential nominee’s. This news has come along with more SCOTUS nominee gossip that First Lady Laura Bush has been urging the president to consider another female nominee since they are confident of their hispanic base. The name bandied about is Judge Edith Brown Clement of the 5th Circuit Court. This particular bit of SCOTUS gossip also implies that Alberto Gonzales is not in the running.

It is unclear how seriously the president ever regarded Gonzales as a potential court choice or if he was steered away from Gonzales at the urging of conservatives who want Bush to move the court to the right in its judicial philosophy.

Posted in Conservative zaniness, right-wingers, etc., Supreme Court Issues, Whatever | 10 Comments

Bush seeks advice from Jerry Falwell in choosing a potential judicial nominee

Posted on July 13, 2005 by Pseudo-Adrienne

Wow, we really are fucked. Not that I doubted Bush would consult a radical Rightwing zealot such as Falwell for “advice” on choosing a judicial nominee, but still–um,….wow.

Washington, DC ““ Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, expressed concern about reports today that the Bush Administration has actively sought the advice of radical right leader Jerry Falwell on whom to nominate for vacancy on the Supreme Court, stripping the White House of any credibility in searching for a consensus candidate who can unify the country.

In a story published in today’s New York Times, Falwell … who enraged Americans after the September 11, 2001 attacks by saying that we could expect more attacks if “God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve” … confirmed that the White House reached out to him to seek his advice on a Supreme Court nominee. The paper reported that Falwell “declined to offer advice, telling the White House staff member that, because of Mr. Bush’s track record appointing conservative judges, `”I am willing to sit back and trust him and pray for him.”

“We’re glad that President Bush is reaching out for advice, but this isn’t the direction we had in mind,” said Keenan. “Consulting with Jerry Falwell is not a recipe for bringing America together. Even more troubling is the assurance Falwell has apparently been given that any nominee would meet his litmus test of opposing personal freedoms like the right to privacy and a woman’s right to choose. Any nominee who can earn Jerry Falwell’s trust is someone who’ll likely be hard for mainstream America to swallow.

Keenan added “When Americans read the vicious words that came from Jerry Falwell in the wake of our worst tragedy ever, they saw his true colors. That the President would seek the counsel of such a person is unconscionable.”

Start stocking up on your birth control ladies and buy a few plane tickets to Canada–you know, just in case. I hope the pro-choice groups, pro-contraception pharmacists, and physicians who perform safe abortions have a “plan B” should women loose their right to control their reproductive destinies. In the worst case scenario; an underground system, perhaps?

Posted in Abortion & reproductive rights, Conservative zaniness, right-wingers, etc., Elections and politics, Supreme Court Issues | 7 Comments

Top Ten Reasons Not To Regulate Dangerious Chemicals in Cosmetics

Posted on July 13, 2005 by Ampersand

As you may recall, this cartoon was written with considerable help from “Alas” readers. I originally had nine lines written and was hoping to get “Alas” readers to help me out with the last one; but your suggestions were so good, I ended up using only five lines of my own.

I apologize for not crediting folks whose lines I used; to tell you the truth, I was so tired by the time I finished drawing this, I couldn’t even concieve of trying to go through all the posts to try and figure out who wrote which line. So I just sent it out without any credit at all, not even my usual credit line.

But now I’m more awake. So: Thanks to everyone who contributed a line, whether or not I used it. And thanks in particular to the folks who wrote the five lines I used: Thank you, Yami. Thank you, Richard Bellamy. Thank you, Omegapet. Thank you, Barbara Preuninger. And thank you, Steven Pierce.

Posted in Cartooning & comics | 17 Comments

And then there's Griswold

Posted on July 13, 2005 by Pseudo-Adrienne

If Roe is overturned no doubt the anti-women’s-reproductive-rights zealots would go after Griswold next. Their agenda is clear; control women’s reproductive choices by restricting and even outlawing them as much as possible. Women are just baby-assembly-lines to them after all. Overturning not only Roe but also Griswold would directly intrude within the lives of women and violate their privacy rights, and that’s exactly what the anti-choice/anti-contraception ideologues want more than anything out of this Supreme Court nomination battle.

ABORTION ISN’T the only reproductive right at stake in the fight over who will replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court. There’s also birth control.

The short version of history is that in 1973, the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling said that a woman could terminate her pregnancy because of a constitutional right to privacy.[…]

A key case in this history is Griswold v. Connecticut, a legal battle over birth control.[…]

In 1965, the Supreme Court ruled that Connecticut’s law was unconstitutional because it trampled the privacy rights of married couples. After the ruling, Connecticut’s married women got access to birth control.

In the ruling, Justice William O. Douglas wrote, ”We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights – older than our political parties, older than our school system.”

Connecticut was not alone in strapping tough laws on birth control. Massachusetts law banned the sale of contraceptives to unmarried women until 1972, when the Supreme Court ruled that treating married and single people differently was a violation of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

If members of a newly constituted Supreme Court unravel Roe v. Wade, they could undermine the right to privacy and access to birth control. If this happens, other attacks could gain force, including the current cases of pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control prescriptions because of their personal values. The nonprofit advocacy organization NARAL Pro-Choice America points to refusals made this year in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Illinois.[…]

Americans should work to make abortion as rare as possible. But if the government revokes women’s abortion rights, it would have excessive control over people’s lives.

And if abortion rights are dismantled and contraception is banned, women’s lives will be completely under the rule of their own government. The precedent would be set; women are birthing chattel on command and women’s sexuality is strictly for procreation–not personal pleasure (and it would be a commodity for men’s enjoyment). Women’ s identity would be solely synonymous as a means of reproduction. Not to mention there will be more unwanted pregnancies, more unwanted children (which will overwhelm our welfare state–there, that’s what the Republicans get for their anti-woman, anti-choice politics, ha-ha), and more women resorting to all sorts of sometimes horrible and tragic measures in order to end an unwanted pregnancy (ie: fatal back alley abortions, clothes hangers, etc.). Or even giving birth and then abandoning the unfortunate newborn infant in a dumpster. And women who have miscarriages would be investigated in order to make sure that they didn’t induce it on purpose (imagine it, a ‘CSI: Fetus’ and the setting is always within a woman’s uterus).

Oh but the wealthy women in this country need not fear the prospect of the overturnings of Roe and Griswold. I’m sure–especially if they’re the wife or girlfriend or daughter of a politician–they’ll always be able to obtain safe abortions and contraception. But for the rest of us (women), our basic fundamental rights as autonomous human beings would be revoked. Not that it matters because hey–we’re women and our rights only exist when they’re convenient for the [mostly male] lawmakers. This is about women’s privacy and restricting it as much as possible in order to make sure that they ‘fulfill their biological and sacrosanct duties as women‘, as the uber-conservative Christian Rightwing’s ideology would have you to believe.

Posted in Abortion & reproductive rights, Anti-Contraceptives/EC zaniness, Anti-feminists and their pals, Conservative zaniness, right-wingers, etc., Elections and politics, Supreme Court Issues | 29 Comments

Goodness, the Democrats might actually_do_something!

Posted on July 12, 2005 by Pseudo-Adrienne

Or this could just be more b.s. grandstanding on their part, and they’ll let Dubya and the Congressional neocon-Republicans ‘have it all’–as usual. Anyway, Senator Henry Reid of Nevada cautioned that Democrats won’t shy away from using a filibuster, should Bush nominate a candidate with extremist ideological reservations. So he says the Democrats will but we shall see.

WASHINGTON, July 11 – Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, said Monday that he did not foresee a filibuster against President Bush’s choice for the Supreme Court, but warned that Democrats would not hesitate to slow the confirmation if they found the process or the nominee objectionable.

“I don’t anticipate a filibuster, but I am not going to shy away from making sure that we have adequate time to explain our position,” Mr. Reid said as Senate leaders from both parties prepared to meet with Mr. Bush on Tuesday morning to discuss the vacancy.

Mr. Reid also said Democrats would try to cooperate in complying with the president’s request that the seat being vacated by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor be filled by Oct. 1. But he pointed out that Justice O’Connor has agreed to remain on the court until her replacement is confirmed and that only six justices are needed for a quorum.[…]

Hmph. All bark and no bite, or will the Democrats stand their ground should Dubya nominate some extremist wingnut to replace O’Connor’s seat on the highest bench in the land? We’ll just have to find out. Also, potential Supreme Court justices during the committee hearings are allowed to take somewhat of ‘judicial’ version of the Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer a question.

[…]This response, known in the Senate as “taking the judicial Fifth,” has been recited in one form or another by every recent Supreme Court nominee, and it is almost certain to be used this year by whomever President Bush chooses to replace Justice O’Connor.

It is bound to frustrate some senators and interest groups, since the new justice will be the swing vote on important issues like affirmative action, the role of religion in public life, states’ rights, environmental protection and laws on partial birth abortion.

But as a practical matter, senators have no real recourse when a nominee declines to answer questions. They can hardly refuse to confirm the nominee on that ground alone, since so many other justices who have been noncommittal on the issues of the day have been approved.

In 1986, for instance, Antonin Scalia refused even to say whether he subscribed to the principle of Marbury v. Madison, the fundamental decision in 1803 that established the authority of the Supreme Court to strike down laws as unconstitutional. The Senate confirmed him unanimously.[…]

Yes, we know he was confirmed and he is on the bench now. (sigh) And having an idea of what kind of candidate Bush will nominate, I’m sure watching the committee hearings will be similar to watching the Enron testimonies. I wonder if anyone would keep count of how many times the Fifth was invoked by the nominee.

Posted in Conservative zaniness, right-wingers, etc., Elections and politics, Supreme Court Issues | 4 Comments

McClellan Zaniness

Posted on July 12, 2005 by Pseudo-Adrienne

The White House press room is notorious for its shafting flippancy–but with a quasi-subtle “f**k you reporters because we’re the Teflon administration” touch to it–policy when it comes to being questioned about heated issues such as the current Karl Rove debacle. Shorter Press Secretary Scott McClellan: “Stop asking me questions about Karl Rove! You damn dirty reporters need to shut up about it already, and no one dare questions the White House!” To put it bluntly of course.

[…]Salon’s David Paul Kuhn was at the White House this morning, and he reports that the press once again grilled McClellan about Karl Rove’s involvement in the Plame case — and that McClellan, once again, refused to say anything of substance about it. When Rove’s name came up, McClellan “retreated immediately to the defensive, to his talking points, wiggling his back foot nervously behind the podium,” Kuhn tells War Room.[…]

And what could he say, really? When a reporter asked yesterday whether Bush continues to “have confidence in Mr. Rove,” McClellan’s response was a non sequitur return to his talking points: “Again, these are all questions coming up in the context of an ongoing criminal investigation. And you’ve heard my response on this.”

Poor McClellan seems to be a bit both perturbed and nervous when [barely] discussing the KR scandal. Reporters questioning him about it apparently annoys him–almost as if he believes the press core has no right to dare broach this issue at all. And here’s a little more concerning McClellan’s own “don’t ask, don’t tell” press room policy…

[…], Scott McClellan tried to argue that the sudden White House silence about the Valerie Plame case has nothing to do with the evidence implicating Karl Rove and everything to do with his claim that federal investigators asked him not to talk about the case when he testified before the grand jury in February 2004. “If you’ll remember back two years ago or almost two years ago, I did draw a line,” McClellan said. “I said we’re just not going to get into commenting on . . . an investigation that continues.”

There’s at least a little truth to McClellan’s argument; McClellan had much to say about the Plame case before he testified and has said little if anything of substance since.[…]

A look at the calendar reveals that, four days after McClellan appeared before the grand jury, George W. Bush told reporters in Chicago that he wanted to know if anyone in his administration had leaked Plame’s identity, and that “if the person has violated law, that person will be taken care of.” Five months later, at a June 10, 2004, press conference in Georgia, the president said he still intended to fire anyone found to have leaked Plame’s identity. And a few months after that, late in the summer of 2004, Karl Rove himself told CNN: “I didn’t know her name. I didn’t leak her name.”[…]

Nobody asked McClellan today why he can’t talk but everyone else around him can, but it probably doesn’t matter. He wouldn’t have answered anyway.

Anyone take a guess as to what kind of medal or perk Karl Rove could receive for this, because hey–Bush loves giving out medals and higher political offices to those who screw up (ie: George Tenet and the current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice). I seriously doubt that there will be any “firing” within the future, no matter how much it is deserved. I just love it how this administration acts as if they should never have to be held culpable, be questioned, or take any responsibility for its mistakes–no matter how egregious.

Posted in Conservative zaniness, right-wingers, etc., Elections and politics | Comments Off on McClellan Zaniness

Pro-choice and pregnant

Posted on July 12, 2005 by Nick Kiddle

There are some cells in my uterus at the moment that aren’t usually there. I call these cells “my baby”, and spend much of my time planning the future that they may have, once they’ve finished developing into a human being. Other women, with similar cells, plan how to remove the cells as quickly and painlessly as possible.

A favourite pro-life argument is to seize gleefully on the similarities between the two groups of cells and demand how you can possibly justify the vastly different ways of treating them. If the fetus has no value, they ask, why do pregnant women often feel a close bond with their unborn babies? If it’s nothing more than a bunch of cells, why can a miscarriage be so devastating? Tempting as it is to dismiss this as so much irrelevance, it’s worth exploring the apparent contradiction for the insights it can offer into what pro-choice really means.

My baby is not yet a human being. Even with special care, it is very unlikely to be capable of surviving on its own if it were removed from my body. It needs my bloodstream and my uterus to have even a chance of becoming a human being. Although it’s genetically distinct from me, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to view it as a part of my body. A part that could, given the right conditions, become a separate person, but until that happens a part of me.

We all see our bodies differently, and we all give different values to different parts. Some people welcome body hair because of the cultural value it has; others remove it for much the same reasons. A transsexual man could be delighted at the removal of his breasts; a woman with breast cancer is more likely to feel mutilated. The same body parts, but very different reactions.

The cells inside the uterus are just another example. I give mine a very high value and watch their development with delight; other women give theirs a low value and can’t wait to be rid of them. The belief that we both have the right to assign value to our own bodies for ourselves is the essence of being pro-choice. If a woman places a high value on her fetus, removing it against her will is just as unacceptable as forcing a woman to retain, against her will, a fetus she gives a low value to.

This is partly why miscarriage can be so devastating. A woman who anticipates with joy the time when her fetus becomes a fully-fledged human being invests those cells with a great deal of value. If they are destroyed, she’s lost a part of herself that she loved and welcomed, and will naturally feel a degree of grief. The pain could well be made worse by the attitude that women are walking incubators, but that’s another question entirely.

The contradiction turns out to be no contradiction at all. I care passionately about my baby; every sign of movement brings me a little extra joy. But it wouldn’t bring joy to every woman, and those for whom it would mean nothing but discomfort should be able to make a different choice.

Posted in Abortion & reproductive rights | 241 Comments