I’ve always had a problem with the formulation of legal, safe, and
rare. Why should abortions be rare? No one insists that blood
transfusions should be rare. No one insists that chemotherapy should be
rare. No one insists that childhood vaccinations should be rare.
Abortion is a medical procedure; full stop. It is part of panoply of
treatments and procedures that are covered by Reproductive Health Care.
No sane person would argue that epidurals should be rare; that other
forms of pain management should be rare. That is decision best left to
the woman and the doctor.
Far too many people are hung up on the supposed moral dimension of Abortion. The mushy middle still believes that Abortion is still “wrong” and shameful. What they do not get is that one third of US women will end a pregnancy via abortion in their lifetime. Many of these women are either already mothers or will be mothers in their lifetimes. They want children, but not right now. Abortion is a legitimate means of family planning, especially when done in the first trimester.
And turning to the real world, Abortion will always be with us; and it will never be rare. I once looked up abortion rates in the EU to see what the minimum set might look like in the US. Remember these are nations that are doing everything “right”: they have comprehensive sex education from grade school on up, they have free subsidized health care that includes free birth control, they have a much more mature attitude to sex. Yet even in the EU, nations like Germany are having abortion rates in the high hundreds of thousands. That is not even close to rare.
A more honest approach would be to say you want to make Abortion safe, legal, and accessible. I really do not see any point in arguing otherwise. A women’s right to agency trumps any “moral” concerns a uninvolved bystander may have. Keep your morals to yourself and have a nice day.
And since we are talking about morals, we can now talk about the oxymoronic Moral Majority.
Actually their name is doubly oxymoronic since they are neither moral nor a majority. Their whole ideology is a perversion of Christianity. They take the message of Jesus and flip it around 180 degrees. From meekness and love they pull out hate and oppression.
The religious reactionaries of the Republican Party only really care about two things: sticking it to the poor (read the nig-CLANG) and sexual repression. Denying women the right to control their own bodies is all about patriarchy, and punishing the evil sluts for having (and enjoying) sex. That is why the Religious Reactionaries blew a gasket over Obama’s BC decision. Now all those evil no good sluts can have their wanton sex with no consequence; they will get off scot free! That is why it all of a sudden became vitally important that the RC church (and others) get some kind of religious exemption from the AHCA’s BC requirement; never mind Catholic Institutions were already providing health care with full reproductive health care benefits (read Birth Control for preventive health) before the Bishops went into high dungeon about the Obamacare rules.
Remember, for far too many of the Republican Party it is all about the sex, and punishing woman for enjoying sex by having it on her own terms.
Far too many people are hung up on the supposed moral dimension of Abortion. The mushy middle still believes that Abortion is still “wrong” and shameful. What they do not get is that one third of US women will end a pregnancy via abortion in their lifetime. Many of these women are either already mothers or will be mothers in their lifetimes. They want children, but not right now. Abortion is a legitimate means of family planning, especially when done in the first trimester.
And turning to the real world, Abortion will always be with us; and it will never be rare. I once looked up abortion rates in the EU to see what the minimum set might look like in the US. Remember these are nations that are doing everything “right”: they have comprehensive sex education from grade school on up, they have free subsidized health care that includes free birth control, they have a much more mature attitude to sex. Yet even in the EU, nations like Germany are having abortion rates in the high hundreds of thousands. That is not even close to rare.
A more honest approach would be to say you want to make Abortion safe, legal, and accessible. I really do not see any point in arguing otherwise. A women’s right to agency trumps any “moral” concerns a uninvolved bystander may have. Keep your morals to yourself and have a nice day.
And since we are talking about morals, we can now talk about the oxymoronic Moral Majority.
Actually their name is doubly oxymoronic since they are neither moral nor a majority. Their whole ideology is a perversion of Christianity. They take the message of Jesus and flip it around 180 degrees. From meekness and love they pull out hate and oppression.
The religious reactionaries of the Republican Party only really care about two things: sticking it to the poor (read the nig-CLANG) and sexual repression. Denying women the right to control their own bodies is all about patriarchy, and punishing the evil sluts for having (and enjoying) sex. That is why the Religious Reactionaries blew a gasket over Obama’s BC decision. Now all those evil no good sluts can have their wanton sex with no consequence; they will get off scot free! That is why it all of a sudden became vitally important that the RC church (and others) get some kind of religious exemption from the AHCA’s BC requirement; never mind Catholic Institutions were already providing health care with full reproductive health care benefits (read Birth Control for preventive health) before the Bishops went into high dungeon about the Obamacare rules.
Remember, for far too many of the Republican Party it is all about the sex, and punishing woman for enjoying sex by having it on her own terms.
2 comments:
A more honest approach would be to say you want to make Abortion safe, legal, and accessible.
I think they should be rare, too. It's how we get to "rare", though, that separates me from folks in the social conservative business. To me, it should be rare because it's rarely needed. Make incest, rape, and medical problems rare, and make contraceptives easy to use and safe, and there's a lot less need for abortion. Abortion ends a potential life, at least, and it has hazards for the patient, too.
I think that's what Pres. Clinton was saying when he said that. It's certainly what I took it to mean.
Still, it should be accessible, and it should be safe when it's needed. I think that should go without saying, but we live in a time when I seem to need to say the things that go without saying, so there you go...
I have no real issue with making Abortion rare as a goal in same way I do not have an issue with the goal that we should brush and floss after every meal. Were I get off the train is where the government attempts to big-foot people's private, personal decision. I do not think making Abortion "rare" is a legitimate policy goal for Government.
Plus I really don't think such a goal is attainable even if we did try. Look at the EU statistics for Abortion, they do everything right, and still Abortion is still common as the grass.
The thing is my dear puppy that once a woman is up against an unplanned pregnancy abortion is always safer than carrying the pregnancy to term.
So from a pure risk reduction analysis Abortion is always the better option than pregnancy. Now that all goes out the window when the Pregnancy is wanted.
I am hoping that the new preventive medicine requirements of Obamacare allow women who wish to remain childless to avail themselves of IUD, which are a much more reliable form of birth control than the pill over the long haul. IUD are truly wonderful "set and forget" devices.
Still, I do wonder why this particular medical procedure has such an onus on it. In point of fact is merely an amplification of what naturally occurs for many women with no medical intervention at all. Spontaneous Abortion, also know as a miscarriage, is a fact of human reproduction. More to the point, it is not a rare occurrence by any measure.
So why would one pregnancy termination be so morally fraught, something we wish to be rare, yet there is so little public hand-wringing over the other?
I really think there is no reason for the Government to interfere with any woman's decision on how to handle her own body. My position is that that the abortion cut off occurs right at the time of contractions. Otherwise the government and other non-involved parties need to butt out.
Post a Comment