Go read this argument for abortion rights — it’s personal, powerful, and good. My only reservation would be to wonder why anyone uses imgur to post what is basically a text essay as a series of screen shots…
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
She’s angry, but sometimes anger is good. These meddling dog turds disguised as humanity have no right to be invading other people’s lives and making important decisions for them. I hope their end is painful and lonely when it comes.
PS: I apologize for any offense given to dog turds.
@DLC #1:
None taken.
Sorry. Had to joke. That was a hell of a powerful argument.
I needed some anger this morning. There’s a lot of apathy going around that’s making me sick.
This literally made my stomach hurt.
Pro-lifers are not just ignorant. They are willfully ignorant, and vile.
Every time, the self-rightousness and complete lack of empathy of these people gets me. Just three weeks ago, I’ve been to a protest against European pro-Lifers who dared to claim that it was about letting disabled kids live, because of course all these superficial women would simply abort any kid with a hint of disability. They waved placards with pictures of kids with Down Syndrome on them and the slogan “Thanks for letting me live.” What. the. ffffuuuu…
I’m also close (too close) to what’s happening in Poland right now, and it’s awful. I’m angry at the EU for letting these assholes go further than ever. But if they don’t do anything against Orban, the surviving evil twin of course thinks he can test the boundaries as well.
Minor point, but does anyone have a fact-check on the claim that D+E was promoted by the pro-life movement? I’d do my own research, but I don’t know how much fetus worship I have the stomach to wade through right now, and somebody might know.
@cedrus:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial-Birth_Abortion_Ban_Act
(Sorry, I’m not familiar enough with this story or US law to be able to dig deeper)
It is pretty unheard of here in Germany where people who lose wanted pregnancies are mostly treated with some kind of dignity. Here the standard method before around week 20 is to simply induce birth. Many women report that going through birth “naturally” helped them to cope. After the point of viability the heart is stopped intra uterine and then birth is induced.
D&E for such a progressed pregnancy is barbaric for the pregnant person.
just another indication that it is not about the children but about the “sinning” of the mothers.
uncle frogy
It doesn’t matter what a fetus is. What matters is where it is, and what it is doing, and what it is getting ready to do, to the womb-owner.
If something is located inside your body and unwelcome there, and/or is helping itself to the contents of your bloodstream without ongoing permission, and/or is getting ready to subject you to a major medical/surgical trauma against your will, then you are entitled to have it killed, no matter what it is.
If ALL the human beings in the WHOLE WORLD were assembled inside your body, then you would be entitled to holocaust them. That’s part of the meaning of the word “your” in the phrase “your body”. If God were located inside your body, then you would be entitled to kill God.
I had an elective abortion at 5 weeks pregnant and still grieve the situation 20+ years later, but would absolutely make the same decision again. It is impossible to convey to someone who has not been in the same situation just how traumatizing it is to make this decision. Agonizing hours, days and sleepless nights pass filled with torment. Pain, self doubt and self recrimination. Anger, shame and horror. I thankfully live in Canada where this was handled professionally and with a minimum of fuss. I cannot imagine the additional trauma inflicted by self righteous zealots who involve themselves uninvited at one of the most fragile and difficult times a woman and her family face.
My wife was diagnosed with a living, but non-viable fetus, due to chromosomal abnormalities. She was given 4 choices: 1) attempt to carry it to term, with the 95% chance it would die in utero. If it died in utero, she would begin to feel very sick, come to the hospital, and have the corpse delivered. 2) If she carried it to term, it would be about 100% likely to die within 30 minutes; there are no treatments for the condition. 3) Wait a few weeks, hoping for a miracle. If no miracle happened, come to the hospital and have an induced birth. 4) Since she was at 20 weeks, come in and have a D&E under general anaesthesia. No giving-birth trauma, no holding the fetus, etc.
She chose #4; as in, GET THIS THING OUT OF ME IMMEDIATELY, I DON’T WANT TO GIVE BIRTH TO IT OR TO SEE IT! As we are in Canada, the procedure was done promptly and without fuss and without the intervention of ANY other party.
The only problem was that we had to enter the hospital through the obstetrics door and walk past all of the happy pregnant parents and those with their just-delivered children. I asked our doctor why we had to go through this torture, and he replied that if the hospital had an abortions-only door, then the pro-life fanatics would be camped out in front and make the whole procedure more nightmarish.
This was all to the good. If we had had to walk through a pack of those whining, sadistic zealots I probably would have lost it.
My understanding is that it’s not so much that they promoted D & E as that they pushed to illegalize D & X, aka the “partial birth abortion”. Neither procedure is performed if inducing labor and delivering normally, if prematurely, is a viable option. These procedures are used when the fetus is grossly malformed such that it cannot fit out of the uterus or there has been fetal demise of one twin with potential to save the other. The very bill that made the D & X procedure illegal acknowledged that it was the safest procedure for both mother and surviving twin in the latter case.
The procedure is pretty much the only way to go in cases of advanced fetus papyraceus, where the fetal bones are well developed, but the majority of fetal tissue has already been resorbed.
To attempt normal delivery would be at the substantial risk of uterine perforation.
Beyond that, I’ll simply say, one spontaneous abortion, two live births, one ectopic pregnancy that was aborted as it was entering the second trimester (yes, that’s a serious medical emergency that resulted in an obstructed fallopian tube) and a total of 16 pregnancies with only two live births. We really did want one more.
Rage over “pro-lifers”, where one actually told me to my face that my wife should have died, rather than have an abortion of an ectopic pregnancy.
And getting more tissues, as I actually am crying.
*raises clenched paw in solidarity*
Our son, our daughter’s brother, was 16 when he died of cancer. It was the religious friends and acquaintances whose supposedly comforting and supportive remarks none of us could bear. All the fluffy nonsense about a better world and God’s plans, and suppressing angry replies… But this is even worse: attacking people over something they experienced as a tragedy (and one that could have been made a little be less cruel if an abortion had been performed)? What kind of sick, self-righteous, small minded idiot would do that? Oh, yeah, a really religious one. And they claim religion is the fount of morality…
Handsomemrtoad:
Apologies in advance for being fussy about the language (and the sam to all for going off topic here), but I have a problem with describing someone’s relation to parts of their body as ownership: I think the right to control of one’s body is far stronger than any property right, and using the same word for both relations provides rhetorical support for excessively absolutist views of property rights.