November 07, 2004
Post-Election Notes From The Blogosphere : Rayne of Rayne Today
by Liza Sabater
There are several items that the second Bush administration will tackle early and head-on. The first will undoubtedly be Roe v. Wade.
At this point I expect there are some of you that I may lose. We will not see eye-to-eye on this. For me, this is non-negotiable: I support a woman's right to control her body, her destiny. I believe that woman must have the same rights as all other citizens and control of her body is just part of those rights.
At the same time, I don't believe abortion should be frequent. Instead, birth control and reproductive education should be as available as any erectile dysfunction drug -- and more so, since no man dies of ED but women die at a rate of one every 3000 pregnancies.
That's right: for every 3000 of us who become pregnant, one of us will die during the course of the pregnancy or childbirth. Women have the right to protect themselves from mortal harm as much as men do -- and choosing not to be pregnant is part of that right.
What kind of society would deny rights to women to protect themselves? to determine the course of their own destiny? What kind of society would insist that women are subordinate?
Fundamentalist societies. Christian or Muslim.
That is the frame that we will need to implement going forward.
I whole-heartedly agree with Rayne and go one further : Abortion is non-negotiable. We need to start preparing for the worst and need to attack this issue with the verve and urgency that people had in the Get Out The Vote campaign. If sex education won't happen in the schools and homes, then we need to take it to the streets. Literally. Create privately sex education buses and have them tour the United States.
Eons ago I had an abortion. I've never felt at all sorry for myself, actually, I was rather shocked. If anybody knew about how not to get pregnant was me. I knew within a couple a weeks that I was pregnant. My decision was to terminate an embryo ---not even a fetus.
Making the decision to have an abortion is not like shopping for shoes. Nobody I know has enjoyed making that decision. In my case, I was able to terminate the pregnancy as early as I could given the limited options at the time. If I had had Plan B (Levonorgestrel) Emergency Contraception at the time, I would not have agonized over the decision. I would have prevently used it, in order to avoid a pregnancy.
Even at two weeks a woman's body undergoes a radical transformation when pregnancy kicks in. That's why you get the cravings, the bleeding gums, the nausea, the drowsiness, the aversion to foods, sights, touches or smells that under normal circumstances you would not even notice. I have a dentist friend that like to say a fetus is like a tumor : It's an growth that makes use of the body by any means necessary. No wonder Ridley Scott's masterpiece, Alien (1979), is considered a metaphor for pregnancy.
If my worst enemy did not want to get pregnant, I would not wish it upon her. Pregnancy will fuck you up and change your body and mind for ever. It is nothing that we are ever prepared to deal with, but when we want that embryo to become a fetus and thus a baby, love will make you surrender no matter how hard it is on your body and soul.
Why limit the availability of contraceptives, especially Plan B (Levonorgestrel) Emergency Contraception, if you want to "save babies"?
The abortion issue is not about saving babies lives. The abortion issue is about controlling the means of production of human capital.
It's as simple as that.
In The Blogosphere:
The Poor Man: How To Win
Posted by Liza Sabater in 2004 Elections, Abortion, Activism, Body, Civil Rights, Education, Empire, Health, Motherhood, Parenting, Reproductive Rights, Roe vs. Wade, Sex
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