Really? This again?

So Mike Huckabee has trotted out the tired claim that because women have so many abortions, we have to import illegal immigrants to do jobs we don't have enough people to do. Right. He's apparently been hanging out with Tom Delay.

Any time this argument comes up, I wonder how many illegal immigrants the speaker has employed either directly or indirectly. And I'm sure that Mike would be more than willing to take that field picking job away from an immigrant. Way to conflate arguments.

Denying abortion as a means of controlling women

Via Jessica at Feministing, I read this article at Marie Claire. I know, barf. The only real "magazines" I read are Bitch and Southern Living. My coffee table is quite the conversation piece, but I digress.

The article is a personal account of one woman's experience with the abortion pill, Mifeprex. While this is a very safe drug to induce miscarriage, this particular woman had a horrible experience with infection and hormonal imbalance for months after taking the pill. Mifeprex almost always causes very uncomfortable cramping, bleeding, and some other side effects. But in my opinion, I would rather deal with these discomforts than have a surgical abortion, if only because I would rather be at home, with people I care about and trust.

As I was reading the article, I thought about how it would bring out the anti-choice zealots in full force to shame this woman for her "choices". (For a little background, the woman was about to be married, but had been a cocaine user during conception and for most of the month or so that she was pregnant, and made the admirable choice of not bringing an addicted and possibly severely disabled child into this cruel world.) After scrolling to the comments, I was proven correct. The first comment made my stomach turn. The commenter had chosen a medical abortion a few years ago, and still regrets it to this day. No mention of how it might be the pregnancy that she regretted, or the lack of support she received from her friends and family, or the fact that our society shames women who abort and induce horrendous guilt. In addition, she claims that "the idea of inserting it vaginally itself was the hardest thing". Really? Putting your fingers into your own vagina was really the hardest part of your abortion? Wow. I put my fingers in my vagina every time I menstruate in order to insert a tampon. Has this woman ever masturbated? Likely, no. Get thee a rabbit, and fast! But now I'm getting off topic.

The next comment gets into the writer's coke addiction. So predictable.

I do not think using an author who had a raging coke habit (at an age when she should have known better nonetheless!) was a wise choice.

At an age when she should have known better? Basically, what this commenter is saying is that s/he can understand if the author was a teenager, when they probably can't afford coke anyway. Not to mention that addiction is a bitch. How many meth/heroine/coke addicts out there are really enjoying their addiction? Not many, I can guarantee that. And we certainly don't encourage pregnant women to seek help for drug and alcohol addiction. In fact, we incarcerate them.

But then we hit the real nerve, abortion as birth control, in the fourth comment. There are some folks on the fence about abortion, who say it shouldn't be used as birth control. Guess what? Abortion IS birth control! Women aren't getting abortions for fun, despite what some of the more unhinged anti-choicers would like you to believe. When you get an abortion, you are deciding whether you want to give birth or not. Birth. Control. That means that proponents of "Natural Family Planning" (since what the rest of us participate in is so UNnatural) are also using a form of birth control. Even abstinence and non-penis-in-vagina sex is considered birth control.

In my opinion, there isn't a human being on this earth of reproductive age that doesn't (wish to*) participate in some form of birth control. What baffles me is why people think that abortion is so abhorrent a form of birth control. I get that it's icky, but so is every type of surgery. Is there really a myth out there that women have unprotected sex thinking, "Well, I'll have sex sans condom, and if I get pregnant I'll just get an abortion on my way to work one day"? Abortion is the last birth control resort for women, save the victims of rape.

Next on my list is the hypocrisy of the "rape exception" of most proposed abortion bans. This has become so common in the political discourse that it hardly stirs a reaction. However, it has always bothered me. By banning abortion, sexually active women are punished. By making an exception for rape victims, legislators are rubbing salt into the wound of the rest of women by basically saying that the reason they can't have an abortion is because they CHOSE to have sex, and weren't forced into it.

This is the proof that anti-choice policies are not really concerned with saving fetuses, but with controlling women. And this is what it's all about. Privileged men, so afraid of losing their power, feel the need to control women who dare to act independently. (See, street harassment, rape, domestic violence.) Scary.

* When I say "wish to" I am implying consensual sex. Rape and incest victims cannot choose birth control, unless they are using regular hormonal contraception. We cannot forget these victims whenever we talk about a right to birth control.

"Partial-Birth" Abortion Ban Upheld by SCOTUS, Slippery Slope Predicted

This is just really fucking scary. From what I understand, through all the medical and legal jargon, is that this procedure actually doesn't exist. The anti-choicers have mangled the language of late-term abortion to appeal to those who romanticize the fetus, and the ban was written vaguely enough to create that slippery slope into a full overturn of Roe.

I was just talking to a friend the other day about how I think all anti-choicers are basically assholes. While he agrees with me and my stance on reproductive rights, he argued that some anti-choicers are good people. He was specifically talking about a woman he knows who had an abortion as a teenager, and when her family found out, they called her a murderer because they believe abortion is murder. (For the record, he is very close friends with the woman's brother, and grew up with his family and says they're otherwise good people. I've only met the brother.) My response was that, setting aside the argument about reproductive rights and when life begins, they were assholes for not being supportive of her. She made a legal decision. I'd like to stress that: LEGAL.

The anti-choice culture is not about protecting life, it's about controlling women. Rather than seeing this woman as a human being with what is possibly the most difficult choice a person makes, they simply shamed her for her "mistake". And they are assholes for it. I have an impossible time wrapping my brain around the idea that a person can deny science and not see the hypocrisy in the anti-choice rhetoric. If a blastocyst is a potential life that is morally wrong to terminate, then why aren't the morality police punishing women for flushing ova out of the womb by menstruating? After all, an ovum is a potential life, an even more solid fact considering scientists can now create sperm from bone marrow. What about women who cannot conceive because of a uterine condition? A blastocyst could form through natural fertilization and not implant because of a medical issue, and then just exit the body with the menstrual flow without a woman even knowing. By the anti-choice logic, these women should be punished for this. If you take anti-choice logic to it's conclusion, it means that non-procreative sex should be illegal. That would include the following: fellatio, cunnilingus, anal sex, sex with barrier/hormonal birth control, sex during infertile times (this means you, natural family planning gurus), sex in sterile couples, sex with a post-menopausal woman, and of course, homosexual sex. (Although the anti-choicers probably wouldn't have a problem making that illegal, either.) This sort of attitude may also mean that it will be difficult for a woman to have a tubal ligation, or for a woman to have a hysterectomy during her fertile years due to an illness. (Remember, the new ban does not make an exception for a woman's health.)

It is absolutely crucial for women (and men) to retain the fullest of reproductive rights, and not feel shamed for doing what is right for them at certain life stages. This ban has more repercussions than most realize. We must fight this!

Didn't you know that your womb is state property?

Two stories have really caught my attention this week. The first story comes out of Tampa, Florida -- my hometown. A 21 year old woman attended Gasparilla with some friends last weekend, and decided at about 1:30 p.m. to head back to her car and go home. On her way home, she was brutally raped. In broad daylight. When she finally made it back to her car, she called the police, who then took her to get medical help. While she was being examined, the police discovered she had an outstanding warrant and arrested her. The victim went to jail for two nights and was denied the second dose of her emergency contraception, because the jail nurse had a religious conflict.

The second story is out of Kansas City, Missouri, where a pregnant woman was arrested while having a miscarriage. She had stolen a car, and in the process of whatever it was that she was doing, she started to miscarry. The police disregarded the fact that she was having a miscarriage and hauled her off to jail anyway. The female officer asked, "How is that my problem?" The woman gave birth, and the baby died shortly after.

These two stories have been around the feminist blogosphere a lot, and they have a lot of obvious facts in common that I won't get into here. One thing that I haven't seen discussed is that there is a strong culture in this country of seeing women as hysterical and freakish children. In the case of the rape victim, the officers apparently didn't know what the big deal was. In the case of the miscarriage, the officers apparently thought she was having her period.

Why aren't women given more agency in this culture? Why are we not believed even when there are obvious signs of something wrong?

I think it's simply because women are still unconciously (or maybe consciously by state officials) classified as the sex class, as sub-human. The lack of sex education in this country is also contributing to a lack of understanding of how the human body works. If a woman says she's been raped, take care of the medical needs and evidence first, then worry about her criminal history. Being raped requires medical attention, and a violent rape can cause serious damage to a victim's internal organs, not to mention her psyche. If a woman is bleeding vaginally, or bleeding from anywhere but a paper cut, when you arrest her, investigate it before you get blamed for it. Duh!

This reminds me of a recent story where a man in Australia was arrested for vaginally and anally raping his wife with foreign objects. I talked to a man I know about this case, and he didn't understand what the big deal was. When I suggested that he be anally raped by his wife in his sleep, he cringed. "That's different," he said. How is it different? Most men just don't acknowledge the invasive nature the sex act for a female. So it's okay to shove something up my ass, but not up yours? M-kay.

But that's a topic for another post.