wtfox?!

boehnertroll:

itsnotachoiceitsachild:

There are 2 million American families looking to adopt every year.  Every year 1.5 million children are killed by abortion.  There really is no such thing as an unwanted child.

And you wanna know why they don’t get adopted?

1) They’re usually minority children that are in foster care. 

2) The kid might have a disability or health issues that nobody wants to put the time, effort or money into taking care of them.

3) Most people that look into adopting are white couples. Usually they want a child their own race.

4) Adopting in the US is expensive, time-consuming and stressful. Most families that want to adopt usually go across the border to adopt a child because it’s cheaper.

5) The adoption system in the US is biased against POC. Usually those that do manage to adopt are white couples. POC have to go through so much more screening and evaluation than a white couple.

So before you say that there’s plenty of homes waiting for them, let’s be realistic here.

Yeah, every child in the US is wanted, which is why foster homes, group homes, and orphanages are practically non-existent.

Honestly, how ignorant do you have to be to advance the “every child is wanted” argument against abortion? Don’t answer that.

bebinn:

From Pro-Life Feminist To Pro-Choice Mama: My Change In Beliefs

prolongedeyecontact:

NPR recently reported [link] that in some Planned Parenthood clinics, the abortion rate is up.

We’ve seen some people who said that they didn’t really think that they would ever be making this decision, but recognize that this is a time when they have to think about taking care of the families that they have.

I’ve mentioned my mama [link] before around here. She’s the home-birthin’, articulate and soft-spoken, intelligent and wonderful mother of 6 girls. Six vocal girls.

She raised me and my sisters to be pro-life feminists. Then, when I was pregnant with my first child, I became pro-choice.

Here’s why.

 Birth is natural. Our bodies were meant to do this.
Don’t let the men of the world tell you or show you that what your body was made to do is wrong. You’re just feeding in to their chauvinism.
Men have somehow convinced women to avoid what their body naturally does. That is, carry babies and give birth. Now women are even standing up for abortion and turning away from themselves.

Ever wonder if “pro-life feminism” is an oxymoron? The way my mom taught us, it is most certainly not. She’s a religious woman, but [thankfully] never forced us into church pews any more than she forced us to agree with her beliefs. She also didn’t believe that “God punishes all women for what Eve did with the pains of childbirth.” Because frankly, natural childbirth wasn’t all that bad. (And in my experience [link], it’s the worst pain you’ll ever forget…quickly.) Women’s bodies were, instead, wonderfully designed to do this amazing thing: grow and provide for a baby, and then give birth.

Don’t let them take that away from you! Don’t let society tell you that it’s wrong! Don’t let them make you feel that children are an “inconvenience.”

I very much believed that, once even going so far as to write a letter to Ms. Magazine [link] asking them to examine “Pro-Life Feminism” (they refused).

But I still agree with that. As the mother of two boys and stepmother to two girls, I believe in birth and life. But it’s just not that simple.

When I was pregnant with Little L, my older son, I left his father. After catching him with another woman (on my birthday, no less) and discovering an increasingly horrible drug problem, I called off our engagement and moved out. And once I realized that the drugs were creating violence in him, I completely cut off contact with him, even though that meant losing out on a relationship with his then-3-year-old son, who I’d cared for 4-5 days a week for two years. It was a hard choice, but my priority was keeping myself and my unborn child safe.

During my transition from engaged woman to single mama, I had a handful of awesome women to support me. When I left Little L’s father, I moved in with a dear friend, who happens to be a bit younger than my mom. Two of my sisters lived here in Virginia (the rest of my family is in the Chicago ‘burbs) and were always around. I had my natural midwife, who very holistically asked me about my mental state and how I was adjusting every time I visited her. When I started to have “cramps” from the stress of the changes, I began to see a therapist, also a woman. I rented a house and moved in with another single mother and her young daughter. I became friends with the Pastry Chef at the resort hotel where I worked, who admired my supposed “strength” and was endlessly encouraging. Every time I needed someone to talk to, there was someone there. To help, to listen. I could pick up the phone and vent to any sister, and when I didn’t, they’d call me.

I was going to be a mother. Alone, which I had not planned. But everywhere I turned, I had support.

I know it sounds contradictory: “keeping my unborn child safe”, while becoming pro-choice. It happened out of nowhere, and was a surprise to even me.

At some point, I realized that most women don’t have to be thrown against a wall during pregnancy. Most don’t have a table thrown at them and duck while covering the belly. Of course, as a feisty feminist, I knew this was not “normal” and got out before it became regular behavior.

But I also knew that most women do not have the support network that I had at hand. Most women overall, not just pregnant women in bad situations. If another woman were in my situation, pregnant, how could I ask her to carry the child? That was my choice, yes. But would my choice be different if I had no one?

I felt Little L move very early for a first pregnancy (12 weeks). I am thankful for him every day. I was thankful for him every day that I was a single mom, too. No matter how I struggled at times. But Little L and I had incredible people in our lives. People who babysat for free so I could work. People who bought us loads of clothes or sent us Whole Foods gift cards. People who thought about what we needed and gave and gave and gave, without us ever asking.

Most women—most poor families—do not have that.
How can we ask women to stay safe, protect the children they have, and leave a bad relationship without support? How can policymakers simultaneously rail against abortion while cutting funding for food stamps or TANF or proposing “welfare reform”?

I don’t think we as a society can. Look critically at your beliefs, especially if you don’t agree with me. Work hard to provide for the life around you. Work to help those with less. Especially in this economy.

If you are against abortion, ensure that the multitudes of poor women have other choices. Until there is justice and support for them, abortion must be one of those choices.

[I really enjoyed this story. The one nit-picky thing I have to say is that last sentence kind of irks me. Abortion will always need to be a choice, not just until we have tons of resources and support networks for those who need them, because some people simply never want to be pregnant. So maybe…until we have birth control or sterilization that works 100% of the time? No, actually, even then we would need it because something could go wrong with a wanted pregnancy. So yeah, we’ll always need abortion.]

The second-to-last paragraph is what always irked me about pro-life feminism. They claim to empower women (people) by removing a necessary choice before ensuring that they have adequate support. It’s putting the cart before the horse in the worst way. You cannot claim to empower and support others by removing their choices and forcing them to continue unwanted pregnancies. It’s completely unrealistic and callous.

Italics are what I’m reacting to.

“Keeping your unborn child safe” is in no way, in no way at all, incommensurate with being pro-choice. I hate, hate, HATE that dogwhistle anti-choice “feminists” use, and while I don’t know if this is still the OP’s belief—that electing to have a child while in a difficult situation is somehow the opposite of being pro-choice—or if the OP is stating the party line of anti-choicers without believing it herself, but either way, people need to knock it off.

The fact that you exercised your agency, and were allowed to exercise your agency, whether to carry the pregnancy or abort, is the goal of pro-choice advocates. Choosing to keep a pregnancy and being pro-choice are not contradictions in terms, they just aren’t! HOW is this so hard to understand?

Also, I find any theory that reduces women to one biological function, no matter how amazing it may be, to be not very feminist at all. The last time I checked, I’m a lot more than my uterus and ovaries, thanks.

another thing about anti-choice rhetoric

Is how a child is either God’s greatest blessing or him punishing you, whore lady, for opening your whore legs. I mean, how the hell does that work? If something is, by its very nature (not its particular existence, but its participation in a category), a blessing, it can’t be a bad thing. “Blessing” and “punishment” as states of being are incommensurate with each other. You can’t have it both ways, I’m sorry, you just can’t.

I also find it hilarious that the same people who pontificate on and on about how fetal life is sacrosanct enjoy deploying that same life as part of God’s plan to punish loose women. If you want to say “it’s a child not a choice,” you don’t get to turn around and say “it’s a consequence,” and use that as justification for putting women in untenable psychological, social, or economic positions. And that’s essentially what the child-as-punishment theory is: emptying another individual of personhood and turning them into a thing, a stick to beat someone with.

So way to be raging hypocrites there.

[NB: The above is for religion-driven arguments against choice. I haven’t encountered agnostic or atheist anti-choicers who make the same sort of argument (albeit separated from doctrine), but I’m sure they exist.]

tesseralharmonics:

unknowablewoman:

fracturedrefuge:

TW at link: Graphic description of blood and illegal abortion

propaganda-for-life:

MUST READ!!!!

cariann22:

This has got to be one of the most horrible things I’ve ever read!

For fuck’s sake.

It clearly says, in the article, that the women were charged with the murders of a pregnant woman and a born baby who accidentally survived a late-term abortion. They’re not being charged with murder over an actual abortion. Get a fucking grip.

Also, neither of them had medical training; who the fuck let them perform a surgery? In fact, it says here that the doctor in charge of this clinic was actually not properly trained in providing abortions, either. But hey, you know where this happens more often? In places where abortion is illegal. When done safely in a developed country, abortion is one of the safest medical procedures in the world.

This is not ”the truth of what goes on in abortion clinics”, to use the article’s words. The article already freely admitted that these people weren’t properly trained in the least. My bullshit senses are tingling. This also fails to mention where this happened, and I highly suspect it was in a state where abortion access is extremely limited. This wouldn’t happen in, say, Massachusetts or California.

PS: I also find that LifeSiteNews.com has a huge penchant of lying through their teeth.

This happened in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia to be exact. According to NARAL, Pennsylvania has some pretty restrictive abortion laws, including a fucking spousal notification law, which requires married people to seek consent from their partner on order to get an abortion.

Oh my god. I knew spousal notification laws existed but I just don’t want to think about them. They make me sick.

Ahhh, the Gosnell case.  It is indeed horrible.  BUT.  This is in no way representative of abortion clinics in general.  A key point about the PA laws is that, while getting an abortion is difficult (mandatory delays, spousal notice, restrictions on age, and more), abortion clinics are not regulated as outpatient surgery, so this particular clinic fell into a legal grey zone not present in other states (only reason it was allowed to operate without inspections that would have caught the horrors earlier).  This clinic is nothing like Planned Parenthood, which is a national organization with national standards and much, much stricter guidelines and rules.

Abortion is always going to happen.  There’s a choice to be made whether this medical procedure can be done in a legal, safe, regulated* clinic staffed with people certified or licensed in ob/gyn and surgery, or whether we force women to go to a place like this clinic, where it was easier to get access to the procedure.

* The danger in regulating clinics is allowing the possibility of the anti-choice segment to add even more onerous laws, forcing women to use illegal methods.  Abortion clinics are medical facilities and should be treated as such; the morals surrounding abortion is an entirely separate thing.

Yeah, we’re already seeing the results of your last paragraph, with states placing impossibly strict licensing requirements, and tight deadlines to meet those requirements, on abortion clinics that have historically functioned safely, cleanly, and legally. The closure of those clinics drives women to seek abortions elsewhere—and, of course, also deprives many lower-income or uninsured women of preventative health care, prenatal care, STD screening, and contraception.

And also 1000% agreement with your point re: treating clinics that offer abortion as medical facilities, not as sites for moral debate.

(Source: cariannscott)