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25 thoughts on “The pro-aborts are right”

  1. The problem is, why do they seem to think that giving people no choice but to have back-to-back children will lead to people welcoming those children as “a blessing and not a curse” or whatever?

    Why do they deny history, where women with pregnancy after pregnancy didn’t always want that?

    Also, what is “contraception” to them? Are they looking to take all contraceptives including condoms, spermicides, diaphragms, etc. off the shelves so that we look like Ireland before the ’50’s (or whenever?) Or are they just looking to eliminate The Pill?

  2. Also, as I tried to argue on a conservative site once, if they are going to legislate a “mentality,” good luck.

    I detest being told that because I didn’t have a child straightaway after marriage, that I have the same “mentality” as people who consider children a pain, something they don’t want, or something they would abort. I detest people assuming that I would abort an unintended pregnancy just because I prevent.

    How will they prove that all “contracepting” (shoutout to D-wn Ed-n) couples have the same mentality? Are we going to try to outlaw “Not seeing children as a blessing?” If so, how? Won’t people just start abandoning the child that breaks the bank or is just one too many? Will we see babies left on streets and murdered after birth like happens with baby girls in China and India?

    When I tried to argue this on the conservative Family Scholars Blog (if poster “Mythago” shows up here, she’ll know what I mean), the bloggers denied that there were any non-Catholic pro-life groups opposed to contraception. They claimed it was a Church teaching that would never become public policy. I might use this post as evidence if it comes up again!

  3. Marian, I attended a pro-choice/anti-contraceptive Lutheran* school and — if their attitudes are anything to go by — it’s all going. I was taught *by my science teacher* that the pill (well, all hormonal BC, really) works by causing abortions, as do IUDs. He, along with the reverend who taught “Love, Marriage & Family” (the fall term senior religion class), also taught that condoms are ineffective and I believe accused them of breaking half the time, so why bother? Spermicides and diaphrams were never mentioned, but I’m sure we cannot kill the holy seed no bar its way, so…

    And women who don’t want pregnancy after pregnancy should just pray to the Lord for guidance on their purpose. That’s the answer I got when I asked what we should do if we only wanted one or two children, or (imagine the shock and horror) none.

    We also had the fun and exciting field trips on Thursday mornings to the local Planned Parenthood, so that we could pray at the women killing their babies. If you opted out of going, it was counted against your attendance as though you were cutting actual classes. Though there was the funny of seeing some of the not so bright ones earnestly beseeching the about-to-pop pregnant women not to kill their babies. Because, you know Indiana, it’s totally progressive and allows you to abort right up until the day before you’re due (or, you know, the 14th week, whichever comes first). Everyone knows PP is a big, babykilling factory.

    Okay, that was long. Sorry!

    * In defense of Lutheranism, there’s the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America and the Missouri Synod Lutherans, which was my school’s affiliation. The Evangelicals, in this case, are actually the less scary ones. The MS is the ‘Bible is literal truth’ sect while the ELCA is much more progressive. My school stopped having the students’ pastors visit after my church sent one of our junior pastors, Pastor Kathleen. A woman leading a congregation? St. Paul says no!

  4. this seems to be inline with a broader movement that i’ve been seeing become more visable over the past 5 years, that conservative protestants that traditionally would have identified very strongly as “anti-papist” and the like, are finding themselves not just in political, but theological alliance with conservative Catholicism.

    Dominionism is a problem on both sides, but the intellectual grounding that the Protestants gain by adopting Catholic teachings seems to be energizing the movement.

  5. What astounds me is that in these questions of reproductive rights, these people are including ridiculous tenets in their worldviews so they can be consistent. To consistently oppose abortion, you must prohibit it even in the case of rape or incest. To consistently oppose gay marriage or the morning after pill, you must also oppose contraception. If your worldview demands that you oppose abortion in the case of rape or incest, or that you oppose all contraception, maybe there’s something wrong with your worldview.

  6. My guess is one or more of the following:

    A) They think for a woman to not want lots of children is a terrible and punishable offense, and being possessed of a rather sick sense of humor, they want to inflict every woman with something that will only be a punishment for those who commit the sin of not liking it.

    B) Keep the white birth rate up so White Amerikkka isn’t overbred by brown people; at the same time keep everyone else’s birthrate up to keep them in poverty and provide cheap labor.

    C) They want to implement a eugenics program, thusly: women not physiologically suited for childbirth have no purpose and therefore no business existing. Therefore by removing both contraception and abortion, and not having a life-of-the-mother exception, those women unable to have healthy, successful pregnancies will be killed by flawed pregnancies. Also women who have ectopic pregnancies are being punished by God for some sin they committed, and deserve to die.

    D) Make every instance of sexual intercourse tainted with the fear of pregnancy—for the woman. But who cares, she doesn’t need to enjoy it in order to become pregnant.

    These people have their way, contraception will consist of having a hysterectomy and mailing one’s uterus to Congress. If they own it, they can deal with the storage-and-upkeep issues.

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  8. This could, and hopefully will be, a huge boon to the pro-choice movement. Kind of let’s average people know where the pro-life side is coming from. I hope they get so emboldened as to think that openly advocating a ban on contraceptives is a good idea. In the best case scenario, this contributes to the enevitable blow back against religious fundamentalism that is coming…

    You’re right, it isn’t about babies, it is about controlling the sexual lives of women. If you think about it, making abortion illegal except for in cases of rape or incest does just that. It IS contradiction to say an unborn baby is a life, but it is ok to kill it if there was incest or rape (which they are just now realizing). But the vast majority of pro-lifers don’t think this, why…because outlawing abortions for people who have consentual sex does the job in terms of controlling women’s sex lives.

  9. From the comments thread over there:

    I would also add that the “contraception mentality” inevitably leads to abortion because it views children as intruders rather than blessings from God.

    The desire for contraception and the use/availability thereof are two different things, and it is the disinclination to have children that leads to use of contraception, not vice versa. People who don’t want kids will still not want kids if contraception ceases to be available.

    And this is supported statistically, as the majority of abortions are performed on women who were using some form of birth control when they became pregnant.

    Which proves only that it’s not 100% effective, and you’re ignoring the millions of women who don’t get abortions because their birth control is working. As for the women you mentioned, the ones who have abortions due to birth control failure, how many more times do you think they’d be there if they didn’t have birth control preventing them from conceiving more often.

    “Contraceptive mentality” will be here regardless of the availability of contraception. What contraception does, however, is make the difference between whether a fertile woman who doesn’t want kids has one accidental pregnancy and one abortion, or a dozen unwanted pregnancy and a dozen abortions.

    Oh, just wondering, is an atheist supposed to see children as “a blessing from God?”

  11. Ah, but NFP requires you to follow a bunch of rules and not be able to have sex whenever you want (as you can on pills, the IUD, etc.), so that’s fine.

  12. Kyra makes an excellent point… how many more abortions do we think we’d have in this country if there weren’t (somewhat) widely available ways of preventing pregnancy? My guess is it that the abortion rate would be about double what it is now. Do they really think that would be preferable?
    And I’m with Marian. If I have to read about this damned “contraceptive mentality” one more time I am going to scream. My husband and I decided we would start trying to have kids when we bought our first house, which happened a couple years after we got married. If one had come along before that, it would have been welcomed by both of us with open arms, we were just trying to be realistic (we lived in a one bedroom efficiency apartment and did not have a ton of room). I have done it their way… the last three years I’ve pretty much been a baby factory (baby #1 was 8 months old when baby #2 was conceived, baby #3 was conceived 4 months after baby #2 was born) and you know what has led to? A very tired woman who feels like a whale pretty much everytime she goes out (When are you due? OMG, is it twins? Triplets? Are they sure there’s only one in there?) who has a lack of patience and back issues to the point where she can hardly walk. I love my children to death, I do, I wouldn’t trade one of them, but I need a break. If an unexpected pregnancy were to arise however, we wouldn’t abort. It would take me a couple months to get used to the idea, but just like with my second baby (who wasn’t planned, but not prevented… just sort of whatever happens, happens) I would eventually come around to it and by the time I was shopping for baby clothes, you’d never know he/she wasn’t planned. It also doesn’t mean I love my husband any less than those who use NFP. Everytime I read that I want to scream all over again. So, if I avoid having sex with him for a week while I’m ovulating, I love him with my whole heart and will view any child who is accidentally conceived as a blessing from God, but if I take a pill to prevent me from ovulating so that I can have sex with him whenever either one of us should desire to, I’m not accepting all of him, my marriage is less valid and I will run for the nearest abortion clinic if I accidentally conceive. I see no logic in this.

  13. Basically, pro-lifers can’t oppose the MAP without opposing birth control pills, since they contain the same ingredients (female hormones) and, therefore, may both cause abortions – stop an embryo from implanting in the uterus.

    Funny. When female hormones are inherently bad.

  14. From the linked piece:

    If that premise [only God can decide when one should conceive] is true, who has the right to say no to God? Who can say they have a better grip on timing than God?

    Follow that to it’s next logical step, and you have to outlaw IVF. Now there’s a wedge issue for you!

    Kyra’s got it right in #6 — this is about forcing less sex, and punishing those who choose to have sex for recreation instead of procreation.

  15. [quote]If that premise [only God can decide when one should conceive] is true, who has the right to say no to God? Who can say they have a better grip on timing than God?[/quote]
    And how do you know when God wants you to have sex and get pregnant in the first place? Did he tell you you could? How can you think you know better than God when you should try to have a child, since the size of your family is supposed to be entirely up to him?

  16. We also had the fun and exciting field trips on Thursday mornings to the local Planned Parenthood, so that we could pray at the women killing their babies. If you opted out of going, it was counted against your attendance as though you were cutting actual classes. Though there was the funny of seeing some of the not so bright ones earnestly beseeching the about-to-pop pregnant women not to kill their babies. Because, you know Indiana, it’s totally progressive and allows you to abort right up until the day before you’re due (or, you know, the 14th week, whichever comes first). Everyone knows PP is a big, babykilling factory.

    Oh dear. Reminds me of an incident that made the TV news when I was in elementary school or junior high. Registered nurse who worked at a clinic which performed abortions, seven months pregnant, got grabbed and thrown to the ground by a protester, started bleeding and had to be rushed to hospital. And if not for the fact that she was quite literally right outside the door of a medical facility with OB/GYN staff when it happened, to handle things before the ambulance got there, something really bad could’ve happened. If memory serves, she had to spend the rest of her pregnancy on doctor-mandated bedrest or something, when before that everything had been normal. It was a long time ago, but I can still remember the footage of her husband and the clinic director talking to the press outside the hospital, both looking ready to kill someone.

    One “pro-lifer” who was interviewed by the media said the police were wrong to charge the protester with assault, despite the fact that he’d endangered the woman’s life AND her fetus. This asshole’s take was basically that the protester had assumed the heavily pregnant woman must be there to get an elective abortion (because every woman who’s made it all the way to her third trimester is just itching for an abortion, and never mind that late-term abortions are very often performed for PLANNED pregnancies where something went catastrophically, life-threateningly wrong) and he shouldn’t be penalized for trying to “save a baby”. The gist seemed to be that it was unfortunate that he had accidentally assaulted a woman who wanted to stay pregnant, but it was her own damn fault for working there, and if she hadn’t worked there, she wouldn’t have been in danger. It was pretty twisted logic.

    Between that and Dirty Dancing (lousy movie, but the subplot about the illegal abortion circa 1963 shocked and riveted me) I suddenly became a very politically aware and pro-choice pre-teen. Before, I’d had the kiddie view of “Well, babies are cute, and when I get old enough I’ll be babysitting. And since babies are cute, anybody who doesn’t want them is a bad person.” So yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of your Lutheran school classmates are now regular donors to Planned Parenthood. Kids grow up and figure shit out for themselves, even when their parents are vigorously anti-choice.

    Actually, while my dad is still against pretty much anything that would get women out of their proper place in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant, my mom has since amended her position, but when I was a kid and a teenager she was vehemently anti-abortion, mainly because during my childhood she’d had three very traumatic first trimester miscarriages, and she felt like she’d lost babies. But she’s also a feminist and gradually came to the conclusion that she would never have an abortion herself, but can’t countenance the government forcing other women to be pregnant against their will, so she won’t vote for anti-abortion candidates these days. If you’d told me when I was twelve that one day my mom would be okay with me telling her I’d attended a pro-choice rally, I would’ve thought you were insane. Even adults can change their minds and become wiser over time.

  17. Oh, and re: the actual topic (because I am the queen of tangents and disorganized thinking), I am thrilled that these assholes are showing their true colours and publicly owning their anti-contraception mentality. We’re going to hang Jill Stanek and D–n E–n around the necks of the pro-forced pregnancy types like albatrosses. Maybe it’ll wake up the “moderates” who vaguely think abortion is icky but don’t want it to be banned to the point where they or their daughter can’t get one (because it’s only women they don’t know who get abortions because they’re sluts, so the sluts should be punished but not the “good girls” who need abortions too), and sure as hell don’t want to give up their pills. There are a lot of people who call themselves “pro-life” but only have two kids and don’t want more. Let them get a good look at their bedfellows.

    P.S. So, how many children does Jill Stanek have? I mean, she’s anti-contraception, so she must be up in the double digits by now. Or is she one of those women who only became anti-contraception after she’d had her tubes tied and therefore wouldn’t be affected?

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  20. The awful theology of these anti-choice crazies would be funny if it weren’t so misogynist and hateful. Nowhere does the Bible treat the subject of abortion, nor did church tradition until the men running the church (and I say this as a male deacon, soon-to-be (non-Roman) priest) figured out that women had been making reproductive decisions for themselves.

    Also, the idea that “God is the sole pro-creative decisionmaker” is ludicrous. Does she think human beings don’t have a right to make decisions about whether or not to have sex? Because deciding whether or not to have unprotected sex without contraceptives is definitely a “pro-creative decision.” I also see she only has three kids; seems kind of low for someone who’s leaving all the pro-creative decisions up to God.

    In any case, Exodus 21 is one of the few sections of the Bible that deal with the status–full human life or not–of a fetus, and that passage comes to the conclusion that no fetus is equivalent to an already-born human being. If conservatives want to base their policy on an uncritical reading of the OT, they’re welcome to chew on that passage awhile. I’d rather figure out the solution that involves loving God and loving my neighbors (female as well as male, adults as well as children and fetuses) as much as possible; for me, that involves being pro-choice and sensitive to the real situations of real women.

  21. [quote]If that premise [only God can decide when one should conceive] is true, who has the right to say no to God?

    If the answer’s nobody, then God’s a decided asshole and a control freak. Having absolute power does not mean you have to use it to make people’s lives miserable. And the idea that God is this sort of person is, to put it bluntly, unbelievable for me. To quote Captain Picard, “The universe is not so badly designed.”

    Who can say they have a better grip on timing than God?

    Everybody. Or, you know, anyone with the sense and decency to not put women through pregnancies they don’t fucking want!

    Their God, that is. Mine has the decency to defer the right to choose how many children to have to the person who’s actually having the children.

  22. If that premise [only God can decide when one should conceive] is true, who has the right to say no to God?

    Two thoughts: One, what makes you so sure you know God’s will? I say that God wants me to use birth control right now. I know this because She has given me no desire to have another child and that when She wants me to be pregnant again She will send me a desire to have a child and the circumstances to allow that child to grow up healthy and happy.

    Two, your God can be stopped by a millimeter or so of latex? Sounds like a fairly impotent sort of diety to me.

  23. If that premise [only God can decide when one should conceive] is true, who has the right to say no to God?

    Cheap ‘n’ easy riposte: Substitute “die” for “conceive” and follow the logic all the way. It’s certainly as wrong to second-guess God in one matter as in another.

  24. People who use God as an excuse for their political arguments already know that their arguments are ridiculous. If a position has any validity at all, you can support it without resorting to “because God/the Pope/my ministerpriestrabbiguru said so”.

    Substitue “I” for “God” in these opinions and arguments and I think you get a better idea of where these people are coming from. This isn’t about God. It’s about them. It’s about the fact that they can’t handle living their beliefs in a world where there’s an option to live another way, especially a way that other people are enjoying and benefiting from. They can’t deal with choice, so they don’t want other people to have choices (all choices, not just in the abortion debate sense).

    Besides, if you’re going to take a political position based on “God”, the onus is now on you to prove “God” beyond a shadow of a doubt.

    Document and corroborate the instances where it can be shown that some entity called “God” has been heard or seen telling a couple when they ought to have a child, and you might have a point. Get it on film or on tape. Go ahead. But until then, you’re just a power-hungry control freak who wants to tell other people how to run even the most private and intimate aspects of their lives, or you’re just too weak to live what you claim you believe unless you can make everyone else live it, too.

  25. one of them just burst out in a string of ad hominems after i wouldn’t accept his condescending attempt to tell me that i don’t know what i feel, what i want, or what counts as freedom for me. bullies, all of them.

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