abortion

Somewhere over the last couple of years I earned myself the nickname "gypsy". I get it, I can't stay in one place, I like the rush of visiting a new city, standing in a crowd of a million people with the knowledge that not one of them knows anything about me, I like being invisible there, at least during the day, but then in the early hours of the morning in some run down hostel I always end up laying awake wondering how I can stop the feeling of isolation from ripping me apart. I don't get it.

Being alone has been a norm for me since I was a kid, I was always the loner in my family, and it seems to me that the more I expressed myself, and stood up for myself, the more isolated I became, some of that I cherish and some of it I hate. Feminism is one of those things, it can be isolating, it can be hard to express for fear of isolation, for me anyway. Especially in a community which supports abuse against women and pretty much encourages silence. In lots of ways I love it because it is an instant separator between me and them. People who I don't want to know or befriend or even try to convince that I have a voice in this damn community and I should be able to use it when I want to, and how I want to.

Dear Obama,

I really really wanted you to be MY president. The type of guy who I could say, yeah, that dude is my president. I'm happy HE is in political office. I wanted to be able to scream your name from the roof tops.

Then you had to ruin it all by putting more troops in Afghanistan and you haven't ended the war. I thought you were all "anti-war", that is what you told US. That is why all of us who marched on Washington against the war voted for YOU. To BRING OUR TROOPS HOME! Not just move them around a little.

Then you made me all happy by having your people say you wouldn't allow the federal government to come in and arrest people for growing marijuana in states where it is legal. Ah, then what the heck happened in California?

Just lately I have been trying to perform a whole bunch of turn around's in my life, I guess an easier way to say that is I have been reviewing my flaw's (which sounds terrible, but it has been anything but, more therapeutic than anything else). One thing that has come out of this is that I am at my best, happiest and most inspired when I am not living in New Zealand, and was at my most happiest when I moved to Canada for a whole year, even though that also involved a whole lot of regrouping and dealing with the stuff I left behind, which was not a lot of fun, but it was necessary to say the least.

Abortion is okay!

On the one hand, I'm happy when I see other people being outward about this take: that abortion is plain OKAY. Not a necessary evil, not a sad shame, not something unfortunate that should-be-avoided-at-all-costs-except-that-it-should-of-course-still-be-an-option... but OKAY.

On the other hand, I have mixed feelings about how this writer goes about their opinion--both in how they practice it and how they express it. It's a pretty heavy blog entry. The writer--whose gender I cannot determine--works/volunteers at an abortion clinic and a pregnancy clinic. A choice quote:

"To all of those women waiting in the clinic’s nurse station for their pregnancy results, I said ... “If you think abortion is wrong, I’m not going to sign this referral letter.”

Just watch her speech at a Right To Life dinner in Indiana that I heard on C-SPAN on my way home from DC.

http://motherofallconservatives.com/2009/04/sarah-palins-speech-to-indiana-pro-life-group/

OMG. In one speech she says extremely offensive things about disabled people, admits to considering aborting her son and says she knows what women/girls are going through when they seek abortion.

Oh yeah and those Neanderthals who think you can't work while being pregnant ARE THE SAME SEXIST JERKS THAT YOUR POLITICAL PARTY IS MADE OF! Oh and by the way LIBERTY (according to wikipedia)"is a concept of political philosophy and identifies the condition in which an individual has the right to act according to his or her own will." Not according to what freewill a few pro-lifers would like us to have.

Is McCain-speak for overturning Roe V. Wade.

Culture of life? Is it a culture of life to continue a war that was started on false intelligence?

Or to cut funding for a center that helped teenage moms like his VP did?

Or make women pay for their own rape kits?

Or follow the direction that other countries without abortion have and make it so difficult for women to get abortions that even when medically needed doctors refuse to perform abortions for fear they will be fined or jailed?

What is so scary about McCain is that he could care less about human life. He admitted in a 1997 interview with 60 minutes to killing innocent women and children in Vietnam, to being a war criminal. More then a decade later he is now calling himself a war-hero to win an election.

I'm not the type of person to read the paper. I prefer my media to come filtered through the liberal lens of feministing, NPR or google. However I got into the habit of reading the local paper after one of my co-workers kept leaving it on the breakroom table. Of course I was drawn to the opinion section.

If negative stuff about Obama written by locals did not bother me enough I just had to read the opinion of a conservative nut job Cal Thomas. The first article I read was how Democrats are pushing away "faith voters". Voters of course who are of the Catholic faith and are also pro-life.

I saw the documentary Jesus Camp on A&E last night. This part really got to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mefXbLXlRpw

Later in the film the children stand in front of the capital with the word "Life" taped over their mouths.

I'm not against children being in political rallies or being involved in political action. If my daughter asked me at young age what abortion was I would explain it to her. This kind of propaganda is dangerous. The way in which the woman says "don't be a promise breaker" is scary. Such a small sentence, but it could have a huge impact for the girls that are in that room and then young boys that are "warriors for Jesus".

Today is national Blog for Choice Day.

I did not sign up because I was not sure whether I'd have the time, but I think it's really pretty important to get the word out anyway. The topic this time around is: Why is it important to vote pro-choice?

Here's why I think voting pro-choice is important: We're all going to be faced with tough choices at some point in our lives, and with a lot of those choices, we can never know how we'll react until it happens to us. It's easy to judge, and it's easy to rationalize and theorize, but ultimately all of that means very little when the situation arises. And when we're in those situations, it's always best to have as many options as possible, and to have information about all of them, and to then be able to make the decision that is best for us at the time.

Last week at work I was faced with a big decision. A Woman, who we know well at work, who is also quite pregnant right now, came into the bar. She had obviously been drinking and she ordered some more drinks for herself and her friends who were with her from my boss.

First of all, I was pretty shocked that my boss, who has 3 children, served her the alcohol, but also that the friends who she was there with were encouraging her to drink when she is pregnant. So when she went to sit down at a table, I asked my boss what we can do about that, and why he served her when it is harming the child inside of her. He said that there is nothing we can do about it because it is her decision and we are not allowed to get involved in it.

http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/06pdf/05-380.pdf

Today the Supreme Court of the US in a 5-4 ruling upheld the ban on partial birth abortion, despite the lack of a provision that allowed for the life of the mother to override the ban. It's being greeted by anger or elation, depending on your affiliation, and is seen as another step on the slippery slope of abortion rights in the United States.

What do you all think about it? (If you don't want to read the whole thing, the dissent at the bottom by Ginsberg is definitely worth reading.)

To add to Brooke's recent post about how cheap (and moral) being pro-choice is, it's also very expensive to be pro-life in this world. You see, I frequent a message board and group on Facebook called Support A Woman's Right To Choose, which is probably the biggest pro-choice group on the site, with over 90,000 members and counting.

While we often cite science or statistics from sources such as the Guttmacher Institute, today Trevor Sorenson created his own approximations on how much criminalizing abortion as murder would cost. Surprise! It doesn't exactly fit into the Republican party line, which seems to think that being pro-life and lowering taxes is within any realm of possibility.

A couple of years ago, if you had asked me how I feel about abortion I would have called myself a fence sitter. Today, on the day before the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, I find myself sitting to write down three articles in defense of it. I am pro-choice, let me tell you why.

I am pro-choice because I am a feminist, and I truly believe that women cannot achieve the same status as men in our society until we have full control over our own bodies. In the many countries across the world where this has been acknowledged, abortion is legal. Here in the United States a woman’s right to choose is under constant attack, and all over the world women are forced to undergo illegal abortions because their nation has refused to recognize or protect their rights.

Via Feministe:

Vanessa at Plucky Punk , inspired by Biting Beaver’s story, has come up with an action plan:

If you’re not already well versed in the travesty that happened to Biting Beaver, click here to read her story and here to read the consequences.

Long story short: an adult woman with several children in a committed relationship was not able to obtain emergency contraception in time (due to some serious backwards actions on the part of several doctors and nurses) and became pregnant against her will. Now she must pay for an abortion she really can’t afford.

We, as AGA bloggers and by virtue of our age, have never lived in a country without Griswold and the right to access to birth control. We've never lived without Roe and the right to choose abortion. And it's easy to forget that not so very long ago these rights were greatly restricted or withheld altogether. We must remember the work of our foremothers; and the times when we forget, there is one group of women who never fail to remind me.

Before the Feminist Majority Foundation, Before NARAL Pro-Choice America, before NOW--

Heather Booth made her first referral.