In Portland, there was a protest last weekend where I noticed the same thing - an unsettling number of kids holding signs that said things like “Would you abort ME???”, “ZOMG Abortion causes nuclear war!!”, and other logical arguments sure to persuade the average fence sitter. 

I wondered to myself how many of these young girls - many 8-12 - will end up pro-choice after they start thinking for themselves and realize their parents aren’t really interested in their well being (at least in this context).  Or, how many will end up having abortions and nevertheless remaining staunchly “pro-life” after the fact.

Around here, protests cause chain reactions to the point where we’ll have concentric circles of radically alternating viewpoints.  Someday we hope to harness all of this energy and finally get off the grid.

“Would you abort ME???”

I already did, Stupid, and on my second try, I got somebody better.

No, in real life I would never be than mean.

an unsettling number of kids holding signs that said things like “Would you abort ME???”,

The temptation to reply, “well, you look like an obnoxious little shit to me” might be overwhelming.

Dude! I totally want to protest in front of somebody’s church now. “BAN MARRIAGE NOW!” “HETEROSEXUALITY IS A CHOICE!”

In the comments of my blog for choice post, we talked some about the young teenagers. There were a lot of CYA type kids in the protest, and like I said then, the appeal for young women who are wary of sex—-the idea of having an entire penis put inside you is scary on its surface, but our culture at large makes it a much more disturbing idea, especially with conflicting messages about how sex is wrong but you should be agreeable to boys—-is that anti-choicers offer this fantasy that addresses those concerns.  Specifically, they tell young women they can compromise the demands to be agreeable to men with the fear of being a used-up slut by telling them that guys like you BETTER if you don’t have sex.  Male domination is keenly felt by young women, and the anti-choicers exploit this by telling them that if you get married and have babies, you earn all this respect you don’t have.  That, and the abstinence message gives you a reason to put off worrying about scary, scary sex.  I get it, really, and it’s painful to explain this to pro-feminist men, because they feel guilty and they shouldn’t.  I don’t think it’s ever really possible to get past all fears about penetrative sex when you’re a young woman, but people who exploit natural concerns to make girls sex-phobic and judgmental instead of letting them explore safely at their own pace are the problem.

But yeah, a lot of anti-choice young women grow out of it.  Their own sexual desires start to outweigh their concerns, and of course experience will show you that it’s not as scary and mysterious as you’ve been led to believe by the sign-waving misogynists.

an unsettling number of kids holding signs that said things like “Would you abort ME??

No, but I might abort your parents.

[...] shuttle 3 or 4 kids around in an SUV with a smug but pained look on your face while your marriage disintegrates because your belief that men and women have nothing in common but sex and children makes it increasingly hard for you to tolerate each other.

Oh! So that’s the *real* reason why the zombie-essentialists are anti-same-sex marriage! I always wondered why their so-called arguments against same-sex marriage always had such a strong jealously vibe to them.

Because, believe it or not, it is possible to choose one way of living without spending all your energy being angry that someone takes another route, or actively trying to stop their free choices.

Meh. Some people enjoy having perpetually high-blood pressure over other people’s affairs, as it provides a convenient respite from their painfully monotonous lives. And hey, something or somebody has to be on the gossip-shitlist at the PTA meetings, break-rooms, church picnics, yoga classes, country clubs, locker-rooms, and the benches of the playgrounds. And some of these oh so kind-hearted neighbors call themselves libertarians (pfft!) and wax poetically about being pro-live and let live, and yet they’re so psychologically (and even politically) invested- if not out right interjecting themselves—in the lives and choices of complete strangers.

It wasn’t uncommon to see a handful of these kooks downtown in my small town in WI growing up. They would hold up placards with giant pictures of mangled fetuses. It made me feel weird and uncomfortable walking past them, and as a teenager, I didn’t know why. But now I know it’s because those sorts of people actively hate women.

Some of my former students are my friends on facebook (I have my settings so that they can’t see anything but some innocuous pictures, my favorite sports teams, and applications like the ones where they can send virtual fish and flowers). After the March for Life last week, one posted pictures of herself and all of her 18-year-old friends on the Mall with their “We Choose Life” signs and big grins. I remarked that I wonder how long it will be before one of them has an unplanned pregnancy and changes her tune. They’re all less than a year removed from living in their parents’ homes. Maybe some of them will retain their parents’ values, but I’m guessing by the time college graduation comes around, I’ll see a few of them carrying signs for reproductive rights instead.

The “Would you abort ME?!” signs are really fucked up. I wonder how often those parents lord over their children that even though they weren’t wanted, they went ahead and had them anyway, as if it’s not too late to go get one.

n unsettling number of kids holding signs that said things like “Would you abort ME???”

“No, I can’t, because I’m not your mother.”

“Or don’t have to, in order to have nothing to do with you” as it were.

Or “Nobody was trying to make me create you; you weren’t aborted because either your mother wanted you or was forced to have you despite not wanting you.”

Or something.  Though the latter trends toward cruel, if potentially true.

Although in the case of the adults who made the signs and got their kids to carry them, the answer to “would you abort me” is trending more toward “where’s the time machine?”

I remarked that I wonder how long it will be before one of them has an unplanned pregnancy and changes her tune.

Or has one of those “moral abortions” and resumes protesting reproductive autonomy outside the local Planned Parenthood clinic, as some form of atonement to the patriarchal status quo. Because hey, she’s not like those uppity, hairy-legged, selfish, man-hating, lesbian-Jezebels who have the audacity to question patriarchy and demand that their humanity and citizenship be acknowledged. Nope. She’s different, she’s exceptional, and believes that wimminfolk ain’t shit. Sorry, that’s just the cynic in me after encountering many anti-choice, anti-feminist women who pull this shit.

Whoops! That should be “protesting against reproductive autonomy.”

When I was in High School, we used to talk politics all the time at lunch. Pretty much everyone I hung out with was liberal, but there was this one chick who would often burst into tears everytime abortion rights or anything related (like the Young Democrats Club, we tried to get condomns handed out one year—we failed in our attempt). Anyway, this chick was utterly unraveled and completely incapable of having a rational discussion about abortion because HER PARENTS EMOTIONALLY ABUSED HER

Kyra, I get it. Interesting point. Really shows how the lifers have no real concept of how pregnancy actually works, because the question is absurd. “Would you abort me, even though I am not a fetus and was never in your body to begin with?”

I’m probably being overly literal, but I do think there’s something to the fact that they chose (ha ha) that accusatory, overemotional phrasing for so many signs….

(Oops, sorry, the cat pawed “blaspheme” before I finished my comment)

When I was in High School, we used to talk politics all the time at lunch. Pretty much everyone I hung out with was liberal, but there was this one chick who would often burst into tears everytime abortion rights or anything related (like the Young Democrats Club, we tried to get condoms handed out one year—we failed in our attempt). Anyway, this chick was utterly unraveled and completely incapable of having a rational discussion about abortion because HER PARENTS EMOTIONALLY ABUSED HER BY TELLING HER EVERY YEAR ON HER BIRTHDAY THE STORY OF HOW THE MOTHER (WHO BECAME LEGALLY BLIND AS A RESULT) WAS TOLD IT WAS MEDICALLY ADVISABLE THAT SHE NOT TRY AS A DIABETIC 42 YEAR OLD TO CARRY THE FETUS—THIS CHICK—TO TERM). Okay, the doctor gave medical advice, as his/her obligation is to his/her patient 1st and foremost regarding the likelihood of a 42 year old diabetic woman (and I think it was childhood diabetes, the kind that killed Julia Roberts in Steal Magnolias when she had a baby) might die or suffer other medical problems as the result of a full term pregnancy. This is reasonable information to share—but this chick (and surely it came from her wackadoodle parents) always made it out like the Doctor decried that the baby should die (evil laugh echoes echoes echoes)! Blah blah blah faith in baby jesus gave the mother the strength to proceed. Okay, she’s legally blind now—which lots of people are, so I’m not beating up on the disabled, but more importantly, she was ABLE TO MAKE THE CHOICE. Yet, somehow this chick and her abusive parents want to take that choice away from other women, other families. She, the chick, fundamentally feels that everyone else’s abortion is somehow in part killing a potential her—or , that when they make the choice to abort, it could somehow cascade back in time and make her mother abort her. I don’t fuckin know, but seriously, it was ALL ABOUT HER and never about real issues that effect individual women’s choices. I wonder, if perhaps so many of the forced-birthers really just believe that if they’re mothers weren’t forced to give birth to them, if a culture where giving birth really becomes a choice, if that means that they face a retroactive death warrant or something. Its all on the backfield of their thoughts, but goodness knows anti-choicers/forced birthers aren’t very good sussing out their subconcious anxieties from reality based arguments for policies.

peace

Oy, Thealogian.

Would it be wrong to answer that sign by saying, “Of course, by having you, your parents effectively aborted one or more children who would have grown up much less likely to be self-righteous twits”?

I do think there’s something to the fact that they chose (ha ha) that accusatory, overemotional phrasing for so many signs….

I’ve run into a couple of people born out of wedlock (as they used to say) who are weirdly reflexive in their opposition to abortion because they insist on seeing themselves as the aborted fetus.  One was born pre-Roe, and the bio father did want her mom to abort (b/c he was a married church choir director, while the mom wanted to force him to leave his family & marry her… nice, huh?), but she refused.  Her mom was educated & affluent enough to have been able to abort had she wanted to, of course, so while I object to the blackmail aspect of continuing the pregnancy, it seems clear that she ‘chose life,’ which is fine (she moved away, made up a dead husband to explain the daughter, hooked up with another church-music type who did leave his wife for her & then abused them all for some years).  Another was born post-Roe, and can’t seem to wrap his mind around the idea that it wasn’t the law that forced his mother to continue the pregnancy, but her own ideas & priorities.  Which is also fine.  It’s such ridiculous magical thinking on their parts, this notion that the law must force all women to do what their own mothers did voluntarily.

Then again, as ridiculously childish and neglectful as my own parents could be, none of us ever doubted that they had wanted us, so maybe that bit of security was more valuable than the more obvious kinds we lacked.

I wonder, if perhaps so many of the forced-birthers really just believe that if they’re mothers weren’t forced to give birth to them ... if that means that they face a retroactive death warrant or something. Its all on the backfield of their thought

This dovetails with the comment on the Misogyny thread about feelings of abandonment being one possible emotional source of misogyny.

Another was born post-Roe, and can’t seem to wrap his mind around the idea that it wasn’t the law that forced his mother to continue the pregnancy, but her own ideas & priorities.

This is so sad, b/c his mother CHOSE to have him, and he doesn’t trust any other woman to make that decision.  It’s almost as if he doesn’t trust his own mother to make that decision, even though HE’S HERE, when she could have chosen not to have him.

So sorry, “What if you aborted me?” losers.  I am the Sun-blocker!  I, and all women, have the right to decide whether or not God’s Greatest Gift (tm) is coming through my (our) bodies.  This is not a decision that anyone else other than the woman involved has any business trying to make.

It’s almost as if he doesn’t trust his own mother to make that decision

You’d think he would, since he’s 24 and she’s still completely supporting him.  But that’s another story.

“Would you abort ME???”

I already did, Stupid, and on my second try, I got somebody better.

Send them this...

I was walking in downtown ATL the other day and had my path blocked by these maroons. Four city blocks’ worth of protesters and exactly three non-Caucasians. Statistically, this would be impossible in Atlanta. The crowd was about half over 50 and grim and mean, and half high-school kids, most of whom were clearly of the “anything for a day off school” mindset.

I really needed to cross the street, so I just ducked under the barricade and started excusing myself through the crowd. But I caused a commotion, because I was carrying our 3.5 month old daughter on my shoulder. We got mobbed by HS girls, who all wanted to see the baby (who thoroughly enjoyed the attention). One of them told me that she was happy that I’d brought my baby to the march to show others how they should choose life or some such rot. I told her that no, I was just crossing the street and that I opposed everything they stood for. Most of the teens shrugged, clearly of the mindset that I had a right to my opinions and choices, but one of them ran off to tattle. Then, I was swarmed by church ladies who were really, really mean and aggressive about how I oughter be on my knees thanking “god” for blah, blah, blah… I told them they were all full of crap and needed to understand that they were supporting a racist patriarchy, and it just got kind of silly from there. I made it across the street, but they were still shouting. The baby still enjoyed the attention.

  <blockquote> Another was born post-Roe, and can’t seem to wrap his mind around the idea that it wasn’t the law that forced his mother to continue the pregnancy, but her own ideas & priorities.

This is so sad, b/c his mother CHOSE to have him, and he doesn’t trust any other woman to make that decision.  It’s almost as if he doesn’t trust his own mother to make that decision, even though HE’S HERE, when she could have chosen not to have him. </blockquote>

I’d go even a little further: sounds as if he doesn’t entirely agree with his mother’s decision to have him, and is displacing his feelings by being against Roe. Some people find being wanted as hard to accept as being abandoned.

It’s weird (not really) how quickly the culture shifts—when I was a kid, the idea of someone being “an accident” or otherwise unwanted was pretty much ubiquitous, and the scene in which the kid found out was popular supposed to be one of those primal traumas. Now, at least in the circles I travel in, that meme is pretty much unimaginable. But looking back, I can’t think but that the difficulty of access to contraception and abortion during the baby-boom period fueled a sort of pervasive ambivalence toward all offspring, whether nominally wanted or not.

felagund, heating the haterade to a nice rolling boil! Good work, sir or madam.

one jewish dyke:  Some of my former students are my friends on facebook

Yeah, that’s the source of my exposure to all of this stuff too.  Eye-opening to say the least.

Is it possible that some pro-life/anti-choice younger women’s sentiments come from the idea that their own parents might have preferred a boy—and, hence, “acceptance” of abortion would mean the ability to deny their existence?  Outlawing abortion then becomes a way to compel parents to keep “undesirable” babies like them.  If so, I guess we’d be back to patriarchy and misogyny as root causes…

felagund, wow.

———

As so many wingnut problems stem from their inability to understand the idea of consent (the confusion of gay relationships with pedophilic or bestial ones, to name one thing), others stem from their self-centeredness, and their inability to grasp or respect the fact that other people might not make the same choices they made, as well as bodily autonomy. There is some overlap between issues. It’s all related….

I don’t see any logical reason to bring a kid to a protest, especially one that deals with an adult issue like abortion. Those kids at that demonstration probably don’t even know where babies come from, let alone what it’s like to have an unintended or unhealthy pregnancy. Furthermore, kids don’t even have sophisticated moral reasoning capabilities. I bet most of those kids would think stealing five cookies is worse than stealing one car, because it’s worse to steal more things. But they’re supposed to give me some sort of lesson in morality?

flipyrwhig, I think that few US white teen girls who are anti-abortion would feel that they would have been aborted in favor of trying again for a boy. Most anti-abortion white girls are from anti-abortion religious families, and the main reasons the girls have for being anti-abortion are pleasing their parents, keeping a “good girl” public image and self-image, and feeling superior to other girls.

Emily, concerning children at protests, I think that there may be some safety issues as well - I’d want to know that every single young walking child was harnessed or attended one to one by an adult. The idea of having traffic in the proximity of multiple toddlers watched by one adult who is likely to be distracted - makes me nervous, at least.

and perhaps some actual real-world support so the unplanned pregnancy wouldn’t ruin their lives

That’s the seed of your change of heart right there.  A real right winger knows that God will provide, so we can just tell the poor and hungry to go work harder or starve.  Besides, real world support takes money, and that means taxes, and everybody knows Jesus said, “Hoard what is Caesars and keep it in your sock drawer.”

I would like to have a rally in support of BIRTH CONTROL, all the birth-control methods.  Hand out pamphlets to girls & boys about how condoms DO work. Such a rally might even do some good.  Anyone in the Reno-Sparks are interested?

NancyP: keeping a “good girl” public image and self-image

Sure, this makes sense, but what I’m trying to reconcile is how some women whom I know value strength and accomplishment in themselves and in literature by and about women _still_ come down on the anti-abortion side.  It’s either a badly discordant element of their own political thinking or there’s a common element I’m missing.  So what I came up with was that they were lamenting the loss of potential strong, smart women-like-them.  Too much benefit of the doubt?

I agree with Emily. I was speechless last week when my sister told me that my nephew would be going with his church group to DC for the anti-choice march. He’s a 13 yr old boy. The only things he cares about are football, playstation and guitar hero. He doesn’t know, understand or even care about the issues surrounding abortion. People need to stop using their children as tools. It kills independant thought in our children and it cheapens the concept of protest when a third of the particiapnts don’t truly understand and aren’t truly invested in the issue.

So what I came up with was that they were lamenting the loss of potential strong, smart women-like-them.  Too much benefit of the doubt?

Well, if they don’t care about the strong, smart women who risk death giving *birth* to these “potential women” then yeah, I think you kinda are giving them too much credit…

Well, I didn’t say I _bought_ their view.  Yes, it clearly would be a case of sympathetic projection with the fetus and _not_ with the woman risking birth, which is an immense flaw.  I’m just trying to imagine how people with many feminist hallmarks in other domains of their lives would nonetheless be vociferously and smilingly anti-abortion.

Now see, I was told that my mother had the option to abort me and instead chose to have me, and this makes me pro-choice and proud of it. Because my mom *has* had health issues as the result of having me too young. And if I thought I was an accident and she had no choice, I would feel guilty about that. But I feel loved and wanted and I feel no guilt for my mother’s health problems, because I know she freely chose me—that she had a choice, she had options, and her option was to choose me.

How frickin’ insecure do you have to be to fear that if your mom had had a choice she wouldn’t have chosen you, and to want to exist at the expense of your mother?

Kwillow,

I live in Sparks.
Check your Pandagon private message inbox for my e-mail and phone number.

(later)—Hmmn, the message I sent you isn’t appearing in my “Sent” folder. I don’t know if I just have to give it time to process, or if this means the messaging system is down or you haven’t activated yours or what.

I’ll check this thread; meanwhile if you have your messaging working but see nothing from me, try to send me one.

I’ve shared my e-mail on these public posts before; I’m just stupid that way. If all else fails that is what I will do.

How frickin’ insecure do you have to be to fear that if your mom had had a choice she wouldn’t have chosen you, and to want to exist at the expense of your mother?

I’m always extra-cautious about wholeheartedly accepting a theory about the motivations of my opponent. It is too easy for me to convince myself in this regard. Nevertheless, if this is really their motivation, then that is really sad.

Now see, I was told that my mother had the option to abort me and instead chose to have me, and this makes me pro-choice and proud of it.

Ditto. Back when I was an angsty pre-teen I thought my parents didn’t want me (due to much teasing from my older brother). I had been an “accident” (my mother refuses to call it that though, she prefers “surprise”) and for many years my brother rubbed this in my face (and most of the time he was teasing but it still got to me as a kid). One time I broke down and said my mom hadn’t wanted me and she told me point blank that had she not wanted me I wouldn’t have been here. She explained that upon her doctor’s visit and finding out that she was indeed pregnant he gave her the option of having an abortion. She thought about it and said no, she was going to keep me. Then walked out of his office, told my dad what was up and that was that. (Though right after my birth she had her doctor tie her tubes immediately.)

Knowing this only made me pro-choice. I was sad and down because I *thought* my parents hadn’t wanted me, I could not imagine a life where they actually DIDN’T.

This is why I never dragged my kids to any sort of rally until they were old enough to make their own signs.  For my kids, this was at age 5 and 7 when they started begging me to go to anti-war rallies.  I figured that my kids would make up their own damn minds about things when they were ready, but that the were not going to be props for my statements.

It is much more effective when the sign they hold clearly came from their own hand and mind.  I still have the “WAR IS DIRTY” sign that my older son made for the NYC march, within days of his seventh birthday. I preserved it at the urgings of some of the gray-haired elders who said we might need it if there was a draft in ten years - I guess it helps to show longstanding anti-war sentiment when going for conscientious objector.  There are archived videos of him using it on that occasion, too.

“would you abort me?”

In your current form, no.  However, the republicans in congress think that letting you die horribly and painfully of a treatable infection or some other illness not covered by your parents’ insurance is a really good idea.  These people call themselves “pro life”.

“Would you abort ME???”

I tell ya, 30 years of anti-Roe propaganda, along with 2 decades of self-esteem pop psych twaddle, has spawned a sizable number of insufferably narcissistic young twits.  I’m active in local politics and am noticing a disturbing uptick in Young Dems who are “pro-life” because “What if my mom had gotten rid of meeeeeee??!?”  As if abortion never happened before it was legalized.  And as if said young people are such amazing special miracle snowflakes from Jeezus that their mums’ lives were worthless before they came along.  Blech. 

Happily, they seem to be in the minority.  They’re just a really frigging obnoxious minority.

Sure, this makes sense, but what I’m trying to reconcile is how some women whom I know value strength and accomplishment in themselves and in literature by and about women _still_ come down on the anti-abortion side.

Flip, I’ve met them, too.  Push them hard enough, and they tend to think that having an abortion is a sign of weakness that should be punished.  It’s the exact same phenomenon as women who come down on rape victims for bringing this on themselves by drinking/wearing that/walking around without male escorts.

Now see, I was told that my mother had the option to abort me and instead chose to have me, and this makes me pro-choice and proud of it.

I was adopted at 2 weeks old in 1968.  I’ve been pro-choice since as long as I can remember.  I don’t know what my biological mother’s situation was.  I don’t know whether she gave birth to me because she wanted to or because she had no other options.  All I know is that she should not have been compelled to bring me into the world.

My mom had an unintended pregnancy and abortion was legal, so she could have done it if she wanted.  She chose not to.  I don’t really feel this was choosing me, though.  She chose a baby.  I was what random chance turned up.

This doesn’t bother me in any way.  I find no comfort from the idea that my existence is anything but a random shakeout of genetics.  If another sperm had gotten there first, it wouldn’t be me.  I fail to see why this is an upsetting thought.  Your life is what you make of it, and destiny has nothing to do with it.

I was what random chance turned up.
This doesn’t bother me in any way.  I find no comfort from the idea that my existence is anything but a random shakeout of genetics.  If another sperm had gotten there first, it wouldn’t be me.  I fail to see why this is an upsetting thought.  Your life is what you make of it, and destiny has nothing to do with it.

Well stated.  The universe didn’t plan for any of our existences. We aren’t part of some grand scheme.  We just got lucky that some shit that turned into us.

I was re-listening to “Letting Go of God” yesterday.  I love that quote Sweeney reads from Dawkins:

The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of the Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.

It wasn’t some cosmic design that made each of us, it was pure, dumb luck.

Interesting—sort of like:  “all you have to do is apply yourself (as I have) and you too will avoid Bad Things.” 

Incidentally, I now know my existence was entirely unplanned.  (I deduced it late in life from some sketchy family stories that led to one indisputable conclusion.)  But at least my parents didn’t emotionally blackmail me with that.

And of course we are all cosmic accidents.

Diva, a woman I went to high school with decided that she couldn’t live with herself if she had an abortion.  So she went through most of her junior year with swelling belly and swelling ankles, had the child, and put the child up for adoption. 

Twenty two years later she was pro-choice, and still would have done what she did.  Having a supportive family helped her through the pregnancy, but she made her decision to bear a child, but not raise a child, and has no regrets.

So, yes, it is possible that your mother did the same.  It does happen.

Then, I was swarmed by church ladies who were really, really mean and aggressive about how I oughter be on my knees thanking “god” for blah, blah, blah… I told them they were all full of crap and needed to understand that they were supporting a racist patriarchy, and it just got kind of silly from there. I made it across the street, but they were still shouting. The baby still enjoyed the attention.

This is what I don’t get.  On one hand it’s all “It’s a Child not a Choice”, and OTOH it’s “Thank your mother for choosing life”.  I honestly get the sense that a lot of these women secretly want abortion to remain legal so that they can get accolades for not taking advantage of it. 

Flip, I’ve met them, too.  Push them hard enough, and they tend to think that having an abortion is a sign of weakness that should be punished.  It’s the exact same phenomenon as women who come down on rape victims for bringing this on themselves by drinking/wearing that/walking around without male escorts.

Except when they have an abortion.  And many of them do.  Their abortions are different, though.

So, yes, it is possible that your mother did the same.  It does happen.

I nurse the hope that’s the way it happened.  And if it didn’t happen that way, I hope she is happy wherever she is.

I remember a moment at my high school’s mandatory junior retreat I mentioned I was an accident and this girl was horrified.  She tried to console me even after I explained that it didn’t bother me in the slightest.  This compassion overkill was even weirder considering it came from a girl who was afraid of ever having to live near a poor person. 

My sister was pro-life until she got pregnant.  Making the decision to have a baby changed her to pro-choice.

This doesn’t bother me in any way.  I find no comfort from the idea that my existence is anything but a random shakeout of genetics.  If another sperm had gotten there first, it wouldn’t be me.  I fail to see why this is an upsetting thought.  Your life is what you make of it, and destiny has nothing to do with it.

For a time in my adolescence, I was deeply invested in regret about how life could have been, in regretting choices I had made. I was invested in this literally to the point of insanity.

I spent years in the grip of this insanity, going over and over my regrets. People pointed out over and over to me that the past was dead, and that “could have been/would have been” is nothing but an illusion, I was finally able to escape the insanity of my attachment to an illusion of the past.

So there’s hope for people to change.

Besides the fear of sex, I think a lot of adolescents are also in the grip of an egocentric adolescence that drives them to think that having never existed would have indeed been some sort of strike against the destiny that is THEM.  They’re growing out of the childish phase of thinking that you’re the center of the world.  What’s sad is adults who can’t get past this. 

What really bothers me about the anti-choice nuts who go crazy thinking of lost possibilities with all the lost eggs and sperm and embryos is that they don’t give a shit about the more concrete lost possibilities of women’s actual lives.  They try to wax poetic about lost Mozarts and Obamas, but they never stop to think that mandatory childbirth would have deprived us of Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, and most likely Marie Curie.  Because they’re fundamentally sexist, and women don’t count.  I notice the possible geniuses we’re supposed to worry about losing are all men.

Too bad about the traffic jam, but white-flight suburbanites venturing into downtown Austin, that must have been a sight to behold.

I don’t know that all anti-choicers are for submissive women etc. My dad, an anti-choicer, was married for twelve years to a woman who was anything but submissive. Some people are just really hung up on elective abortion because they can’t fathom the morality of terminating a fetus.

I did press my dad on the issue though. When he said he equated abortion to murder, I asked him whether he would view someone who had an abortion the same way he would view a murderer. He wouldn’t, and I think it’s obvious that the morality of abortion isn’t nearly as cut-and-dried, something anti-choicers often fail to consider.

Because they’re fundamentally sexist, and women don’t count.  I notice the possible geniuses we’re supposed to worry about losing are all men.

Oh hell, not even genuises.  I was a Delegate in Denver last summer and there were these anti-choicer men demonstrating outside the Convention Center.  They had full-color placards of what looked like stillborn infants that they were trying to pass off ass typical abortions.  There was this one guy who had a bull horn.  He was blathering about the 30 MILLION BAYBEEZ KILLED BY LEGALIZED ABORTION!!1!.  He then regaled onlookers about how one of those abortions could have been HIS BEST FRIEND!!  I’m guessing said best friend didn’t necessarily have to be Stephen Hawking, just someone that would tolerate his whiny ass.  I walked up to him and suggested that a stick of deodorant and a personality would go a long way, considering there are 6 billlion of us people on the planet already.  Needless to say, he didn’t have an answer for that Nor could he explain why there weren’t any women out there demonstrating with him.

I’ve noticed that a majority of the pro-life young people (my generation) does equate every abortion to their near-missed or otherwise. Recently on one of my nursing lists a nursing student was all worried about how Obama was going to make it so you’d have to assist with abortions, and she was concerned because you know her mom had a life-threatening pregnancy and chose to keep it and her brother’s and how could she assist someone with an abortion after all that?? Because it is all about them and how it could’ve been them dead and the world would be a bleaker place, or some very strong attachment to fetuses.

@Tenya: that’s a great anecdote; it’s illustrative of the kind of thinking that informs the pro-life/anti-choice position, i.e. a blanket willingness to project personal moral judgments on others. these people might reply, “this isn’t personal; this is an issue of life and death.” but by analogy they would have to lament the death of every spontaneously aborted fetus. they don’t.

what might appear a complicated moral issue had become for pro-lifers very uncomplicated. they have arbitrarily decided that the life of a human being invested with rights begins at conception. this kind of black-and-white morality fits into a simplistic framework.

maybe that’s why abortion activism is such a popular cause: none of the complexities of environmental issues, of war, or of poverty.

i might be passing judgment, but i think that abortion activism among pro-lifers/anti-choicers is a sort of moral cowardice; not only is it hopelessly two-dimensional, but also it distracts them from other moral issues on which they could do some good, such as poverty.

What really bothers me about the anti-choice nuts who go crazy thinking of lost possibilities with all the lost eggs and sperm and embryos is that they don’t give a shit about the more concrete lost possibilities of women’s actual lives.  They try to wax poetic about lost Mozarts and Obamas, but they never stop to think that mandatory childbirth would have deprived us of Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, and most likely Marie Curie.  Because they’re fundamentally sexist, and women don’t count.

Definitely.

In the occasional internet conversations I’ve had with anti-abortion people, I’ve noticed a couple things:
-They often assume that my support of reproductive rights and abortion means I’m a woman.
-There’s a lot of free-floating anger against women in that crew and they aren’t afraid to show it.
-Their anti-abortion sentiment is generally combined with other ‘conservative’ beliefs.

i think that abortion activism among pro-lifers/anti-choicers is a sort of moral cowardice; not only is it hopelessly two-dimensional, but also it distracts them from other moral issues on which they could do some good, such as poverty.

Absolutely. It’s an “easy” position for them. Especially easy for anti-choice men: they’ll never have to make the choice themselves, and they can terrorize and use guilt against women, all the while excusing their talk with images of adorable babies on billboards.

  My mom had an unintended pregnancy and abortion was legal, so she could have done it if she wanted.  She chose not to.  I don’t really feel this was choosing me, though.  She chose a baby.  I was what random chance turned up.

I was also an oops pregnancy.  My mom wasn’t even supposed to be able to have kids (according to the doc after a car accident in her teens) and so she was very, very surprised when she turned up pregnant at 18.  So she dropped out of college, got married, and settled down to have babies.  Because that’s just what you did, I suppose.  And I was born after Roe, so abortion was technically an option, but she says that it never even crossed her mind to do that (and it isn’t like there would have been any/many providers within easy distance of small town southern WV in the mid 70s anyway).

Honestly, it’s never bothered me either way.  I know that she loves my sisters and I fiercely and would basically do anything she can to make sure that we have good and happy lives, even now, and that she was reasonably content during those years.  I also know that she basically put her life on hold for almost 30 years until my youngest sister finished school.  But now that she’s divorced dad and moved away on her own, I’ve never seen her happier.  And I wish she’d had the option of doing that when she was young instead of waiting until almost 50 to have her own life.

So I’ve always been pretty militantly pro choice.  Even though my mom and sisters are only nominally so and I was raised Catholic in the midst of fundamentalists (it’s sad when the Catholic church is the most reasonable one in the area).  Because I wish that my mom had had the choice to make when she got pregnant.  And because I would not have made the same choice that she did.

Most kids are generally pro-life, because of the aforementioned moral immaturity. I remember having the “I’m pro-life, u suck!” conversation with my parents who set me straight in record time. When you start entering your teenage years, you feel passionately about EVERYTHING: “I luvluvluv Creed. They’re the greatest band EVAR.”  (OK, I never said *that*). Abortion has the nice black-and-white moral issue “feel” for minds attempting to develop their own political beliefs and moral rules, and there’s a lot of stuff out there (billboards, tv ads, chick tracts) to help give you your talking points. But you’re still operating in an emotionally immature headspace where you are the center of the universe, abortion could have potentially deprived the world of its center, so abortion must therefor be bad. It doesn’t help that a lot of the fantastical entertainment programming for kids and early teens (especially the dreaded JRPG) belabors the idea of a “chosen one” whose existence is essential to the continued livelihood of the universe. What if someone had aborted Cloud? Then who would defeat Sephiroth!?! And such nonsense.

Even after planting my feet in pro-choice soil, I was still a mushy-middle for a while, declaring that I was all in favor of women having the choice, but I could never have one myself. Because, you know, I’m not like those stupid sluts getting themselves knocked up. I would have moral *clarity* and do the *right thing.* (OK, that’s not what I was verbatum thinking, but there was still a lot of internalized misogyny and the need to self-aggrandize behind those thoughts)  And fortunately, it didn’t take an unplanned pregnancy for me to pull my head out of my ass when I started thinking about the logistics of an unplanned pregnancy, even an adoption. I really applied the scenario to my life and not to some nebulous moral template. I thought of the nosy co-workers, and their need to hand out unasked for moralizing. I thought of the sickness and the potential damage to my career of having 9 months when I was off my game due to fatigue, nausea, and generally feeling like poop warmed up. I thought of how I could never guarantee that 18 years later when I was trying to move on with my life there could be a knock at the door and how a future family would react to having a “secret other family.” And that’s about when I realized that I’d been a dipshit and that it’s all well and good to pretend that you had this moral plan in place but that those plans don’t always marry with the real world.

The point isn’t how much I suck, and how inevitable it is that people are going to be jerks about this stuff until they come around, but rather how important the process of understanding the complexity of the abortion issue is, and how ultimately, understanding this process was what compelled me to seek out reliable long-term birth control that would ensure that I wouldn’t have to go through all of that. When you realize without any doubt that you would not be up to carrying a pregnancy to term (whether or not you raised the child or put it up for adoption), it’s not about saving up for your first abortion then, it’s about making sure you don’t get pregnant in the first place, while understanding that if there is an accident, you won’t waste time thinking of this stuff for the first time. And the process made me realize how completely pissed off by the medical establishment I was that my options were so limited for reliable birth control that weren’t hormone-based. But that’s another rant.

MonkeyShines

Will you please stop hawking that tired-ass re-heated bullshit about how “hipsters” are dragging the society into sin and degradation, or some such nonsense? I don’t care if it is Adbusters saying it.. this just makes me trust Adbusters less.

Oh, and because there were some eccentrics and individualists around in the Weimar Republic, now eccentrics and individualists are just Nazis at heart? That’s the most ass-backward thing I’ve ever heard.

What I can’t figure out: why all of these “pro-life” types aren’t spending every last precious moment, as it were, praying to their God to please please please stop His miscarriage holocaust that continuously and horrifically destroys fertilized eggs in a tremendous number.  What a huge waste of diversity of genetic recombinations that we could use here on Earth!

Monkey, were you born a worthless bore, or did you have to work at it?

Um, why shouldn’t someone growing up reading a feminist blog work for a fortune 500 company? Particularily those companies with good benefits, which they extend to gays and straights alike, that consider childcare important and don’t penalize women for having children. Companies that are doing well enough that they can get ahead despite (or because of?) offering women equal pay for equal work?

Sure it’s not all of them, but the number is growing, and I don’t see anything objectionable in making a better way for yourself and the next generation by instilling an air of equality in today’s leading corporations.

Feminist != Communist
Feminist != Libertarian
Feminist != Capitalist

Feminist = one who, irrespecitve of politics, strives for equality between men and women. If you don’t see that then I see where your disconnect with this blog is.

MonkeyShines, you posted a rambling, vapid, and tendentious attack on ‘hipsters’, which blames them for everything from smoking, to stupid bike tricks, to shallowness, but which ultimately cannot even define the category ‘hipster’ in any objective sense. You further stated that this vapid piece of inchoate complaining illustrates how Amanda Marcotte “has surpassed even Renee of womanist-musings.com in terms of sheer self congratulation”. The reader looks at this and wonders:
-How has Amanda Marcotte been self-congratulatory?
-What is womanist-musings and why should I care?
-Where has anything in this thread mentioned erotomaniacs?
-What “trust-fund bohemian” has been mentioned?
-Does MonkeyShines consider all “non-submissive women” to be “erotomaniacs”?

In addition to the muddled nature of your comment, the tone is just rude and nasty. So why should I care about what you think of Amanda Marcotte, the ‘anarchists’ you knew in college, or any of the rest of it?

people who try to fit into a subculture in order to prove their individuality are in fact nullifying their individuality,

How do you get from Amanda’s description of living in a diverse environment and tolerating others to “trying to fit into a subculture”? Do you really believe that situation is so odd that it’s nothing more than a fringe fashion statement? There are whole cities’ worth of people who’d argue otherwise.

Look, I know how frustrating it is that someone like yourself, no doubt the former president of the high school Ayn Rand Admiration Society and Debating Club, is still too much of a boring tight-arse to get laid a decade later, while “hipsters” (which seems to be your term for mature men who think of women as something other than aliens and sex as something more than an economic transaction) seem to get girlfriends and sex with a minimum of effort. But really, don’t let your bitterness blind you to the fact that not everyone who isn’t like you is going to eventually consign themselves to the exurban conformist despair and resentment.

By the way, anyone with “even a cursory knowledge of the Weimar Republic and It’s eventual overthrow” (including the authors of Cabaret) understands that the mindset of authoritarian followers develops mainly from ignorance, provincialism, economic stress, and a willingness to accept the first scapegoat presented. The “erotomaniacs, fashionable ‘non-conformists’, and trust fund ‘bohemians’” with any knowledge of history are also usually the first to see authoritarianism rising, and usually have the education and social resources to issue warnings and/or leave before those who are really to blame get to experience first-hand the consequences of their fear-laden peasant mentality.

It’s just that I have seen too many like you in my life.  And I happen to know where you are headed in the long term.  Just you watch, a decade or so from now when you have thrown away everything you ever claimed care about, you’ll remember this post.

Asshole, I stopped caring about the resentments, empty threats, fake moralizing, and nasty attitude from your kind years ago. It’s a part of growing up.

Monkey, you obviously persist in the braindead notion that only 20-somethings post or comment here.

Let’s hope that you keep this post so you can reminisce about how you used to put on a fake-superior tone and lecture people about how they will all be conventional burnouts in ten years.  Before you actually learned how stupid and wrong and immature you were.

I just want to know what any of that had to do with the topic at-hand.

I have no idea how MonkeyShines’ ongoing bitterness about the fact that he’ll never be anything but a megadork has anything to do with anything.

It’s a part of growing up.

Yep. With a year’s effort, you can take the frustrated, lonely nerd out of that awful sophomore year of high school. But fast forward a decade or two later, and you can’t take that awful sophomore year of high school out of the frustrated, lonely nerd.

I wonder if MonkeyShines is the same mope who, before he lost it and got banned, used to call any commenter who exhibited a liberal characteristic a “hipster”—I forget his name, but that barely repressed rage-a-holic was a lot of fun.

...Maybe he took it personally that I ripped on Creed?

It’s just that I have seen too many like you in my life.  And I happen to know where you are headed in the long term.  Just you watch, a decade or so from now when you have thrown away everything you ever claimed care about, you’ll remember this post.

Talk about projected anxiety!

Damn.

I have no idea how MonkeyShines’ ongoing bitterness about the fact that he’ll never be anything but a megadork has anything to do with anything.

He keeps an RSS feed or such going.  Whenever there is a discussion about “abortion” he knows that we MUST be talking about him.

He’s hip, he’s cool, he’s 45.

But fast forward a decade or two later, and you can’t take that awful sophomore year of high school out of the frustrated, lonely nerd.

I try to channel my own high school loserdom into, like, sympathy for actual people’s actual suffering.  All the frustrated lonely nerds I knew ended up on the political left.  I guess other people head off into the realm of revenge fantasy…

All of the people I knew who called themselves anarchists in college are working for the Fortune 500 now.  So will alot of the teenyboppers who grow up readings this blog, I assume.  I’m not gloating over that, it’s just a sad fact.

It’s also a fact that a large percentage of all working Americans are employed by Fortune 500 companies.  So if *all* those self-described anarchists are now working for one, then that would not be unexpected at all.  Even anarchists gotta eat.

Count me in the group of teens who were dragged to the anti-abortion rallies and breast-fed conservative radio. I say ‘dragged’ because even though I was pro-life, I wasn’t pro-life enough to stand/march in Texas heat in August for anything and - besides - there were video games at home. Video games that I wasn’t playing because I was in this stupid protest that wasn’t going to change anyone’s mind and it’s hot out here and no one thought to bring water, you stupid mouthbreathers.

I digress.

I, too, was totally anti-abortion because that’s a very easy thing for a teenager to be, simply because your average teenager cannot grasp complicated situations. I became pro-choice the moment I realized that if I got pregnant under X circumstances, I would have an abortion, no questions about it, and never regret it (because those X circumstances I was living under would be WAY worse for the child than an eternity with Jesus, or death, or whatever). That was kind of a shock, but I didn’t ignore the moment. And since I was pro-choice for ME, I instantly became pro-choice for EVERYONE because hypocrisy breaks me out in hives.

It’s interesting for me to note online that most anti-abortionist “liberals” are males, usually atheists. They tend to decry that the infants “one chance at life” was lost or something similarly weird. They tend to like kids and want to live in a dream world where pregnancy is not-messy, not-dangerous, and not-life altering. Deep down, I suspect them of being libertarians, but that’s name-calling on my part.

I try to channel my own high school loserdom into, like, sympathy for actual people’s actual suffering.

I was a big geek in high school, but it was an oddball private school where almost everyone, even the most popular kid, was deeply involved in some sort of geek clique. “Loserdom” becomes almost a non-issue in that kind of diverse environment. I remember only a couple of my classmates being bitter nerds in addition to being geeks, and that’s mainly because they aspired more to fit in with the “normal” teenagers they knew outside the school or saw on television.

It’s interesting for me to note online that most anti-abortionist “liberals” are males, usually atheists.

I’d agree that they’re less “liberals” than Libertarians (the kind narrowly focused on economics) and Objectivists, and don’t think it’s name-calling to describe them as such. You wouldn’t find them at the sort of Xtian fantasist demonstration like the one Amanda ran into, but they share some of the same messed-up views about women.

I, too, was totally anti-abortion because that’s a very easy thing for a teenager to be, simply because your average teenager cannot grasp complicated situations.

I wonder how much the transition from fantasyland pro-lifism to reality-based pro-choicism has to do with forethought of the reality of pregnancy.  If Anti-choice girl A goes to rallies, marches, etc, and doesn’t think about how her politics could impact her personally then accidentally gets pregnant, I don’t know that she’ll automatically jump on the pro-choice wagon just because it’s expedient for her personally to do so (not that she won’t) but rather she’ll either have a Moral Abortion because she’s a special snowflake and keep insisting that it should be illegal all the same, or she’ll just hunker down and become MORE anti-choice because she has to justify to everyone else that she’s right, she’s always been right, and dammit she’ll prove it by hook or by crook even if she has to be miserable the rest of her life because of it. I bet a lot of people in the parade were Option B.

But if Anti-choice girl A has a chance to see the complexities of the issue without the gun pointed to her head, necessarily, there’s probably a better chance of her coming around to reason.

Just you wait… In ten years you will remember this post… just you wait… when everything you love has turned to dust… the sky pitch black… the moon blood red… when the Stay Puft marshmallow man terrorizes new york… goddamn it you will remember this post.

Even a cursory knowledge of the Weimar Republic and It’s (sic-MHF) eventual overthrow should be more then enough to prove that the presence of an abundance of erotomaniacs, fashionable “non-conformists”, and trust fund “bohemians” does nothing to prevent the development of an authoritarian mindset.
....
MonkeyShines on 01/26 at 07:53 AM

(My added emphasis—MHF)

And a cursory knowledge of the Weimar Republic and its eventual overthrow is evidently all you have.

You really can’t blame Hitler on Berthold Brecht or even Marlene Dietreich, you know. Except in the sense that Hitler’s followers hated their more creative compatriots, precisely because they were both artistically good and perceptive.

All your analogy suggests is that perhaps we should be less polite and tolerant than we are generally inclined to be, and take more drastic steps than we hope are reasonably necessary, to get people like you to shut up.

Oh, and prevent y’all from congregating.

But we’ll take our chances with civil liberties, because we believe in them. Do you?

Also—

Paging kwillow, or anyone else in Washoe County Nevada, in touch with kwillow.

I’ve decided I am not putting my e-mail on this thread.

I’d love to get in touch.

I dunno if Amanda will give you my e-mail but Amanda, I’d like it if you could.

Or jessilikewhoa has it.

Obviously the sort of action you mentioned is needed.

Mark Foxwell, it’s tough trying to get real communication going when you can’t just auto-email someone. There’s gotta be a way to institute that.

Mark Foxwell, it’s tough trying to get real communication going when you can’t just auto-email someone. There’s gotta be a way to institute that.

People, gmail accounts are free.  Set one up - say “Dingbat22@gmail.com” - and give that out instead.

I have a free e-mail. The issue is, not giving my e-mail to every troll who comes along.

I wasn’t pro-life enough to stand/march in Texas heat in August for anything and - besides - there were video games at home. Video games that I wasn’t playing because I was in this stupid protest that wasn’t going to change anyone’s mind and it’s hot out here and no one thought to bring water, you stupid mouthbreathers.

Essie, I dunno if you’re gonna look back at this thread but: I love this. ^______^

I’ve run into a couple of people born out of wedlock (as they used to say) who are weirdly reflexive in their opposition to abortion because they insist on seeing themselves as the aborted fetus.

I wonder their feelings come from a type of shame that some segments of society have placed on them.  As a “bastard” child myself I have frequently run into anti-choicers who, for lack of a better term, try to guilt me for the basic fact that I’m alive and that I should be deeply indebted to the “pro-life” movement.  Cause otherwise I wouldn’t be alive!  Even my own step-mother has tried to pull this shit on me.

I generally respond with the snarky truth; that my bio-mother would have had me anyways because she wanted to sue my father for child support so she could pay for her cocaine habit.

But I digress.  Needless to say these little “guilt trips” don’t work so well on me but I really do wonder why they feel this is an effective tactic or why they feel the need to say it.  Does it boil down to their own fear that if mother’s have choice they may not exist?  Do they feel they are appealing to some kind self-preservation instinct in me?  The whole thing just strikes me as absurd.