Abortion

[Yrth]

The connection between abortion and feminism is something that has confused and saddened me for a long time. I feel that first of all its a false connection, and that second its obstructing the progression of reform. Abortion becomes much easier to defend when you cast the entire category as a civil rights issue for women. And its a false connection because female independence and abortion rights overlap a little but not at all completely.

 

The way this feminist sees it, abortion is connected to feminism because family planning is connected to feminism, and abortion is one family planning tool among many. It is the equation of family planning=abortion which is false - an equation I encounter with regularity, unfortunately, but there it is.

 

Incidentally, 19th century feminists tended to oppose abortion; Susan B. Anthony springs to mind here. She didn't write much about abortion, but in what little she did write she opposed it for being an unsafe medical procedure that killed women (as it frequently did at the time). She held male-dominated society responsible for creating the circumstances which drove women to abortion, and believed that full equality would eventually eradicate the need for it. See a bit of info here.

 

Not every feminist is pro-choice, either. Ever heard of Feminists for Life?

 

Hey, I am into feminism. This is my favorite(most interesting) feminist read, but it will be a long time before her ideas will be real, and I'm not sure I could handle them if they did while I was alive.

But how is feminism connected to family planning? Doesn't family planning involve, well, families, and therefore wouldn't it be gender neutral?

 

After all, as Neon has pointed out, there is the man involved to consider as well as the (small) human being aborted. Aside from the fact that abortion adds to female independence what it steals from the unborn and men(More so from the unborn, but I have known some traumatized guys involved in these situations), it subtracts rather than adds to the position of women, and really the the position of us all.

 

How does abortion subtract to anyone's "position"?

 

What do you mean by "position"?

By position I meant social, financial, and political status. Sort of like shorthand for positive and negative development. I think abortion and its normalization harms the position of women by making them more vulnerable to attacks on the childbearing aspects of their existence. You said it -- if there is a double standard imposed its by biology, but if you dumb down the 'pregnant' aspects of women, you simply end up marring the picture.

 

Women may now choose whether or not to carry to term, but if you think they don't face intense pressure from men (avoiding child support) or their families to get an abortion then you're sadly mistaken.

 

Sure, that does happen. Are you implying that women have abortions largely because men want us to?

I think its way more likely women will have an abortion if their partner doesn't want that responsibility, and I also think the decision to have an abortion is influenced by other people. If someone is considering an abortion, that most likely means they weren't planning on being pregnant, and so they'll be asking for advice.

 

Abortion is the best thing that has ever happened for reckless men, not women, who in fact do like to get laid every weekend with a new partner. How does encouragement of that sort of behavior add to the position of women in our country?

 

How does male promiscuity lower the position of women?

 

How does male promiscuity lower the position of women? (O.o) Have you ever heard a group of jerks boasting about their latest conquests? Talk about stripping the humanity from someone. 'Yeah I got a blowjob from that ho, haha, you could prolly get one too if she's drunk enough.' 'Fat chicks give great head.' 'The girl is ugly as SHIT, I wouldn't stick my dick in there if you paid me' Etc. These are our modern Casanovas. When this is the way women are treated by men, women will adjust to fit the part. Its the Pygmalion effect meets the relational need of an adolescent girl. Add to that the misinformed idea that men and women are the same and thus women should emulate promiscuous men in order to break out of a gender role, and wuala you have a descending circle of degradation. Oh, and those are all real quotes.

 

How would compulsory pregnancy raise it?

I think people would be less likely to have reckless sex if the risks were higher. Also, women might be seen less as sex toys that talk and more like equals who, remarkably, are capable of having kids. This is now about certain types of feminism and the effects of abortion (And, I suppose, birth control too) on society, not just about abortion.

[godlessgrrl]

Hey pockets, I'll have to address your posts later as I'm under the weather today and am about to head out for a nap. Just wanted to post a quick thanks for your reply, and thanks for helping keep things even-tempered. I'm aware that you and I disagree widely and that this could devolve very quickly into a big shouting match, so I appreciate the overall civility.

 

Time for that nap now.

[Guest Marty]

Sure :] Here you go, the result of my own quick Google search. As I understand it, the problem (today) isn't growing food so much as distributing it.

 

Well, that article stated to feed that many people, corn has to be the only thing grown on the planet. It seemed to make an awful lot of assumptions as well.

 

At the current worldwide level of productivity, and taking all suitable land on Earth for farming and using it to grow corn, and if people needed no additional resources from nature (no meat, cotton, or wood products), then the Earth could support 50 billion people. This is based on Scenario 3, assuming additional land that is currently being used by nature can be repurposed for human use and that some of this land would produce less biomass when converted to growing corn.

 

Corn is an incomplete protein, even if I wanted to eat only corn, I couldn't survive solely on it. The article also says nothing about how to water all those crops, or what to do with all the extra human waste that would be produced.

 

The reason is that you're both alive, you're both human, you both require resources, and you're both here. There are better ways of reducing the population without throwing out human beings.

 

You make it sound like I am pro-choice for population control reasons. That would be another strawman. I merely offered a viewpoint that I didn't see represented in the discussion. I feel it is a strong and valid point, but it is not my sole reasoning here.

 

Well, if that's true, then I am sorry for the prior sarcasm. I'm not a counselor, and I don't know what to say to you to convince you to prize your life, but what about the lives of others? Would you be comfortable having their mothers abort them?

 

Yes, I am fine with that because I have no say in the matter. It is not my decision to make, but theirs, and I feel that people should be able to control their own lives. Who am I to tell someone I don't even know she has to have that baby?

 

Well, I'm afraid you're simply wrong about the clump of cells not being human. What else is it but human? Rabbit? Frog? Martian?

 

A clump of cells is called a zygote, not a human. The cells in my body are not much different than a frog or rabbit, so I'm not sure what your point is. The potential to be human is not the same as being human. By this logic all men should be considered rapists since we have the potential to be rapists. Do you consider sperm to be half a human?

 

And I wholeheartedly agree that we should be paying more attention to the children who are already here, hungry, and suffering. They are legion, and they are real children, and they are really suffering.

 

How does that sentiment square with human society having ruined everything?

 

Well, let's see. A good place to start would be how we spend more time and money debating and fighting for babies who aren't even born while ignoring the ones that are here. If a woman is talked out of an abortion, are the pro-lifers gonna help her raise the kid? No way, their on to the next clump of cells to save. Nobody cares for people who are already here, they only want to save the unborn.

[godlessgrrl]

Mornin' pockets - I've snipped threaded replies a bit to preserve bandwidth.

 

Hey, I am into feminism. This is my favorite(most interesting) feminist read, but it will be a long time before her ideas will be real, and I'm not sure I could handle them if they did while I was alive.

But how is feminism connected to family planning? Doesn't family planning involve, well, families, and therefore wouldn't it be gender neutral?

 

Oh cool, took a skim of your link and it looks intriguing. I'll be sure to put that on my feminist reading list for the summer, thanks!

 

Heh, it would probably take a dissertation to answer the question of how family planning is connected to feminism. I tend to see it as part of a larger history of feminism and what the movement has sought to achieve overall in the past couple hundred years. In a very bare, not-remotely-comprehensive nutshell, I don't think the status of women can rise unless we have economic resources available to us, and those resources are severely taxed when we have no control over how many children we have and when - it's literally a matter of having too many mouths to feed and not enough money to feed them (or educate them). I suppose it ended up a feminist issue because women have traditionally been responsible for the bearing and rearing of children. And yes, it's a gender neutral thing too, and a man's issue too.

 

That's probably not the best explanation but it sums up what I generally think so far.

 

By position I meant social, financial, and political status. Sort of like shorthand for positive and negative development. I think abortion and its normalization harms the position of women by making them more vulnerable to attacks on the childbearing aspects of their existence. You said it -- if there is a double standard imposed its by biology, but if you dumb down the 'pregnant' aspects of women, you simply end up marring the picture.

 

Okay. Thanks for explaining. It sounds as if your idea is that our capacity for childbearing should confer on us greater value and status? Is that on the right track?

 

I think its way more likely women will have an abortion if their partner doesn't want that responsibility, and I also think the decision to have an abortion is influenced by other people. If someone is considering an abortion, that most likely means they weren't planning on being pregnant, and so they'll be asking for advice.

 

Well yeah, I can't imagine not asking plenty of people I trusted for advice in a difficult situation. That doesn't necessarily mean that the final decision is someone else's, it means that a number of positions were weighed before the decision was made. I know that there are women out there who would or have had an abortion under pressure from a partner, pressure that perhaps goes beyond simple advice. I don't like it, but don't feel it justifies banning abortion. I'd still rather the choice were available than not.

 

I still think it would be really interesting if we could successfully transplant a fetus into a guy and have him continue out a pregnancy that perhaps his female partner didn't want to have or couldn't for some reason. Heck, I think it'd be interesting if women could knock up men from the start! What would things be like for you guys, if you could get pregnant the way women can?

 

Probably something for another thread...

 

How does male promiscuity lower the position of women? (O.o) Have you ever heard a group of jerks boasting about their latest conquests? Talk about stripping the humanity from someone. 'Yeah I got a blowjob from that ho, haha, you could prolly get one too if she's drunk enough.' 'Fat chicks give great head.' 'The girl is ugly as SHIT, I wouldn't stick my dick in there if you paid me' Etc. These are our modern Casanovas. When this is the way women are treated by men, women will adjust to fit the part. Its the Pygmalion effect meets the relational need of an adolescent girl. Add to that the misinformed idea that men and women are the same and thus women should emulate promiscuous men in order to break out of a gender role, and wuala you have a descending circle of degradation. Oh, and those are all real quotes.

 

Oh, I absolutely believe those are all real quotes; I've had similar things said about myself before, by both guys and gals, interestingly enough. On a tangent, I highly recommend checking out a copy of Leora Tannenbaum's Slut. It's all about the loss of reputation girls and women face when people say things like the above.

 

However, what you're describing here isn't male promiscuity, but male chauvinism. The problem isn't that these guys sleep around, it's that they treat women like shit. It's equally possible for man to be promiscuous, but to treat every woman he encounters (sexually or otherwise) as if she were a goddess. Likewise, it's possible for a man to be as chaste as the driven snow, and still think that women are all inhuman whores. The problem here doesn't lie in his promiscuity so much as in the overall attitude a man has towards women.

 

And let me tell you, we do not all adjust to fit the parts men put us in. Plenty of us recognize woman-hating scum for they are and avoid them like the plague, and teach our daughters, nieces, friends, sisters, and other female loved ones to avoid them too - and to recognize them, and to call them out, and to love and support men who aren't like that.

 

I don't fuck woman-haters. I don't even give 'em the time of day. I don't think raunch culture is particularly empowering, either. I think one of the unfortunate byproducts of the second-wave feminist era is that sexual freedom for women got co-opted by men who wanted to get laid. It is tremendously empowering to be able to have sex without fear of disease or pregnancy, which is another of the things I think birth control brought to both men and women - but it is tremendously discouraging to see a sexist culture use feminism as an excuse to create something like raunch culture. Until we really do value women as full equals, and stop shaming women for sex, it will not be empowering to be a slut. And I say that as a sex-positive feminist, too.

 

I have to wonder what porn and erotica would look like if we lived in a culture that adored women for real. I think it'd still be around, it might just look very very different.

 

I think people would be less likely to have reckless sex if the risks were higher. Also, women might be seen less as sex toys that talk and more like equals who, remarkably, are capable of having kids. This is now about certain types of feminism and the effects of abortion (And, I suppose, birth control too) on society, not just about abortion.

 

Heh! Yes, we've gone quite the tangent, haven't we! Well, it is all related in there, in one way or another.

 

The problem with the idea that people would be less likely to have reckless sex if the risks were higher is that it doesn't actually work. If it did, abstinence-only sex ed would probably be more effective than it actually is, since it certainly plays up the risks in an effort to frighten people into chastity. What seems to work more effectively in curbing risky sexual activity is to teach people healthy self-esteem, and provide them with accurate sex ed and access to birth control.

 

I can guarantee you, it isn't the guys who treat women like sexual kleenex who are going to give a damn what the risks are to anybody but themselves, and removing abortion from the equation isn't going to change their minds. It's just going to leave women stuck holding the bag if we find ourselves pregnant by an irresponsible man-whore, and it'll just give such men more reason to hate and resent us - i.e., "Dumb bitch got pregnant!" Men like that are still going to think of us primarily as sex toys no matter what. The way to counter their attitude is not to remove abortion, it's to teach men to value women and to teach women that we have value and don't deserve to be treated that way.

[Neon Genesis]

I still think it would be really interesting if we could successfully transplant a fetus into a guy and have him continue out a pregnancy that perhaps his female partner didn't want to have or couldn't for some reason. Heck, I think it'd be interesting if women could knock up men from the start! What would things be like for you guys, if you could get pregnant the way women can?

 

Probably something for another thread...

Wasn't there a pregnant guy who was on all those talk shows awhile back? But I think he was transgendered so if I don't know if that's what you had in mind. But your idea reminds me of a plot in an episode of The Cosby Show once where Doctor Huxtable was having a dream where all the men in the world got pregnant including himself.

[Vomit Comet]

Some folks here have commented on what a terrible thing it would have been had they or one of their parents been aborted. Frankly, this makes no sense to me. I love life, but had I never been born, so what? One doesn't miss what one never had, what one was never aware of. If you never existed as an autonomous human being, you simply wouldn't know anything about it. Do you miss not having been alive 500 years ago, 1000 years ago, 10,000, etc? This has no meaning.

 

Some of us who are genetically a "certain way" have often asked ourselves: would I have been aborted had the doctors told my parents that I was going to have this condition?

 

My condition, if you're wondering, is Asperger's Syndrome. Every once in a while I stay up at night wondering if I would've been scraped had the doc said "your child is going to be retarded." Which is more or less what I was classified as throughout my early childhood.

 

I wonder if gay people ever lie awake wondering the same thing? Had their parents known the kid was going to turn out gay....

[Guest Marty]

Pro-choice, with reluctance. I don't think I could do it myself, but its not up to me to sit in judgment upon the circumstances that compel others to get an abortion. If not done in a clinic it will be done elsewhere under dangerous conditions.

 

I recently did some genealogical research and traced my family back to the 16th century. When you look at it on paper, its quite impressive the number of people who had to come together to produce this body. It was hundreds. If I were able to trace it further back, no doubt it would be thousands. It gave me a different perspective. Life is such an amazing process and continuity.

 

Now, on paper, that sounds logical. But what I can not get past is that there were not that many people alive in the past. Aren't there more people alive today (6.7 billion) than have ever been alive in recorded human history? So how can you go back in time and have so many people contributing to you? I mean, some 1,000 years ago there were only about 1 billion people on the planet, if that, yet if I were to "do the math" going back 1,000 years, more people would have contributed to me than were alive at that time in history. It doesn't seem to add up to me...

 

But you are not counting people who were alive at the same time. Its a total through the centuries. Back to the 16th century I had approx. 300 direct ancestors I could find that lived during that whole time span-- 15th through 20th century (I am missing a few). As far as the 16th century itself, there were not all that many actually alive then. Maybe 1,000. I think if you went back 1,000 years, you would find yourself the decedent of probably four thousand people who were alive at that time. There were still plenty around. Someone who is better at math could figure it out more precisely than I can.

 

How many northern Europeans were there 100,000 years ago? I don't really know, but however many there were, they probably all would all be my ancestors.

 

 

As you go back far enough, of course it wouldn't be "people" in the sense of modern humans anymore.

 

OK, so maybe I'm misunderstanding this (no surprises there!), but I remember being told that since we each have 2 parents, every generation you go back you essentially double the amount of "grandparents" that have contributed to your being here. So my cell phone calculator only lets me figure back 750 years (assuming 25 years a generation) and gives me a number of 536,870,912. Now, I'm sure there were 536,870,912 people alive on earth 750 years ago, it just seems a stretch that they all contributed to me. Going back 750 years, 536,870,912 must have been half the world population, right? Just seems far fetched...

[Ouroboros]

OK, so maybe I'm misunderstanding this (no surprises there!), but I remember being told that since we each have 2 parents, every generation you go back you essentially double the amount of "grandparents" that have contributed to your being here. So my cell phone calculator only lets me figure back 750 years (assuming 25 years a generation) and gives me a number of 536,870,912. Now, I'm sure there were 536,870,912 people alive on earth 750 years ago, it just seems a stretch that they all contributed to me. Going back 750 years, 536,870,912 must have been half the world population, right? Just seems far fetched...

Two parents can get more than two children.

 

Like this:

 

We start with two women, and two men: W1, W2, M1, M2

 

W1 + M1 -> w11, w12, m11, m12, m13

 

W2 + M2 -> w21, w22, w23, m21, m22

 

And for the sake of this argument, we won't include the possibilities of rape, incest, or polygamy.

 

Lets combine the children, and let them have just three children each:

 

w11 + m21 -> c1, c2, c3

 

w12 + m22 -> c4, c5, c6

 

w21 + m11 -> c7, c8, c9

 

w22 + m12 -> c10, c11, c12

 

w23 + m13 -> c13, c14, c15

 

So we have now 4 grandparents, 10 parents, and 15 grand children, total 29 people. Starting from just 2 men, and 2 women, without using any trick.

[woodsmoke]

OK, so maybe I'm misunderstanding this (no surprises there!), but I remember being told that since we each have 2 parents, every generation you go back you essentially double the amount of "grandparents" that have contributed to your being here. So my cell phone calculator only lets me figure back 750 years (assuming 25 years a generation) and gives me a number of 536,870,912. Now, I'm sure there were 536,870,912 people alive on earth 750 years ago, it just seems a stretch that they all contributed to me. Going back 750 years, 536,870,912 must have been half the world population, right? Just seems far fetched...

In addition to what Hans said above, you're also failing to account for common ancestry. You and your cousin both have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, etc. The way you've been adding it, on paper this means it's taken 28 people to produce the two of you. You need to account for common ancestry in order to get the correct result of 14.

 

You and I both have a 536 million-long tree of progenitors, but the odds are good at least a few of the same people show up in both of those trees, especially the nearer to the trunk you get.

 

Re: Pockets

 

First, White Raven was absolutely right (you always share in the hearting, WR ). In conjunction with that, and doing my best to remain civil, the fact you repeatedly used the phrase "reckless sex" has made it immediately apparent to me you and I will almost certainly not see eye-to-eye on a number of issues, abortion being just one of many. For the sake of the discussion and a healthy blood pressure, I think it's best I bow out of our debate.

[Ouroboros]

You and I both have a 536 million-long tree of progenitors, but the odds are good at least a few of the same people show up in both of those trees, especially the nearer to the trunk you get.

I think it's very likely that a lot of them show up in both trees.

 

The problem is to look at the ancestral tree as a branching tree, while in reality it's more like a mesh, or network. Criss-crossing lines, and it's because of the simple fact that in the pre-industrial civilization it was common to have many children.

[SilentLoner]

Some folks here have commented on what a terrible thing it would have been had they or one of their parents been aborted. Frankly, this makes no sense to me. I love life, but had I never been born, so what? One doesn't miss what one never had, what one was never aware of. If you never existed as an autonomous human being, you simply wouldn't know anything about it. Do you miss not having been alive 500 years ago, 1000 years ago, 10,000, etc? This has no meaning.

 

Some of us who are genetically a "certain way" have often asked ourselves: would I have been aborted had the doctors told my parents that I was going to have this condition?

 

My condition, if you're wondering, is Asperger's Syndrome. Every once in a while I stay up at night wondering if I would've been scraped had the doc said "your child is going to be retarded." Which is more or less what I was classified as throughout my early childhood.

 

I wonder if gay people ever lie awake wondering the same thing? Had their parents known the kid was going to turn out gay....

 

Hell I've wondered about that even though I'm not a "certain way." Probably on the issue of my mom being stuck with us kids (esp. post nasty divorce) and having to give up becoming something. She doesn't regret it (she says) but I know she had some real potential. And all I can think of is that if it would have been better for her if she had, then it'd have been fine with me.

[Yrth]

You make it sound like I am pro-choice for population control reasons. That would be another strawman. I merely offered a viewpoint that I didn't see represented in the discussion. I feel it is a strong and valid point, but it is not my sole reasoning here.

I understand that.

 

Well, I'm afraid you're simply wrong about the clump of cells not being human. What else is it but human? Rabbit? Frog? Martian?

 

A clump of cells is called a zygote, not a human. The cells in my body are not much different than a frog or rabbit, so I'm not sure what your point is. The potential to be human is not the same as being human. By this logic all men should be considered rapists since we have the potential to be rapists. Do you consider sperm to be half a human?

 

Who said anything about potential? I have not made an argument based on potential. You're taking the word 'human' and assigning an alternate definition. A 'human' is an animal which passes through several developmental stages, beginning as a fertilized embryo and ending as a full adult. These are facts, not points to be debated, which is the reason why abortion discussions eventually boil down to personhood theories. You could describe yours, and then we might be able to talk about it. :]

[Yrth]

By position I meant social, financial, and political status. Sort of like shorthand for positive and negative development. I think abortion and its normalization harms the position of women by making them more vulnerable to attacks on the childbearing aspects of their existence. You said it -- if there is a double standard imposed its by biology, but if you dumb down the 'pregnant' aspects of women, you simply end up marring the picture.

 

Okay. Thanks for explaining. It sounds as if your idea is that our capacity for childbearing should confer on us greater value and status? Is that on the right track?

Very much so. And I suppose what I have to say here doesn't really apply to most people these days, but here it goes. Ann Warren once compared an abortion to getting a haircut, and I'm saying that that is highly dangerous. Because how can you preserve the value assigned by the couple dreaming of cribs and mobiles while saying that an abortion is equivalent to clipping your nails? But that's an extreme position.

 

I still think it would be really interesting if we could successfully transplant a fetus into a guy and have him continue out a pregnancy that perhaps his female partner didn't want to have or couldn't for some reason. Heck, I think it'd be interesting if women could knock up men from the start! What would things be like for you guys, if you could get pregnant the way women can?

 

Probably something for another thread...

*blink* *blink* hmmm. Definitely something to think about.. It reminds me of a short story by Neil Gaiman where people could switch sexes overnight with a pill.

 

Oh, I absolutely believe those are all real quotes; I've had similar things said about myself before, by both guys and gals, interestingly enough. On a tangent, I highly recommend checking out a copy of Leora Tannenbaum's Slut. It's all about the loss of reputation girls and women face when people say things like the above.

 

However, what you're describing here isn't male promiscuity, but male chauvinism. The problem isn't that these guys sleep around, it's that they treat women like shit. It's equally possible for man to be promiscuous, but to treat every woman he encounters (sexually or otherwise) as if she were a goddess. Likewise, it's possible for a man to be as chaste as the driven snow, and still think that women are all inhuman whores. The problem here doesn't lie in his promiscuity so much as in the overall attitude a man has towards women.

Ah, I am in complete agreement with you on this.

 

I think people would be less likely to have reckless sex if the risks were higher. Also, women might be seen less as sex toys that talk and more like equals who, remarkably, are capable of having kids. This is now about certain types of feminism and the effects of abortion (And, I suppose, birth control too) on society, not just about abortion.

 

Heh! Yes, we've gone quite the tangent, haven't we! Well, it is all related in there, in one way or another.

 

The problem with the idea that people would be less likely to have reckless sex if the risks were higher is that it doesn't actually work. If it did, abstinence-only sex ed would probably be more effective than it actually is, since it certainly plays up the risks in an effort to frighten people into chastity. What seems to work more effectively in curbing risky sexual activity is to teach people healthy self-esteem, and provide them with accurate sex ed and access to birth control.

 

I can guarantee you, it isn't the guys who treat women like sexual kleenex who are going to give a damn what the risks are to anybody but themselves, and removing abortion from the equation isn't going to change their minds. It's just going to leave women stuck holding the bag if we find ourselves pregnant by an irresponsible man-whore, and it'll just give such men more reason to hate and resent us - i.e., "Dumb bitch got pregnant!" Men like that are still going to think of us primarily as sex toys no matter what. The way to counter their attitude is not to remove abortion, it's to teach men to value women and to teach women that we have value and don't deserve to be treated that way.

Yeah, you are probably right about this too. /sigh @ raunch culture.