An Irish anti-abortion group, Youth Defence, has stuck up hundreds of posters all over Dublin announcing that abortions tear women’s lives apart.
That’s crap. Sometimes abortions are very emotionally painful, but not always. It’s certainly not true that there’s always a better answer – that’s why the right to get an abortion is worth having.
That argument is so infantalizing. A lot of women want abortions. If there was a better answer, they would’t want them. Women want abortions because they know that’s the best answer for them at that time.
And the underlining of the word ‘always’ gives me the chills. Some people really think it’s better to let the woman die than abort a fetus. I hate them.
Better answer to what? I don’t want to add another person to the world. If I were to get pregnant, abortion absolutely would be the best answer.
I love when their own words give them away. In this case, they belie any claim to this effort being grounded in compassion for women.
“There’s always a better answer” would seem to be directed to women, trying to prevent them pain. It would seem that way, that is, if the first part read “Abortion tears your life apart” rather than “…her life apart.” That it’s talking about a woman having an abortion rather than to women who might get abortions shows that it’s really directed to men and women who want to deny women the right to find their own answers to their own problems.
@SC
Exactly. It’s a message to others: Lets not give her the power to make that decision herself. For her own sake!
I presume that, Ireland being what it is, the Catholic Church is not far below the surface of this ad campaign. If not, then the Church would certainly approve of it.
Yet God himself often provides women with abortions. Perversely, we call them miscarriages.
There is sometimes a better answer. Possibly, if adoptive parents were to step forward and offer to support the woman financially and emotionally through the pregnancy, and not just in a token way, then maybe the abortion choice would not be made in some cases.
But this clearly has not occurred to the Catholic Church. Just why not is beyond me.
Because it’s not about helping women, it’s about punishing them. The RCC is not stupid. It’s evil.
For years now, a group around here has put up the, “Abortion stops a beating heart” billboards. I’ve always thought that if I win the lottery, I’ll pay to put up billboards right next to theirs that say, “A coat hanger can stop two beating hearts”.
When will the creators of these sorts of billboards realize that abortion isn’t a party. It isn’t the “in” thing to do. People don’t walk into their house or their office yelling, “Guess what??!?? I get to have an abortion! Yay!” That women have them based on their situation, what they view as any child they have’s situation and after a lot of thought. When will they get it through their thick skulls that the opinions of the person carrying a proto-baby out-weigh everyone else’s?
I agree with Hertta that the ad is infantilizing. Anti-abortion activists on both sides of the pond treat women who get abortions as victims. They ignore the fact that it is the women themselves who demand and initiate abortions.
Excellent point, SC @3.
Jeez…
Sometimes, maybe most times, an abortion PRESERVES the life of the woman having the abortion. An abortion can keep a working woman from having to sacrifice her career. An abortion can keep an unfaithful wife from blowing up her marriage. An abortion can in lots of ways prevent a woman from interfering with her life to sustain another life that she’s not particularly interested in dealing with right now.
There’s “always” a better answer, my ass. Hell, at this point I’m fine with abortion as birth control rather than a ban on abortion, and screw that whole “safe, legal, rare” stupidity. Which brings me to my biggest point, which is people treating a pregnancy as a punishment for unapproved sexual behavior… I almost agree with them! I think there is all sorts of sexual behavior which should totally be condemned and shunned by society. Those are the LAST PEOPLE ON EARTH I WANT TO BE RAISING CHILDREN, and the first people who should be given better options.
The better option, when there is one, is birth control. But the same clowns who oppose abortion are also trying to restrict access to that. Same for even simple knowledge.
And forcing her to bear a child against her will doesn’t tear her apart, hmm?
“Abortion should never be used as birth control” is an anti-choice slogan, not a reasonable compromise. Abortion is necessarily an act of birth control, after all.
It’s my understanding that surgical abortion, while quite safe, is not entirely risk-free, so other forms of birth control are preferable. That’s not what the anti-choice types mean by that slogan, however. They mean that you can’t have an abortion for an unintended pregnancy.
Excellent.
I employ a slightly different approach:
Lizards have hearts, too. WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE LIZARDS?
(If they go after the central nervous system, that’s even better. Then I get to bring up cockroaches.)
I do kind of wonder what better option they think there is for a woman with an ectopic pregnancy. Or a woman who is 18-19 weeks pregnant and develops HELLP syndrome. Or one with primary pulmonary hypertension. Because in each of these cases the other option, besides abortion, is death.
What the fuck? Abortion isn’t even legal in Ireland! Not for rape, not for incest, and (statistically speaking ) not for the health of the mother.
Women and girls have to fly or sail to England, pay for accommodation, pay for an abortion, then get. home.
Many can’t afford to, and end up dead from partner abuse, suicide, or trying to induce.
google ‘Abortion Support Network’.
Dianne – actually we already know that – they think the better (and only permissible) option is the death of the woman along with the fetus. Cf the bishop of Phoenix.
they think the better (and only permissible) option is the death of the woman along with the fetus
I know this, I just don’t know how they reconcile their desire that women made ill by pregnancy rather than be cured with their moniker “pro-life”. Isn’t that rather anti-life?