Can You Believe We're Still Fighting This?

[filkertom]

Not content with trying to outlaw and stigmatize abortion (because, y'know, women do it for fun), a movement is growing to get rid of even birth control.

Insane.

If you're in the NYC area, it happens that there is a fund-raiser in Brooklyn (Greenpoint) tomorrow night, the proceeds of which go to Planned Parenthood of South Dakota.

Thanks to Rebecca Traister's Broadsheet at Salon.com (registration or free day-pass required) for the heads-up.

Comments

[holzman.livejournal.com]

Of course -- the compulsory pregnancy lobby never stopped being against birth control.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

This is, sadly, not news; they've been open about it since at LEAST the Reagan administration.

[morpheus0013.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, not news to me. You run into this train of thought a lot when you're the least bit involved in the pro-choice movement.

I'm not sure how I feel about the picture of mifepristone and misoprostol being present, however, since all of the other pictures appear to be of actual contraceptives.

[wouldyoueva.livejournal.com]

So, are they giving up breastfeeding, so as not to prevent fertilized eggs from implanting?

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

If that actually worked reliably, there would never be siblings withing 1.5 years of age, would there? And it would come as a big shock to a friend of mine and her year-apart kids.

Singing, every sperm is sacred... o/ o/ o/

General Reply To The Three Above

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

You're all correct, of course. This has been simmering for a long time; I think they just think now is a good time to push it, before Dubya and the GOP gets thrown collectively into the hoosegow.

They're anti-sex, 'cause sex is dirty, or distracts you from thoughts of Gawd, or whatever. They're anti-women -- and I will never figure out the women willing to sacrifice their own rights and well-being as well as those of other women. They're anti-birth control, because God Wants Souls. They're anti-anything which might make sex safer, let alone more pleasurable.

They are basically anti-anything except birth. And they couldn't care about the life of the mother or the baby, just the kid's actual birth. Pre-natal care? Health of the mother? Financial, emotional, professional situation? Screw it. Bear the child, thou sinner. And, once you have, fuck you, disappear.

Gaaaaaah.

Re: General Reply To The Three Above

[reyl.livejournal.com]

Oh but they're doing it for the women. Bush is against birth control because he doesn't want women to be forced to have sex with their husbands whenever the men want.

Wow. That guy's logic just boggles my mind. Thanks for showing me yet another totally weird Bush quote.

/still glad I'm Canadian.

Re: General Reply To The Three Above

[morpheus0013.livejournal.com]

No, no, no. See, it's me who hates women because I support giving them 100% choice in their reproductive decisions without putting any caveats on it such as rape, incest, etc.

Because I'm an on demand/without apology pro-choicer, I hate women. *nods*

Re: General Reply To The Three Above

[jhayman.livejournal.com]

But they AREN'T anti the prevailing media which has glorified everything bloody comodity in a sexual manner, so that sex, sex, sex is the topic of the hour.

US Highest teen pregnancy rate of all developed countries. Also the highest neonatal mortality rate of all developed countries.

You have a huge number of readers: please keep saying these things. Your country should not become a Third World Country with a lot of money.

Compulsive editing

[janet-coburn.livejournal.com]

Please tell me that the first sentence implies that women have sex, not abortions, for fun. I mean, that's one of the right's main objections to female sexuality, isn't it? That without fear of enforced pregnancy, women might actually *enjoy* sex?

Re: Compulsive editing

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I wish I could. And, yeah, that is one of the right's main objections, 'cause Gawd knows y'cant have fun doing something your body's hotwired for enjoying. But, no. You should know that, dear -- there are so damn many of 'em out there (funny how they're almost all men) who think that abortion is a casual decision, used by most women as birth control. As if women think, "Hmmm. What should I do Saturday? Write the Great American Novel? go to tae kwon do class? Shop for clothes? Change the oil? Abort my eight-week-old baby? Hmmm."

[gpeefalt.livejournal.com]

"The mind-set that invites a couple to use contraception is an antichild mind-set," she told me. "So when a baby is conceived accidentally, the couple already have this negative attitude toward the child. Therefore seeking an abortion is a natural outcome. We oppose all forms of contraception."

This part touched me personally. My son is a product of failed contraception. At the time we found out, I didn't have a job and we lived with her parents. Abortion was the last thing on my mind. (I'm pro-choice)

[kightp.livejournal.com]

In an otherwise comprehensive and thoughtful article, I note one glaring omission: Any mention of the deeply anti-feminist side of the anti-choice, anti-birth-control movement. If one is motivated by a desire to put women in their place and return them to lives of subjugation, compulsory pregnancy is a damned good way to do that.

World-wide, study after study has shown that two factors make the biggest difference in the quality of life and standard of living for women and children: Access to contraception, and access to education.

[sunfell.livejournal.com]

They want to take all of that away from us. All of it. They chip away at our soveriegn rights as human beings, and they are chipping away at the quality of education in public schools with their "intelligent design" idiocy.

They hate women. Period. Remember that. They hate us, because the Bible tells them so.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Not so much hate, as fear. Just as they fear anything that threatens their total sovereignty over the world and their toys, which include other human beings not themselves.

Jerks.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

"We see a direct connection between the practice of contraception and the practice of abortion," says Judie Brown, president of the American Life League

Well, heck, so do I. Inversely; the better, safer, and more widely available and used birth control is, the fewer abortions.

Oh. That's not what she meant? Then why isn't she a client of The Lighthouse, which helps the blind?

What an ass; how unfortunately representative she is of such idiots.

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

Abortion is no friggin' picnic, it is surgery, albeit an outpatient procedure. Safe, reliable and available birth control could end abortion forever. Every conception a wanted child. There are worse ideas than that.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Yep. Precisely. Although knowing the way the world works, I don't know that we can ever get to 100% reliable birth control. But we can damned well try, and destigmatize it. And destigmatize its failure -- say, at a rate of 1 failure per million or ten million uses.

Rather than "worse ideas" I'd reverse it -- that there are few better ideas than that every child be wanted and loved.

[kengr]

Alas, "wanted" and "loved" do nopt automatically go together. If they did, adopted children would never suffer from parental abuse...

A lot of people want children as something they "own", something they can *control*.

And if the child's mind doersn't work the way the parent expects it to, the child must be forced to conform to the parent's wishes, regardless.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

I am unfortunately too aware of this, both in the abstract and concrete (though not in my own person, for which I give great thanks).

I know that twisted ideologues are capable of turning ANYTHING to their own hateful ends (else how would we see the teachings attributed to Yeshua ben Yoseph turned as they have been?). Still, I prefer to think that there would be a significantly higher percentage of children born both desired and loved than now.

[kengr]

It doesn't even have to be twisted ideologues. Parents who are trying to do the right thing can *still* mess up kids because their minds and the kids mind don't work the same way.

One of the more common ways is always hitting the "bright"/"talented"/whatever kid with "you can do better" instead of praising the stuff they actually accomplished.

Some kids will take that as intended. Others will learn the unintended lesson that working hard just means you are expected to work harder. As well as learnning that their efforts aren't worth anything (and by extension, neither are they).

And that's just *one* example of being "wired differently" resulting in a well-meaning parent being anything but "loving" as seen from the kid's point of view.

Yeah, in a lot of cases, an unbiased (and sufficiently knowledgable) observer mighyt not consider the actions "loving", but that's not the same as the sort of parents who *should* (or worse yet, *do*) know better than to treat their kids the way they do.

And yes, I am (unfortunately) speaking from experience on the "well intentioned, but wrong" type. Thank god I don't have experience with the "evil" type. But I've been involved with folks who were in that position. And you know something? The damage caused is pretty much indistinguishable.

Well, the non-physical type anyway.

[markbernstein.livejournal.com]

Astonishing and impossible as this may sound, it's even worse than you think. Some of these loonies have now come out against a vaccine that can prevent cervical cancer.

[omimouse.livejournal.com]

That one's been going on for a while now.

But after all, if the little sluts have sex, there must be consequnces!

May each and every one of those idiots find themsleves alone, scared, and not knowing if they're pregnant or not. In some lifetime. In a situation where a child would be one of the worst things that could happen to their lives at that moment. As an added bonus, they can actually want to have kids at some point in their lives.

I've been there. 3 times now, and I use birth control. I want kids, and the choice I would have had to make, had it showed positive any of those 3 times, would have been hellish enough without the far right screaming at me over it.

Each and every one of them deserves those 2 minutes of gut-wrenching terror while you wait for the little stick to show a plus or a minus.

[omimouse.livejournal.com]

Sorry, need to add something lestt part of the above is misread:

I wasn't alone. I was lucky to have 2 absolutely wonderful, loving men who were willing to face that choice with me.

I was not alone, and it makes me angry to realize how outside the norm that is.

[kengr]

Actually, even a guy can feel a moment of terror, though not as extreme.

I once had a "one time" oincident with a casual aquaintance. A year or so later I ran into her with a baby. That was quite a shock.

Not the same thing, but since I *try* to be responsible, I never again did unprotected sex.

[droewyn.livejournal.com]

As usual, one thing the article completely fails to mention is that some women take contraceptives for *gasp* Other Reasons Than Birth Control.

I, along with roughly ten percent of all women, have endometriosis (http://www.endometriosisassn.org/endo.html). Oral contraceptives tend to slow the growth and internal scarring, and help keep the pain manageable. Other than birth control of one form or another (my doctor has also suggested injections and IUDs), my options are pretty much periodic laparoscopic surgery or having my ovaries removed. Or waiting for menopause, I suppose, although seeing as I'm not yet thirty that really isn't much of a plan.

It's never happened to me yet, but I have a tantrum of righteous wrath just waiting for the day a pharmacy clerk refuses to fill my prescription...

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I know at least two women who have had to take birth control for years simply to keep from bleeding excessively at menstruation. One of them nearly died once.

[daundelyon.livejournal.com]

*waves* I'm one of those women. My choice is oral contraceptives, or back to the hospital with uncontrolled hemorrhage, dehydration, and pain. I'll take the pills, thanks! My personal plan, should a pharmacist ever deny me my medication, is to describe in exquisite detail exactly what I went through, ask if they're willing to pay my hospital bills, then grab the meds while they're turning green.

[droewyn.livejournal.com]

That's about the same as my plan too, although my symptoms aren't nearly as bad as yours.

But hey, what's a little bit of suffering and death in the noble cause of protecting Life?

[realinterrobang.livejournal.com]

*wave* Hi there, I'm one of them too. I have terrible problems with cramps and nausea and excessive (although not life-threatening) bleeding. Also, my periods are nowhere near regular, so they can just, you know, disappear for months at a time, and then reappear in one godawful torrent.

Hardly anybody ever mentions women with irregular periods when "compromising" on earlier and earlier abortion restrictions. I've had periods go missing for three months at a time and then restart, knowing that I was not pregnant, because I wasn't sexually active at the time. But the point remains, if you don't have regular periods, you could be pregnant for three months or so before you even think to check, especially if you use other forms of birth control. Before I went on the patch, the irregularity used to be so bad I could go for a couple months without even starting to think if I might have had a condom failure; missing a period or two was more or less SOP.

Does that make me irresponsible? Only by the longest possible stretch of the word, I guess.

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

The best lack all conviction, while the worst / are filled with a passionate intensity.