Wow... I just read an amazing post on a forum on VegSource that summarizes my position on abortion very eloquently. (Note that this is someone else's work, not mine)


---
From: Rand (cf-ctva.ex-pressnet.com)
Subject: Re: Consenting adults should have their privacy and freedom.....
Date: January 22, 2003 at 4:32 pm PST

In Reply to: Consenting adults should have their privacy and freedom..... posted by CC on January 22, 2003 at 10:06 am:

Let us, right here and now, get this very straight.

No one wants ab0rtion. Isn't that reassuring? No one likes ab0rtion. No woman anywhere in the entire world who accidentally and/or tragically and/or violently and/or sadly became pregnant and did not intend to, wants to suffer this, ever.

No woman, by way of either mistake or unsafe sex or bad condoms or neglected birth control or immaculate conception or rampant misinformation or overly aggressive ignorant males, ever wants this done to her.

And furthermore, no female who ever became pregnant as a direct result of the lack of proper birth control information, or of the incessant
stream of guilt-ridden conservative-cheered church-inhibited faux-advice masquerading as sex education in this nation, is right now saying to
herself, oh joy, I get to go have this highly unpleasant, painful, frustrating, often depressing procedure. Are we clear?

But it is, as it has always been, her choice, and no one else's. Oh yes it is.

It is not yours, not mine, not your God's, not Dubya's, not a lawyer's, not an old misogynist Republican senator's (hello, Sen. Brownback), not those who choose to interpret a barely formed fetus as a viable "life," and who scream that everyone else must agree with their interpretation.

And certainly, the choice does not belong to Bible-waving antisex "pro-family" clusters of self-righteous, two-minute-missionary-position Christians living in Colorado Springs or Kentucky or Washington, D.C. Is this clear?

Is that stereotyping? Is that too mean? Not even. Not when you see how hell-bent they are on hurling the nation, and women, back to 1954, and enforcing their own narrow and bitter views of God and females and procreation upon the entire country. You know, just like Syria.

Seems simple. Seems like a foregone conclusion. Newly pregnant women choose whether to proceed. Male partner can assist in this choice. Same as it ever was, for thousands of years. Everyone else butt the hell out, and if you don't believe in this right to choose for yourself, fine. You don't have an ab0rtion. Simple.

But apparently it's not. Still.

And during this, the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, as the battle rekindles due to the onslaught of the new 'n' misogynistic GOP regime, it is certainly worth remembering whose choice it is, as the tight-crotched antichoice crowd once again gears up to try and pass stricter legislation that would further chip away at a woman's right to make her own procreative decisions -- and this time, they might just succeed. A little.

It starts with a new law banning certain late-term "partial-birth" ab0rtions, a measure that Clinton vetoed, twice, but that Shrub has vowed to sign, because he's just that smirky and kowtowing to the Right. Coming soon: The National Right to Life organization tells you what you can and can't do with your tongue on the first date. Watch for it.

They're trying to crack down. They're rubbing their very deeply repressed God-spanked doctrines together and just can't wait to cram through some new legislation that would further limit what a woman can and can't do with her own body once she becomes pregnant. Oh yes they are. Because their version of God told them to, is why.

Because this is America, this is the land of the free, and, just as Dubya declared just last week, the U.S. is all about the sanctity of life -- unless of course you're Iraqi or poor or a dead mother in Africa, or gay or a minority or on welfare or, you know, sexually attuned and aware and fully in command of your own divine self-realized feminine power. They will try. And for the most part, they will fail.

Here is why -- and this must also be made very, very clear: Women have always had ab0rtions. They always have, and they always will, and the antichoice crowd can scowl and legislate and stomp their pious bunioned feet and refuse to ever have good sex in their entire lives and they will only contribute to the pain and suffering (and yes, death) of thousands of poor women worldwide, for whom basic health care funding has been cut due to Bush's ab0rtion stance. How proud they must be.

Hundreds, nay thousands, of years, across every culture and every religion and ethnicity and age group, women have chosen to end their procreative cycles. In enlightened ancient Athens, the cradle of modern civilization, some 5,000 years ago, ab0rtion was legal and ethically accepted, as with other famed Greek city-states. You can look it up. http://www.napa.ufl.edu/2002news/ancientab0rtion.htm

From visiting a medicine women or a shaman for a tincture or a certain ab0rtion-inducing herb, or even a stick thrust into the uterus, to modern health clinics where the ab0rtion procedure is safe and the woman's life is protected, procreative control has always beem, essentially, a given, no matter what someone else's interpretation of the bible might decree, and no matter how much they've tried to bury RU-486 or restrict access to the "morning after" pill or prohibit condom
distribution in schools.

And of course any attempt to stifle this natural law, any attempt to outlaw a woman's spiritually and karmically empowered right to terminate her own reproductive cycle, any attempt to control it with guilt and punishment and murderous ultra-right-wing Christian firebombs, simply results more harm to women, more of the infamous, potentially deadly back-alley ab0rtions featuring the ubiquitous coat hanger -- still in use, you can be assured, in many repressed states. This is not even a debate. This is what happens when you try to cram a personal religious-based ideology down everyone's karma. Just ask the Taliban.

And women will never ever stop exercising this right, not in your lifetime or the next or the next after that. It's true.

Women will always control their own reproduction. Women will always find a way to circumvent any "pro-family" D.C. group, any Kansas Senator's priggish misogyny, any aww-shucks death-penalty-lovin' faith-based cowboy president, any cabal of chanting antichoice advocates who are still chomping at the bit of oppression.

All of whom should, of course, be praying right this very moment to their own fire-breathing God that their own sadly underinformed, surely guilt-ridden, but still sexually ravenous teenage daughters don't make their own casual, unfortunate, heat-of-the-moment backseat mistakes.

Mistakes which will, due to these parent's lack of open sexual communication, or their refusal to talk about condoms, or the Pill, or to teach their kids to respect and appreciate and safely enjoy their bodies and their sexualities, or their lover's, or how to think for themselves and revere their own personal divine sexual procreative power, that said daughter doesn't herself end up in that very same dank back alley.

Terrified, guilt-ravaged, deeply afraid of telling her furious parents of the mistake, and hence suffering the painful -- and potentially lethal -- consequences.
---