I think we have to change the subject

[BlancheSplanchnik]

As we all know, the stick the anti-abortion people use to bash logic in the back of the knee is the it's a babeeee meme. Sorry, a group of cells is not a child. (no new point I'm making here, I know)

By referring to abortion as "choice", I realize that at least part of the intent in those early days of the fight, was to get away from alot of connotations.

But I think that's backfired, and taken away from the urgency of the real issue, which is, Criminalizing Abortion Kills Women. I would want to see "pro-choice" efforts turn from privacy arguments to "save women's lives" efforts. The point, to me, is weighing suffering; and so who suffers more, a group of cells or a living breathing woman?

What do you think?

addendum
I've thought many times that the religious ideologues should be confronted with pictures of the horrible, blood-soaked results of their anti-abortion fatwa, though it would be stooping to their crude level. ...I won't include a pic, but you can easily find them using Google- image.

Here's a link to an Ann Telnaes cartoon which makes the point very well--- (it's copy-protected so the pic won't show here.)
http://www.cartoonistgroup.com/store/add.php?iid=11339

Here's a pic and link to a film from the Feminist Majority Foundation, made in 1990 that focuses on the danger to women
http://feminist.org/welcome/chronology/fmf_1990.html


(hi there, my first time posting to this group, btw. :hi: )

[glowing]

1. Pro-Women's Health should have been the name.

[tekisui]

2. But, it IS about privacy and it IS about choice.

To give that point, would be to lose everything. The health of the mother and burden on the society can be reinforcing arguments, but to give up the right to privacy and choice is to lose.

It would be allowing one groups religious beliefs to write the law.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

3. I don't think focusing on the dire consequences

of criminalizing nullifies your point at all....

in my opinion, privacy and choice are corollaries... without respect for the value of a woman's life, and safe access as testament thereto, privacy and choice are moot

this is how it seems to me.....

[tekisui]

6. I don't disagree with that.

I just highly value the importance of choice and privacy as one of the focal points as precedent. When we win it on those terms, we can build the arguments for many other cases against discrimination and civil rights.

The respect of a woman's life, and safe access to treatment are very strong arguments, though. And, if that angle could secure the rights of women in this country, I am all for it. I think the burden of unwanted pregnancies and unwanted children on society as a whole could be used as well. Unwanted children are more likely to be abused, and have social or legal problems as they grow up.

Really, there are so many reasons why it should not even be an issue. And, the framing has a lot to do with why it still is. Examining that is a worthy exercise.:thumbsup:

[BlancheSplanchnik]

9. yes, absolutely, the magnitude of suffering resulting from unwanted children

is a huge part of the whole equation. And I am certainly not minimizing the importance of choice and privacy.

Framing (yep that's the word I wanted, couldn't think of it) makes such a difference in how any issue is perceived. The whole issue of framing, w.r.t. many subjects is examined at Rockridge Institute...I haven't checked there in a while, but it's very good, and reproductive rights are among the topics.

It just always seems to me that because the anti-abortion hard liners view it so narrowly as a life or death issue (confusing blastocysts with fully formed human beings, in fact putting barely differentiated masses of cells above the lives of women), the life-or-death consequences for living, breathing women should take center stage for our argument. I'm pretty sure the "pro-life" believers make no consideration whatsoever of the boatloads of suffering generated by forced pregnancy/birth. Anything less than black or white is lost on them.

For me, it's always been a question of lessening suffering, and therefore what must be weighed is, who suffers more?

[nichomachus]

4. No one every referred to an abortion as a choice

I think you're buying into the anti-choice propaganda.

And abortion is an abortion.

The decision whether to have one or not have on is a choice.

I don't advocate that people have abortions -- that's none of my business.

I do advocate that they have the choice -- that's their business.

The pro-choice movement, despite what the anti-choice people say, is not pro-abortion. It's pro-choice.

Please keep that distinction clear.

[qwlauren35]

20. This is why I'm Pro-Abortion.

I do advocate for abortion. I think it's more than a choice. I think it needs to be encouraged in a lot of cases.

Kind of like the difference between equal opportunity (Pro-choice) and Affirmative Action (Pro-abortion).

I think of Pro-Choice as a compromise. Because one of the choices is to do nothing, and so the baby is born, with no planning and no resources. And in respecting the "right to privacy" we end up with an additional burden on society.

The choice a woman makes (or doesn't make) regarding her pregnancy has a permanent impact on the world at large.

I think that's why it's mandated in China. And that is the difference between China and the US. If a person is truly Pro-Choice, then the mandatory abortions in China would be as repugnant, offensive and protest-worthy as the Pro-life movement is in the US.

I am not convinced that a woman and more importantly, a girl-child should have the right to carry a child to term that she does not wish to care for.

That is the awkwardness of American Civil Liberties. Our freedoms often impact society, and sometimes very negatively. But they cannot easily be placed in check.

If I could, I would insist that every child born into America to a parent or parents who cannot raise the child without public assistance, would be expected to allow others to openly adopt the child. And if it did not impair the health of the mother, an IUD would be imposed upon her. And if such a device existed for men, i.e. something that physically blocks sperm, or forces it to be absorbed within the body instead of being integrated with semen, I would also require it.

In effect, having an unplanned child should be illegal.

I guess that's about as anti-choice as one can get.

Perhaps I belong in China. I think their law makes more sense. Even though it gets abused, it works for them. I think Pro-Choice is probably the position that most completely corresponds to the spirit of personal freedom and individualism that is part of the American worldview. But I see it as a compromise, and way too fragile for my liking.

[Jade Fox]

5. The anti-choice people don't care about the woman life....

I believe they care more about the potential child, and believe any woman who seeks an abortion deserves she gets.

We need to focus on that--the misogyny of the anti-choice people, and also on their hostility toward sexuality. Again, they believe any woman not having marital-leading-to-childbirth sex deserves what she gets. This explains why the anti-choice movement is branching out into restricting access to birth-control. They want to force sexually active women into giving birth.

We need to confront the anti-choice movement on not really wanting to stop abortion, but to punish sexually active women and force them into traditional marriage.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

10. I agree that misogyny is also at work here.

I just finished posting above; I was saying my opinion is that nothing less than reducing the issue to black and white, "pro-life" kills women, will have an effect.

Of course, that means that the culture needs to move towards humanizing women in all frames of reference. (i.e. violence against women currently is of more interest as entertainment. As always, media teaches attitudes.)

[ismnotwasm]

7. Framing is important

But I think choice rather than be used less, needs to be defined more. It should be simple right? What is choice? The standard forced birth (I do NOT use the terms "pro-life" or anti-abortion at all) argument is What choice does the "baby" have?" then proceed to go to great ridiculous length to justify a anti-woman and, quite frankly and anti-life position.
A group of cells with human DNA is "alive"--so are cancer cells, and so what? What gives it precedence over the rights of a living woman? What convoluted stretch of the imagination makes the development of this belief, by either males or females, possible?

A forced birth position not only threatens women's health, it is an inherent belief that women are incapable of making decisions. It has it's roots in some very old opinions about women and their ability to think, and what their place is in society.
A woman should have choice over her body and her pregnancy, but the old and sometimes new, philosophers, ethicists and legal minds were taught and then retaught from a centuries old position of women's basic inferiority. This position is institutionalized although it's being challenged thank goodness.

So I'd use both. "Saving women's lives" is important, and it has been used, but we live in a society were women continue to be devalued. Choice is a powerful and empowering concept that can strip away the emotionalism of abortion and give women the maternal moral authority that is theirs by basic human rights and the powerful biology of female gender.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

11. I would think that pushing the fact that safe abortion access saves women's lives

would force the devaluation into the open--where it needs to be.

Your remarks about old opinions about women, our place in society, our biological function, our existence as more than happy-wombs makes me think of the predominance of pregnancy in t.v. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems that there's an awful lot of imagery of pregnancy as ... I don't know...all-consuming? Lacking complexity? Hrrm...how to articulate it.... Maybe "utterly and falsely romanticized" would be the best description?

I just feel kind of bombarded by messages telling me there is no other way of being for women than to be thrilled to give up one's life, career, identity for pregnancy. the movie "Knocked Up" comes to mind here. (haaa, it occurs to me: as close-ups of ejaculation are the money shot for men in porn, close-ups holding the baby are the money shot for women in prime-time. Uh oh, I may get in trouble for that comparison. :evilgrin: )

[ismnotwasm]

19. LOL, You have a very good point

(In trouble or not) Let's call it The Sacred Sperm Syndrome.
And perhaps you're right, hammering it home with examples of women's health in danger or just plain lost, might be very effective. For example, without going into great detail, I have a patient who developed severe gestational diabetes. She now, several years later, has just about every complication you can get from diabetes (I'm a renal/dialyisis/tranplant nurse) I know other examples.


Here is a part of a post of mine from the pro-choice forum;

I just finished an essay on unwanted pregnancy, also covering the phenomenon of "rejected pregnancy" as well as "Denied pregnancy-- Women who deny that they are pregnant sometimes until after birth. The rejection is so complete it affects the perceptual reality of these women. Anyway, cited in the essay is a book I haven't read, but am planning to order. "S", A Novel about the Balkans by Croatian journalist Slavenka Drakulic. She fictionalized the accounts of the serial raped women in the Serbian-run internment camps. Evidently the rape rooms were called "women's room's"

"In the novel, S does not initially recognize the fact that she is pregnant. After five months gestation, she is shocked and horrified when a visit to th Doctor reveals that she is pregnant by one of her former captors. The doctor is not surprised at S's lack of subjective awareness, saying that hers is "a normal reaction, that very person has not only psychological but also physiological mechanisms to protect them in extraordinary situations"

"After leaving the hospital, S notices a weight in her belly for the first time: "it is there, at the very bottom, like a piece of lead. A tumor which will grow and spread and become increasingly visible. She is terrorized by the feeling that a cancer is growing inside her: "S. fought this alien body, the sick cells that multiplied inside her against her will....When she shut her eyes she say the foreign cells quite clearly, multiplying, occupying her from within. She saw herself as an enormous receptacle the sole source of which was to feed the voracious cluster of cells"


Then a quick line from the end of the essay;
"Contemporary discourse on pregnancy, with its attentiveness to the positive aspects of pregnancy to the exclusion of all else, continues to silence women who cannot describe their experience in unambiguously positive terms. Until women have the vocabulary with which to express ambivalent and even negative feelings regarding pregnancies especially unwanted pregnancies, they will continue to suffer in silence.


In other words, IT'S ok not to want a baby, It's OK to choose to be "childless" (Even that word-"childless" bugs me, child-free sounds better) Pregnancy IS NOT the pinnacle of womanhood. And it's OK to hate being pregnant. And Fuck yes, pregnancy and childbirth can be dangerous.

[patrice]

8. I prefer to say that if it's really about Life and Families, then Choice has a higher probability of

resulting in optimal conditions, economic, social, and psychological, for Life and for Families.

If they disagree with this, then they have to admit that it's not REALLY about Life and Families (like they say it is); it's about something else, so if there's the opportunity maybe we can get to what it's REALLY about. The little bit that I have persued this line has produced two issues: Some anti-Choice people are most concerned that Abortion is being used more or less as regular Birth-Control, rather than abstinence or BC pills - and - Other anti-Choice people think that Late-Term Abortion is commonplace. Though I'm pretty certain both of these characterizations are seriously distorted, to the extent that either of them may be true, I share their concerns.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

12. yeah, I don't think it really IS about LIFE and families for them.....

the hard-liners and naive church people. has anyone ever noted how they respond to the question, If you're for life, why do you support illegal wars, avoid adopting, etc. etc.?

[iverglas]

13. Canadian abortion laws

were struck down in 1988 (after years of essentially being disregarded, and juries refusing to convict, and such) on the basis of the constitutional guarantees of the right to life and liberty and security of the person. None of that privacy crap.

You might be interested in the decision: R. v. Morgentaler:

http://csc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/1988/1988rcs1-30/1988rcs1-30.html

There's a lot of fairly technical stuff that would not be of interest, but there are things like:

At the most basic, physical and emotional level, every pregnant woman is told by the section that she cannot submit to a generally safe medical procedure that might be of clear benefit to her unless she meets criteria entirely unrelated to her own priorities and aspirations. Not only does the removal of decision-making power threaten women in a physical sense; the indecision of knowing whether an abortion will be granted inflicts emotional stress. Section 251 clearly interferes with a woman's bodily integrity in both a physical and emotional sense. Forcing a woman, by threat of criminal sanction, to carry a foetus to term unless she meets certain criteria unrelated to her own priorities and aspirations, is a profound interference with a woman's body and thus a violation of security of the person.

And the estimable former Madam Justice Bertha Wilson (our first woman Supreme Court judge, appointed in 1982):

Our cases long have recognized that the Constitution embodies a promise that a certain private sphere of individual liberty will be kept largely beyond the reach of government . . . . That promise extends to women as well as to men. Few decisions are more personal and intimate, more properly private, or more basic to individual dignity and autonomy, than a woman's decision -- with the guidance of her physician and within the limits specified in Roe -- whether to end her pregnancy. A woman's right to make that choice freely is fundamental. Any other result, in our view, would protect inadequately a central part of the sphere of liberty that our law guarantees equally to all.

In my opinion, the respect for individual decision-making in matters of fundamental personal importance reflected in the American jurisprudence also informs the Canadian Charter. Indeed, as the Chief Justice pointed out in R. v. Big M Drug Mart Ltd., beliefs about human worth and dignity "are the sine qua non of the political tradition underlying the Charter". I would conclude, therefore, that the right to liberty contained in s. 7 guarantees to every individual a degree of personal autonomy over important decisions intimately affecting their private lives.

The question then becomes whether the decision of a woman to terminate her pregnancy falls within this class of protected decisions. I have no doubt that it does. This decision is one that will have profound psychological, economic and social consequences for the pregnant woman. The circumstances giving rise to it can be complex and varied and there may be, and usually are, powerful considerations militating in opposite directions. It is a decision that deeply reflects the way the woman thinks about herself and her relationship to others and to society at large. It is not just a medical decision; it is a profound social and ethical one as well. Her response to it will be the response of the whole person.

It is probably impossible for a man to respond, even imaginatively, to such a dilemma not just because it is outside the realm of his personal experience (although this is, of course, the case) but because he can relate to it only by objectifying it, thereby eliminating the subjective elements of the female psyche which are at the heart of the dilemma. As Noreen Burrows, lecturer in European Law at the University of Glasgow, has pointed out in her essay on "International Law and Human Rights: the Case of Women's Rights", in Human Rights: From Rhetoric to Reality (1986), the history of the struggle for human rights from the eighteenth century on has been the history of men struggling to assert their dignity and common humanity against an overbearing state apparatus. The more recent struggle for women's rights has been a struggle to eliminate discrimination, to achieve a place for women in a man's world, to develop a set of legislative reforms in order to place women in the same position as men (pp. 81-82). It has not been a struggle to define the rights of women in relation to their special place in the societal structure and in relation to the biological distinction between the two sexes. Thus, women's needs and aspirations are only now being translated into protected rights. The right to reproduce or not to reproduce which is in issue in this case is one such right and is properly perceived as an integral part of modern woman's struggle to assert her dignity and worth as a human being.

Given then that the right to liberty guaranteed by s. 7 of the Charter gives a woman the right to decide for herself whether or not to terminate her pregnancy, does s. 251 of the Criminal Code violate this right? Clearly it does. The purpose of the section is to take the decision away from the woman and give it to a committee. Furthermore, as the Chief Justice correctly points out, at p. 56, the committee bases its decision on "criteria entirely unrelated to own priorities and aspirations". The fact that the decision whether a woman will be allowed to terminate her pregnancy is in the hands of a committee is just as great a violation of the woman's right to personal autonomy in decisions of an intimate and private nature as it would be if a committee were established to decide whether a woman should be allowed to continue her pregnancy. Both these arrangements violate the woman's right to liberty by deciding for her something that she has the right to decide for herself.

(her reasons start at page 161)

[BlancheSplanchnik]

14. Iverglass, thanks this is great!

I'm not in thinking mode yet, but there are some beautiful statements in here.

I'm not in the legal field either, so it's not like I'm seeking info to make a case. This is just a big issue for me, and I like to think and learn....

I wonder, in Canada, is there a big population of religious fanatics creating a big stir about the issue, upsetting the people who'd rather not think of complexities, and trying to slither their tentacles into the political process? (but come on, Blanche, tell us how you really feel...)

I know Obama has stated that among his first intentions after taking office, he will reverse a number of ideologically based bush actions (DU link, from WaPo: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... ); in the first paragraph of the post, reproductive rights are on the list. YEAH!!!!!

And of course, he'll probably have the opportunity to appoint a Supreme court judge or two so that's another happy note!
Ha, I wonder if he'll make an executive decision to fire "faith based" judges??? ;)

[iverglas]

16. I rather like it

There are some slight problematic things in the decision -- and there are numerous sets of not entirely consistent reasons -- but there's some good stuff in it. Some of what some of the judges said about women's priorities and aspirations, and in particular autonomy, was also said by Kucinich almost verbatim when he made his about-face. That was one reason why I thought he had had a sincere change of mind after genuine self-examination. None of that "safe, legal and rare" shit.

I wonder, in Canada, is there a big population of religious fanatics creating a big stir about the issue, upsetting the people who'd rather not think of complexities, and trying to slither their tentacles into the political process?

Too many, but they mostly live in Alberta. ;)

About 20% and rising of the Cdn population self-reports as having no religion, in the 2006 census. (Nearly double since 2001.) You have 40-something % Baptist, I think. We have a similar percentage RC, because of Quebec to a large extent, but our RCers, particularly in Quebec, are in large part quite secular and often in the vanguard on progressive social policy. Quebec was where juries in the 1980s refused to convict Morgentaler for performing abortions without going through hospital committees.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

18. yes, that's what I liked so much...

this: "Some of what some of the judges said about women's priorities and aspirations, and in particular autonomy, was also said by Kucinich almost verbatim when he made his about-face."
That was so refreshing, the understanding that women do have lives beyond the contents of our wombs!!

thanks, Iverglass :thumbsup:

[iverglas]

15. dang, too late to edit

I look back and realized I'd made a bit of a muddle. When I said:

And the estimable former Madam Justice Bertha Wilson (our first woman Supreme Court judge, appointed in 1982):

Our cases long have recognized that the Constitution embodies a promise that a certain private sphere of individual liberty will be kept largely beyond the reach of government . . . . That promise extends to women as well as to men. Few decisions are more personal and intimate, more properly private, or more basic to individual dignity and autonomy, than a woman's decision -- with the guidance of her physician and within the limits specified in Roe -- whether to end her pregnancy. A woman's right to make that choice freely is fundamental. Any other result, in our view, would protect inadequately a central part of the sphere of liberty that our law guarantees equally to all.

that paragraph was Justice Wilson quoting Justice Blackmun in Roe v. Wade.

We like to canvass all opinion and expertise up here, not just the stuff inside our borders. ;)

[iverglas]

17. a thread from before your time

that others here may also have missed, and everyone should read.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=1384115

with best wishes to dancingAlone, if you happen by.

[question everything]

21. Privacy.

It was suggested before that the other side using the term "pro-life" is very visceral while ours "choice" is more of a consumerism.

that we need to find a topic that is as visceral as their pro-life. That we, too, need to tag on the emotions.