I should know better than to look at anything categorized so, especially during a time when I’m struggling to understand how yet another unplanned baby will fit into my family and the lives of those I love.
But it was hard to avoid. Discussions of #LiveTweetingAbortion took over my Twitterstream; some spirit of punishment gluttony made me look at the responses flagged #prochoice. I shouldn’t have looked, not only because of the raw hatred and ignorance (masquerading as concern, of course) directed toward @antitheistangie but because one voice from the pro-choice side in particular caught my eye.
I shouldn’t have read his tweets. I shouldn’t have looked at his blog. But I did, and what I saw made me sicker and sadder than anything goatse-esque, tub-tacular or two-girls-one-cup-arific:
What pro-choice people don’t understand is the concept of self-sacrifice: subjugating one’s own wants for the needs of another.
–from Not All Women’s Rights Are Right
It’s a lovely straw-man argument, Mr. Schlenker, but I can assure you that many of us pro-choice people understand self-sacrifice very well indeed.
There are so many reasons and factors out there, that can, and will, bring about a abortion… All i can say is that i am sorry that there are people out there with such a disregard for both the well-being and the mental and emotional factors that leand and contribute to such a desision.
No situation is unique; “I would never” or “I was fine when i” cannot help sosmeone faced with this desision. Nor does creating guilt in a person for now bearing this burden of choice.
It is the choice of the mother to make. It is their lives.
Pro-life people who advocate making all abortion across the board I think forget that in reality situations occur in which being brought to term would be highly inadvisable for both mother and child.
Ugh I read through about his first 6 most recent tweets and my stomach turned, I had to close it out.
Well, and we all know the best thing to do with a straw man! Light it on fire and dance around it as it burns, burns, burns!
Honestly, though, I don’t understand how anyone can feel so absolutely *absolute* about the issue, as if one way will be the right way, all the time. There are so many potentials. A woman may go through changes over a period of years and where in instance A she would bear and/or raise a child, in instance B she just couldn’t- for whatever reason.
And then there are times less talked about- such as when a woman who doesn’t want a child and feels fine with aborting it is met with the burning desire of a man- the father of the child- who very much wants the child to live. How anyone can think that they can say that one way or the other is always right is baffling.
I dont’ think men really have a say in this, It is never their bodies in this. I’m always skeptical of people who take delight in trying to control other people’s lives.
i am very pro-choice and i know plenty about self-sacrifice. i can not tolerate people that are so stuck in what has been brain washed in them. i want to see all those Pro-Life people adopt all the unwanted babies and then come back to me about self-sacrifice.
I’ve been following and participating in the conversation and his views disgust me. I can’t help but speak up when he talks. But the awesome thing is that he is virtually the only person talking anti-choice — there are LOADS of pro-choice folks on the other side throwing back facts and intelligent arguments. Seeing the Twitter community rally around Angie is the best thing about the whole #livetweetingabortion phenomenon.
It really is. Thanks Violet.
Speaking as a woman who has had to make hard choices in my life, I know how hard my life would be now if I hadn’t been granted the right to make this particular choice for myself. I think about how hard the life of that child would have been, because I know I wouldn’t have been able to give it up in my teenage selfishness. I think about how hard it was to come to the choice to “give my gift back to God”, and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wish my baby well. And now, 12 years later, if I were posed with the same choice, my decision would be very different. Because *I* am very different. My situation is very different and life is now different for me.
Do I regret that choice long ago: different days have different answers, but by and large I did the RIGHT thing for ME and the lives of those I love. Now, do I think, with the knowledge I have now of such things, that MVA abortions should be strictly regulated for safety reasons: yes I do, but I do not think the choice to undergo this procedure should ever be taken away from a woman. Too many women have died over the centuries due to botched abortions until RvW was enacted; far more than those who die now from MVA complications. By taking away the choice, you do not stop abortions from happening, it would simply just send women back to the dirty alley-ways and dark closet rooms to be cleaned out with hoovers and bent spoons.
There is a lot that can be done to make current regulations better, sure, but to remove the choice entirely would disastrous.
I just wish some folks could understand this facts and take their own “opinions” out of the equation. It is just so sad.
If they care so much about stopping abortions they should work on raising the status of women. Promoting birth control, female education etc.
Working on those things would far reduce the number of abortions than harrasing people who have to make the choice.
Like not bringing more children into the world when we struggle to feed and care for those already present?
Oy
Every time I hear Anti Abortion people brag about how many abortions they’ve stopped I think of how many millions more were prevented by planned parenthood and other clinics, scarleteen and other info sources. I suppose if there’s one thing we can all agree on it’s that fewer is better. We just disagree strongly on how to get there.
This is an amazing article/story. I was so pleased when I read it today, thinking “Oh, AAG will love this” and then I realized, that despite not knowing you, I now want to brighten your day. Whoo-hoo.
An excerpt:
But the story I most want to tell—and one I have never heard—is of abortion as an intimate part of a couple’s life together. Our abortion was a love story. I’d worried that Walter and I were rejecting a gift from the universe. What I discovered, though, was that when we stripped away the distractions of everyday life so that we could make this difficult decision together, it bound us together as surely as if our choice had been different—and as it turns out, that was the gift.
And a link:
http://skirt.com/node/1150