Why I Vote with My Uterus
My uterus, although not functional, is very clever. It understands that any political candidate who does not respect it does not, on a fundamental level, respect me. I do not vote for anyone who thinks that I am not a person capable of making personal decisions based on my values, life situation, goals, and desires.Over the years, I discovered something very interesting. So-called "pro-life" politicians - who love telling me that their religious morals are superior to mine - don't actually have much understanding or respect for life. First, they seem to believe that pregnancy is something that a woman just does for a little while with absolutely no consequences. They don't seem to understand that pregnancy is devastating to a woman's body. At the very least, the changes in hormone levels affect everything from how a woman feels to how she thinks. Pregnancy can cause everything from nausea to swollen ankles to diabetes. It can force a woman who needs to work to not be able to perform her job, putting her (and her family) at economic risk. And while less common today than in the past, pregnancy can kill a woman. For someone who wants to have a child, these risks are willingly accepted. But to force a woman to endanger her health and possibly life is unreasonable and shows that a politician could care less about the lives of actual women.
On a second level, "pro-life" politicians have suspicious disregard for what it takes to keep a person alive after they are born. Life is not being born and then you are done. Life is sustained at the most basic level through food, shelter, and clothing. Yet "pro-life" politicians are the ones leading the charge to cut support for affordable housing, for heating assistance, and for food stamps. Forget health insurance. It seems that kids with health issues like asthma don't actually need inhalers to help them breathe. It's ironic that someone who claims to care so much for life couldn't care less if a baby starved to death, had chronic untreated health issues, or had no where safe to live.
Beyond the basics to support life, there are the elements of life that give it true meaning beyond mere survival. Oddly enough, "pro-life" politicians don't seem to support aspects of life that make us human. Where's the support for early childhood education? The money to equalize the playing field in elementary and high school education? For financial aid to help low-income kids go to college? Hmmm....
"Pro-life" politicians are not pro-life at all, but merely anti-self-determination. The fact is that politicians who understand the need to legal and accessible abortion are also the same ones who support programs that truly are pro-life. They respect individual decision-making, sex ed programs that help people make informed decisions that prevent unintended pregnancies, and go an extra mile to provide life-saving public programs that in the long run, might actually discourage abortion by providing a safety net for families and children. Pro-choice politicians also recognize that as a woman, I have a right to life, too.
(Go one step beyond voting for pro-choice candidates and tell them to repeal the Hyde Amendment, which prevents federal Medicaid funds from paying for abortion services. Today, on the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, show your support for accessible abortion by signing the "Hyde-30 Years is Enough! petition. Legal abortion is critical for all women, but useless to those who can't afford the procedure. My uterus thanks your support.)
Labels: irony, other rants
posted by Suzanne @ 9:09 AM
and I'm more than delighted to send some your way. Spread (ha ha!) the word!
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14 Comments:
Excellent post, Suzanne. I couldn't agree more.
Here, here! Well said, Suzanne!
Right on!
W00t!
One of the most annoying aspects of the pro-life campaign is that I apparently need protection from myself, lest I shirk my womanly duties and use my brain instead of my uterus... asshats.
You have an agreer in me!
This is my first time passing through your spot. BRILLIANT POST! I'll be visiting more often!
I'm just wondering if any of you ladies has ever seen an abortion? I couldn't watch much, but did see a few seconds of one on the internet. It's hellish, little feet and hands hacked off.
Yes, it's disgusting. And yet people who have never been in the position of considering their options when pregnant are very quick to tell young women to go and do something that we all know will stay with the woman for the rest of her life. You can't destroy your own flesh and blood and live easy.
I'm not expecting this to convince anyone. I'm a woman, a bit of a dinosaur I guess, who refused to have an abortion 35 years ago. I had nothing, absolutely nothing to offer a child in the material sense, but faith, and today I am so proud of my very well educated kid - who's a woman now of course, and who has brought so much love into the world, whose very presence has mended bridges, and who has made a mark that will be remembered long after she passes on.
Yes, I'm pro-life. The only alternative is pro-death. There is nothing in between.
Valerie
Valerie, what you watched was propaganda, pure and simple. Since most abortions take place in the first 8 weeks of gestation, there are no hands and feet to be lopped off. There are no fingernails. If you don't want to understand actual fetal development and base your opinions on scientific fact, that is up to you. However, you are no more pro-life than I am. You are just ignorant of basic facts.
I also add that the point of being pro-choice is that we support your personal decision to not have an abortion. No one forced you to live by her morals and values the way you would impose yours on others by insisting that we are "pro-death" when there is not consensus on when life begins and different religions believe different things. Your decision was right for you, and that is wonderful. However, you do not have the right to make that decision for me or accuse me of being "pro-death" when in fact I support everyone's right to a fair start in life.
Oh, damn it, Suzanne. I have just spent the past two hours enjoying your company, am thousands of words behind my projected word-count for the morning and am now drawn (albeit squealing puritan work-ethic protests) to contribute my own pennysworth.
The worst of it is that I am one of those who happened on your site when in pursuit of Jewish pussy. That is, I have just been commissioned to write about the wondrous, potent, dreaded ‘C-word’, and was investigating the ursprache radical ‘cu/cw’ for the quintessentially female when I was referred to ‘Hebrew – cus’. I googled this and at once found myself translated to your linguistically unrelated (I think?) but entirely relevant site.
Right. I entirely agree with your post in re ‘pro-lifers’. The principal problem is clearly outlined and manifested by your correspondent Valerie above when she declares, “The only alternative is pro-death. There is nothing in-between”. Such polarisation is characteristic of our alienated, Disneyfied age. Death is not the antithesis of life but its corollary and its closest ally.
If an unexpected guest arrives at the farmhouse where I live and work in Devon, England, I may go out and kill one of my chickens. I will not - nor have I in twenty years – buy from a supermarket a flabby, pinkish, puckered thing sheathed in plastic. That pink thing, disguised as a foodstuff, lived (if you can call it that) in congested darkness and squalour. My fowl live amongst friends, ranging free. Yet those same supermarket customers will chide me as a brute for wringing a bird’s neck because for them the fact of death is more significant than the manner and quality of life – or, to put it another way, their delicate, sympathetic sensibilities are more important than the lifelong suffering of a bird. No matter that any creature, if left to live out its ‘natural’ span, will die not borne by angels from a bed surrounded by relatives but alone, in pain and consumed by others, be they predators, bacteria, viruses or their own brethren. The selfish fear of death – entirely natural but ethically valueless – has been sympathetically translated into a pseudo-morality.
Valerie exhibits the other grossly immoral trait of ‘pro-lifers’, allowing aesthetics to replace morality. Yes, an abortion is distasteful to the sympathetic lay watcher, but I could write an accurate account of any surgical operation which would turn the lay reader’s stomach. Should we then suspend all appendectomies because we do not enjoy reading about them over breakfast? Abortions should be avoided. So should shit on the pavement and death for as long as is practicable, but death and shit are amongst the means whereby life is maintained and regenerated.
Oh, and while we’re at it, can we dispose for once and for all of the conditional perfect as an ethical touchstone? “That aborted foetus could have been… “ No, it could not, save in another universe subject to different laws. It can only be what it is. All that this means is, “I can conjure in my mind the following picture.” If we were to construct a morality from the pictures in my mind… wow! And dear God no! And wow! And dear God, no! Ad infinitum. To found an ethical decision on a conditional perfect were to allow a doctrinaire moralist to ban everything on the grounds that it might prove dangerous, anti-social or pleasurable.
A couple of weeks ago, I was driving along a country lane in Cornwall by night. I was following another car bound for the same destination. This other cat slowed, stopped, veered and climbed the verge to avoid something in its path, then drove on. I found a cat in my headlight beams, its entire rear-end mashed into the asphalt. I killed it instantly with a dragon-kick to the head and threw it into the hedge for the crows. On arrival at the party, I found the woman of the couple still in tears and regaling the company with the horror of the sight. “So why didn’t you do something about it?” I asked. “Oh, it’s all right for you,” said the husband. “We happen to be vegetarians and animal-lovers…”
And no doubt pro-lifers.
Hey ho. Back to work.
Thanks for an enjoyable morning. I must say that I have no prejudices about the hirsuteness or otherwise of snatches, just so they be sweet and expressive. Sorry.
All the best,
Mark
You guys just don't get it, do you? What I saw was not false. Propaanda it may be, just as your so called "choice" ads are propoganda. So what? facts are facts. What do you think of partial-birth abortion?
I don't and never will understand how a woman can KILL her own unborn child.
Furthermore, I have over the years, and particularly when my child was a baby, met many, many women who had had abortions. They would come and admire the baby, then tell me the sad story. "I can't have children due to scar tissue when I had my abortion." This was discussed in a health food store. Over the years, I would hear the same story. I'm a good listener, and a mom, and maybe that's why they spoke to me, all walks of life, all professions.
All I will say is, I never met a woman who could look me in the eye and say: "What I did was a good thing." There was always the regret, the sadness, and even mental health issues which followed them into their autumn years.
Don't get so sucked into the politically correct culture of death that you destroy your own souls. And I'm not speaking religiously (though I am a religious person). I just feel so sorry for women who's been conned into this. A friend of mine had an abortion at 18 - she's now nearly 50. She told me with tears in her eyes how much she regretted being conned into it out of fear for the future, by "helpful" feminists!
No, ladies, it's not like having a tooth pulled, nor is an abortion akin to a surgical procedure relating to another organ. The Fetus is a human being, not a liver or a kidney, or even a dog or a cat. (Though I am also an animal lover and I veer closer to vegetarianism than meat eating.)
I know I won't convince you. You have learned well all the pro-death statements to make. You're all so good at that. Thank God your mothers decided you were worth having, that you didn't get cut up before birth!
Valerie
Sorry, but I do get it. Irrational plays of emotion (how would I like it if my mom aborted me? I wouldn't have an opinion, as I wouldn't be here and that's how it goes. I don't even understand a question like that as it makes no sense.) and your one case study are pretty unconvincing, especially since I know many women who had abortions and years later continue to feel nothing but relief and gratitude.
Take a science course. Then we'll talk.
Aight, I'm jumping in.
Suzanne, this was incredibly well-stated.
Valerie, you saw something on the internet? Why would you believe it? I can film whatever I want and make a video depicting whatever I choose and post it on the internet. So can anyone. If you had seen this procedure in person, then you'd have a decent basis for argument.
Another point about all the people that have expressed regret at having abortions 30+ years ago. No, having an abortion is not an easy decision and I'm sure there is regret. However, often times there is more regret when the mother is killed during childbirth, or the child is killed due to abuse and regret. Also, medical procedures have changed quite a bit. Gone are the wire hangers. Nowadays an injection or a pill will prevent a baby from being left in a dumpster behind a motel.
Great post and I LOVED the title!
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