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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsOb/gyn perspective on abortion...
Scary Mommy on FB~
I cant afford to feed my children I have now. I fear for my life. I went into heart failure with my last pregnancy. My tubes were tied, I never intended to have more kids. Im starting grad school in a week. I had an affair and made a mistake and I dont want to break up my family. I am alone. I had a one night stand and dont know who the father is. I was raped. I am 13 years old. Im 48 years old. I have breast cancer and am getting chemotherapy. My uterus ruptured during my last pregnancy. My diabetes is completely uncontrolled. This pregnancy put me in kidney failure. I have malignant melanoma. My baby has multiple anomalies. Im worried I will kill myself if I keep this pregnancy. I dont want a baby right now. I dont want to be pregnant.
Heres the thing. Even with all those statements, the truth is, it should not matter. You dont need a reason other than, this is your choice.
My body. My choice.
And if I get sent to prison for 99 years for taking care of my patient during such a personal and difficult decision, we have gone too far!
634-5789
(4,226 posts)140 million orphans in the world, and another few million unwanted kids won't fix a damned thing.
ancianita
(37,867 posts)Bernardo de La Paz
(50,362 posts)ancianita
(37,867 posts)Bernardo de La Paz
(50,362 posts)You are denying to reveal your reasoning, assuming it is there, at the bottom of your defeatist nihilist comment.
I'm with women. You seem not to be, as you are denying them hope.
Okay, I'm denying that all is doom and gloom and denying the assertion implicit in your cryptic missive that the last 100 years of progress is a blip and women are doomed.
Come off it.
ancianita
(37,867 posts)that. Doom and gloom are your words.
I consider myself a realist, and a radical feminist since the 70's having studied women's history, both through Marilyn French's world history series on women (the only in-depth and sourced history of women globally in existence), and taking graduate studies in feminist philosophy and law. I was also a single mother for twenty years, living the strengths and limitations of that knowledge.
So where I come with the previous post is this.
For centuries upon centuries, women's hopes and dreams have been mediated in private and public realms by religious dogma (East as well as West) and various versions of rule of law. Behind religion and law has been the essentialist male view of male superiority, spiritually and legally. That's on record.
We're not past any of that yet, for all your claims of gains in the last 100 years.
Religious belief and law still reflect centuries . The reason for male inertia (from home, to statehouse erosions of Roe v Wade) has been the same for centuries, no matter how civilized systems in America treat women. Male inertia is proven legally and socially through unequal pay for equal work and women's forced impoverishment by business policy and practice; the unborn, at state and local levels, having the same rights as women with previous rights to life who try to choose to carry or not carry them; the existence of domestic courts in all 4,000+ U.S. counties that adjudicate both domestic violence and child custody; the FBI's estimated 127,258 rapes reported to law enforcement in 2018 across 50 states; the 200,000+ untested rape kits across 50 states. There's much more, which is, imo, why women out-graduate men from law schools lately.
Why male inertia has been the same for centuries is because, said or unsaid, they choose the essentialist view that domination is superior to adaptation. So they use social tools of domination, win-lose -- mocking, dissing and dismissing. verbal and physical aggression, threatening words and gestures, violence and murder. For every 100 males it only takes one male practice these for the other 99 not to have to, which is enough to convince themselves that they are better than the violent 1 whose behaviors allow them to reap the legal, religious and social privileges they insist they don't have. More often than not, allowing for the growing exceptions.
It's the essentially male belief that Might Makes Right that drives insurrectionists to believe in Rule of Men over Rule of Law. Rule of Men and Might Makes Right are the fascism that undermine Rule of Law.
Obviously I don't know you and you don't know me. So rather than accept your personalizing label, I've given short form (moving from state to state at the moment) on my reasoning. It's realist, not nihilist.
Bernardo de La Paz
(50,362 posts)so blatantly and absolutely with no room for change.
Things are bad. Yes, we know. But if YOU have abandoned hope it does not help anyone who still has hope to go saying there is NO hope.
There has been lots of progress in the last 100 years, but abandoning the cause and hope is a guarantee that it would all be erased.
You can believe what you want, but if you so negatively and crushingly push your absolutist line of "There is a bottom line reason women will keep losing this relentless war on their bodies" you go against the ideals of just about everyone on the site and you will defeat women.
You do not allow any room for progress when you write "women will keep losing". That's crushing. Yes, it does reveal you as a doomer. They are YOUR words: "bottom line ... women will keep losing".
Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)...is you already have a scapegoat ready for when the shit inevitably hits the fan. Congratulations.
Bernardo de La Paz
(50,362 posts)Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)Pro-tip: it's in bold type.
Bernardo de La Paz
(50,362 posts)...is you already have a scapegoat ready for when the shit inevitably hits the fan. Congratulations.
Who needs a scapegoat? Not me. Not people who don't crush hope; they will keep moving forward. Are you referring to me or to ancianita who wrote a thoughtful post eventually but with lots of scapegoats?
What are you referring to as "the shit [that] inevitably hits the fan"? Are you referring to the most common use of that phrase which is by preppers who predict the breakdown of civilization?
The part in bold type (subject line) is attention getting, but is not explanatory or ameliorating your cryptic post.
Simply pointing to your terse enigmatic post, as you did, does not clarify it.
ancianita
(37,867 posts)Bernardo de La Paz
(50,362 posts)And I'm not looking for scapegoats. I know who the culprits are: sexist members of the patriarchy and those who enable them. (ancianita does not enable them, to be clear.)
ancianita
(37,867 posts)d dreams is one thing. For the record I support that."
Women are losing battles; I don't believe their hopes and dreams are crushed by the facts of what they're seeing, imo, which is still more of the same chipping away at their hard won legal rights, in a democracy where they've had the vote for little over 100 years, and abortion rights for 40+ years. Those sit in the context of centuries upon centuries of being raped, owned, soled, trafficked.
That's reality. I support the hopes and dreams that require fight, because right now, women (media are noting this) are suffering from reactionary backlash at red state levels.
Though the whole OP is a fine declaration, I'll err on the reality of its historical context. It's not absolute, nor does it crush anything. I want what women want, and know what their losing right now is based on -- the historical reality of centuries of anti-women forces saying that blowing women's candles out makes males' burn brighter.
Bernardo de La Paz
(50,362 posts)I said you denied hope, which you did by no "if", "and", or "but". I did not say you said "there is no hope".
I wrote
Sure, I assert that denying hope in the way you did is equivalent to saying there is no hope.
When you write words, we only have those words. We do not read minds. When you write tersely, we can only take it exactly the way you have written. It was gloomy to say the least, which is a defensible position, but the bold bald defeatism of it is not defensible. If you mean there is hope, then don't shut it out and use only nihilistic words of doom.
"bottom line" admits no alternatives.
"keep losing" admits no chance of success. It is not "mostly lose" or "lose so often" or "lose until we stop" this war.
"relentless" admits no chance of relaxation or truce or dissolution of the conflict. (There should be no truce.) It admits only perpetual endless war.
Three ways your post is defeatist and got the rejoinder it deserved: "Okay doomer".
You backtracked your absolutist statement only when you were called on it.
ancianita
(37,867 posts)I wasn't asked to explain it, however. I did anyway, which you still choose to call backtracking from your interpretation.
You're not right about what I mean, and you can't convince me otherwise.
Bernardo de La Paz
(50,362 posts)I get that you have hope, and you've educated yourself on the issues. But that is not what you wrote.
"women will keep losing" is clear and unambiguous.
Instead of asking readers to ask, you could be a little less absolutist when writing dark messages that could easily discourage your allies. A little less all-or-nothing binary thinking, a little more reflective on the direct meanings of words without reference to thoughts that cannot be visible to your readers.
wnylib
(23,785 posts)It doesn't sound like defeatism to me. It sounds like the same realism that is behind the saying that "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." There will always be people who try to control other people and limit them. Likewise, there will always be people, usually men, but also some women, who will oppose women's progress and the right to an abortion. To keep that right, women must be eternally vigilant and never assume that the battle is won.
Bernardo de La Paz
(50,362 posts)Realism would be "women will keep losing if they don't ..." or "there is a fundamental reason women will lose most battles", etc. Realism is avoiding absolutism. Notice the addition of a conditional clause or acknowledging the opposition while allowing that women will win some battles.
Defeatism is "women will keep losing", no if / and / but, the way ancianita wrote.
Yes, there will always be opposition, but over time and as women are more and more successful that opposition will greatly decline. 200 years ago women could not own property or serve on juries or vote. Vice President? Impossible! (back then). Nobody is opposing women owning property today. So opposition does lessen as women gain victories.
Women must be eternally forward looking and never assume that all the battles will be lost the way ancianita wrote.
calimary
(83,613 posts)Totally with you, ancianita! I share your thinking.
jmbar2
(5,878 posts)NH Ethylene
(30,966 posts)ancianita
(37,867 posts)The name "ancianita" is a female Spanish word. I'm female.
Please read Reply #15.
Bernardo de La Paz
(50,362 posts)Thank goodness they never bought into your outlook or there would not have been the progress there has been.
ancianita
(37,867 posts)their incremental advances over centuries.
Dissing and dismissing my reasoning, I see.
You must just want to be right in your persistent interpretation of me. Fine.
Bernardo de La Paz
(50,362 posts)Your words.
They were unequivocating, crushing. It's where you started and what you have not disavowed. You allow no hope for progress. I am not dismissing your points when I wrote we (feminists, if I may) got your points 150, 100, 50 years ago, and I might add, every day.
"bottom line ... women will keep losing"
ancianita
(37,867 posts)comes from the essentialist beliefs that men themselves still say they still hold that justify their unwillingness to give up privilege for mere equality. You don't get the final word on what I meant about "losing." But I am explaining that incremental adaptation can in evolutionary
Women did not get my points 150 years ago; 150 years ago they were simply surviving, not thriving. Women 100 years ago did not get my points, either. Overall, both times, there was both no factual history of women, accessible to women, except what came from early English writers of earlier centuries, which were not published or sitting in American libraries.
Women 100 years ago were reacting to their unlivable times, that came out of centuries of codified inequality. They had the bourgeois material wherewithal to become unequivocating in their willingness to protest, some to be jailed or die (rather than threaten or use force as men did), which won the moral battle, for that time, with political leaders, not religious leaders. It was only one man's vote in Congress that gave women the right to vote; he was morally committed to his mother's stance on voting equality. Women will keep losing until they kill that belief in men. There's always hope for progress. So far, that and a bus token have gotten us across town.
Your writing off my thoughts with "women got it 150 years ago" is still personalizing this argument, not addressing the OP's raised issue about male inertia grounded in women's bodies as mostly men's right and their business. Being proud of one ob/gyn's stance is still too small a representation of goodness, when feminists know that it's the generally male controlled system women still suffer under. You don't use any historical facts or references, just make proud claims about women's progress and diss my reasoning about men's bottom line.
Tell you what. We're not getting anywhere. You might knock off your continued personalized criticisms or keep up your emotional labor here. We can continue feminist issues in the future, too; but for right now, I'm done.
Bernardo de La Paz
(50,362 posts)ancianita
(37,867 posts)with an interpretation and then personal attack. When all you had to do is ask. So I decided to answer any unasked question. You start debate, and we're still talking past each other because I'm explaining, not debating.
Bernardo de La Paz
(50,362 posts)I was taken aback. I wasn't alone. It was so depressively doom and gloom.
"bottom line"
"will keep losing"
"relentless"
Words have meanings.
ancianita
(37,867 posts)I get your meanings for those words. So you choose to stay with your opinion, though I've explained.
Bernardo de La Paz
(50,362 posts)I get that you have hope, now that you have explained yourself. But that is not what you wrote to start this off.
wnylib
(23,785 posts)Discussion vs. debate.
Bernardo de La Paz
(50,362 posts)Bernardo de La Paz
(50,362 posts)Bernardo de La Paz
(50,362 posts)You wrote "feminists get it", I wrote "feminists got it", and now you are falsely claiming I wrote "women got it". It's important to read what people actually write and not attack straw figures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Wollstonecraft
ancianita
(37,867 posts)Duppers
(28,204 posts)mountain grammy
(27,062 posts)Ingersollman
(204 posts)to infinity and beyond!!!
niyad
(118,381 posts)Would you consider cross-posting this in Women's Rights And Issues? Thanks in advance.
sarchasm
(1,166 posts)Oh hell to the YES!
secondwind
(16,903 posts)flying_wahini
(7,817 posts)in for an abortion.
She brought a doll with her.
The baby was her Fathers.
LittleGirl
(8,350 posts)CharleyDog
(763 posts)rape and incest.
Doing this to girls and women is psycho fanaticism, fanatics are dangerous, they have no limits, always seeking further heights to wield power.
This is from the guilt and shame they experience over sex. Transferred to women (and to LGBQT people).
demigoddess
(6,672 posts)almost every woman I have known in my life has told me about being molested by family members when they were kids. Brothers, fathers, grandfathers, and uncles. The first time someone told me we were in 7th grade.
Hekate
(93,810 posts)I was in college, waiting for a blood draw (my doc was trying to rule out gout for my mystery bum knee). So there I am, age 22, and there she was, maybe all of 12, a little thing, and 8 months pregnant. She hardly came up to her mothers shoulder.
This would have been about 1969.
lark
(23,820 posts)Our bodies, our choice - period. the. end.
Wounded Bear
(60,172 posts)The Jungle 1
(4,552 posts)Girard442
(6,335 posts)...will be seen as a possible abortion. As an OB/GYN, you'll have to worry if "too many" of your patients miscarry and attract the attention of law enforcement.
If your practice specializes in problem pregnancies, might as well relocate now.
demigoddess
(6,672 posts)on my record. I guess he didn't understand they were not abortions, but miscarriages. So much for intelligent doctors. And people yell at you if you have a child with genetic anomalies, they think the only way it can happen is if you try to have an abortion and it doesn't work. Been there, got the t-shirt.
ShazzieB
(18,159 posts)That so-called "doctor" should be ashamed of himself! How the hell does someone even graduate from medical school without knowing what a basic term like "spontaneous abortion" means? (That was a rhetorical question. Ha!)
I'm going to hope he was not an ob/gyn (because an ob/gyn not knowing that would be even worse), but I'm not holding my breath.
And I'll bet the same Judgy McJudgersons who yell at someone for having a child with congenital abnormalities would yell even louder at someone who had an abortion due to their child being diagnosed with severe congenital abnormalities in utero. Because that's the way their warped minds work.
demigoddess
(6,672 posts)"what did you do to make her like this?". When people say all babies are conceived perfect, some people take it literally. Look up genetic anomalies if you do not know what they are!!
Backseat Driver
(4,580 posts)FakeNoose
(35,043 posts)When you think about it, having a baby means committing the next 20 or so years of one's life to raising and nurturing that child to maturity. The commitment must be made willingly and with the determination to follow through and actually do it. We all know men who have walked away and ignored the responsibility of raising the child they started. But women can't and won't walk away. It could possibly ruin a woman's life if she's not mature, financially okay and emotionally stable enough see it through.
Unwanted pregnancies can happen at any time, but they seem to occur more often to women who are young, fragile, and unprepared to face the consequences. Again, the men involved can walk away without a care, but the woman could be devastated. It's not up to us to judge, we should be compassionate and understanding. Whether or not I'm willing or able to be a parent is nobody's choice except mine.
moondust
(20,330 posts)Pepsidog
(6,292 posts)Unwind Your Mind
(2,122 posts)PoliWrangler
(145 posts)dlk
(12,170 posts)Republicans have a big problem with women being full-fledged citizens with equal protection under the law, including full autonomy over their own bodies. The history of slavery is a thread running through this movement and their comprehensive push to force women to remain second-class citizens. What would it mean to them if women could make their own medical decisions free from political interference?
NH Ethylene
(30,966 posts)They could care less about actual babies.
dlk
(12,170 posts)Their protestations about the sanctity of life are a twisted joke, when so many of their actions prove otherwise.
Very well said.
dlk
(12,170 posts)The backlash will continue- first abortion, then birth control, then Republicans are determined to keep women down.
BobTheSubgenius
(11,737 posts)This issue is already teetering on the brink of "Too Far."
seta1950
(936 posts)I agree wholeheartedly, that is a womans decision period.
NEOBuckeye
(2,799 posts)Im so sick of them and all of their shit over personal stuff like this.
peggysue2
(11,342 posts)GOP/religious resistance has always been about determining, controlling a woman's choice and her reproductive agency.
At one time, I was willing to give the religious objections some slack, thinking there was room for discussion and understanding No more. Religious zealotry provides no room for discussion. By their nature, zealots have only one gear, a 'my way or the highway' position. Even when a woman's very life is at stake.
As for the politicians? Most don't care one way or the other. But even when they do, it's a great wedge issue, a red meat line to throw to their supporters.
It's always been about choice.
dlk
(12,170 posts)Discrimination is profitable, along with the power that comes with perpetuating and maintaining a second class of citizens.
Faux pas
(15,115 posts)Permanut
(6,401 posts)Great OP, great discussion, important information.
A couple things from an old white guy. I'm old enough to remember before Roe v. Wade, when my city had several several people who performed abortions more or less openly, for a fee of course, and they were doing very well. Unlicensed, untrained, no information available on their success and fatality rates.
Roe v. Wade did not open the abortion floodgates, but made them safer and legal.
Second thing, if Roe v. Wade were somehow cancelled by new legislation, abortions would not magically stop, as the cult wackos assume. I can't speak for the desperation that the women in the OP are living with, but it would still be there.
I don't know if I need a disclaimer, but I fully support the rights of choice.
ShazzieB
(18,159 posts)And states like mine that have already enacted laws making abortion legal would become abortion meccas for people from states where it was illegal, like New York was before Roe. Anyone who could afford to travel could still get an abortion, and the poorest and most vulnerable women could not. And meanwhile the legislators in red states would be slapping each other on the back for passing all those draconian anti-abortion laws.
Mossfern
(2,958 posts)I do remember life before Roe v. Wade and understood that if one had the means, that one could get an abortion in England or Puerto Rico, or some secrete doctors. I lived in NYC. If a woman didn't have the means, there were always the back alley butchers.
Overturning the legislation will not stop abortions,
ShazzieB
(18,159 posts)I remember the stuff you're talking about, too, but for a briief period of time, in the early 70s, you didn't even have to leave the U.S. to get a safe, legal abortion.
The women's center on my midwestern college campus ran a problem pregnancy counseling service at that time. They would talk to you about the various options (including abortion), help you decide what you wanted to do (if you needed help with that), and make referrals to apprpriate services as needed, including an abortion clinic in New York City. I know this, because I'm one of the women they referred, in 1972.
Fortunately, I was able to scrape together enough money to make the trip. I met women there from all over the U.S. The clinic ran an airport shuttle to help out of town patients get back and forth to their Manhattan location.
That's why I said New York was an abortion mecca back then. I'm not sure how many people realize it, because it was such a short period of time, but it was, and it can definitely happen again. If abortion is only legal in a few places, the women who can will flock there. The ones who can't will be SOL, but any woman who does not get an abortion is of course counted as a victory by the jerks who make these laws, regardless of her personal wishes.
wnylib
(23,785 posts)I fear that when they return to their home state, they might be accused and prosecuted for violating their home state law. It shouldn't be legal for them to do that, but I believe that they will try.
Hekate
(93,810 posts)wendyb-NC
(3,702 posts)GB_RN
(2,998 posts)Im here to say, if youre a guy, its none of your goddamned business, and you should have no business making laws about it unless those laws are about making sure facilities are medically clean and safe. Otherwise, GTFO. /Rant
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)SammyWinstonJack
(44,148 posts)every Jiffy Lube. Can't remember the DUer to give credit to for that.
William Gustafson
(330 posts)They spend so much time chasing those that want abortions (for many reasons) that when the finally outlaw it, what's next for them.... banning Contraception's? ... Ban Coat hangers (as that is what was used in the "Old Days" ....Forced births under government oversight?... Forced jailtime for anyone that does not go with their religion?.....
They are using this issue to fund raise, but once they do outlaw it, how will they fund raise anymore on this issue?...
The rich will fly to countries that do abortions, like Israel, when their little girl gets pregnant, or their mistress gets pregnant... but the poor and middleclass don't have that luxury.
Here is a new idea.... Getting a Vasectomy's cuts down on abortions, so let require that every young male get one when they turn 16.... if they want to have kids, have it reversed..... And if that isn't possible.... how about requiring every male that gets a girl pregnant PAYS for all hospitalization, post birth care and child support until the child is 18 or out of high school.
I have never heard of any women ever getting pregnant with out a guy sticking his Tally Wacker into her, so why does he get off with no punishment while the women is made to suffer a life time of raising their child..... in most cases, she did not want or was not able to afford to raise one.
It's about control of women, not the baby... once the baby is born, these people could care less and let it starve to death as what is happening right now...in the United States.... Child Poverty - Up, Child Hunger - UP...
Skittles
(157,297 posts)FUCK THEM ALL
Lithos
(26,441 posts)It's such a fundamental human thing. My Body. My Choice.
L-