What is Trans* Repro Justice?
A lot of people when they hear the terms “prochoice”, “reproductive rights” or even “reproductive justice” only think of abortion, but this view is myopic in my opinion. “Reproducing” encompasses many things which includes the right to choose to have children (or give birth and choose adoption), to choose to not have children right now, and to choose to never have children. Reproductive justice frameworks are holistic and look at reproductive rights with the whole person in mind. This means people also have the right to quality and comprehensive sex education, contraception, relevant medical care, the right to be sterilized and the right to not be forcibly sterilized, and a whole host of birthing choices as well (home/natural births, VBACs, the right to refuse c-sections, etc).
Not only that but reproductive rights activists are also concerned with advocating for the personhood/bodily integrity/and autonomy of pregnant people, advocating for reproductive health care as a human right, eradicating obstetric fistula and illegal/unsafe abortion in the developing world, lowering the incidence of teen pregnancy and STIs, lowering the mortality and morbidity rates of pregnant people, improving access to quality healthcare especially for people in poverty. The list goes on and on. Further, we must remember that race, class, disability status, citizenship status, gender, sexual orientation, etc all intersect and all have an effect on how we can or cannot utilize our reproductive rights, and therefore all of those issues must be addressed for reproductive justice to be successful in upholding the rights of all people not just those who are white, wealthy, able-bodied, straight, cis, male citizens.
So what does this have to do with trans* people?
Well, perhaps not everyone within the movement believes “prochoice” should be a holistic philosophy, but I for one, do. We concentrate on abortion rights because that’s the issue so often under attack, but to be actually “prochoice” is much more expansive than that. It’s about bodily integrity and the importance of keeping personal bodily decisions just that, personal. It’s about birthing choices as much as it is abortion. It’s about how the reproductive rights of different segments of society have been effected differently and what that means to all of us as a whole. Intersectionality matters because poc, poor people, disabled people, trans* people, people of various sexual orientations have been targeted differently and yet it’s all part of a larger system that denies those seen as the “other” the freedom to make basic choices in regards to how their bodies are viewed and how they are utilized. Therefore it’s important to remember that the sexist and cissexist system that seeks to control the sexuality, bodies, and reproduction of those it perceives to be women is the same system that actively targets the identities, bodies, reproduction, and sexualities of trans* people. Reproductive rights aren’t about abortion, they’re about the profound and fundamental right to bodily integrity.
So what is trans* repro justice?
It’s the radical notion that:
- Our bodies belong to us and our right to bodily integrity doesn’t dissipate when society becomes aware of our trans*ness.
- Our bodies and identities are valid, no matter how “uncommon” they may be.
- Language matters and so does inclusivity. When your rhetoric excludes us so do your actions, and that sometimes literally kills us.
- We don’t need to be pathologized or “explained” within a cissexist paradigm.
- You don’t need to understand us to respect us.
- Sex and gender are not neat binaries.
- We deserve to have our needs met and our boundaries respected just as much as anyone else.
- Medical care should be easily accessible to every one that needs and wants it.
- Parenthood and reproduction are basic human rights and no person should be sterilized without their consent or knowledge. In the other direction, all people that seek sterilization should be able to do so without jumping through hoops for paternalistic doctors.
- All of us have the right to information about our bodies, that doesn’t exclude or denigrate our identities or misgender us, to ensure we can maintain our health.
- All of us have a right to maintain our humanity, dignity, and health. This doesn’t change with citizen status or prisoner status.
- Intersectionality is important. Trans* activism must be cognizant of it, and willing to acknowledge the power hierarchies and systems of privilege within our own community.
- We all have the right to control our fertility how we see fit (whether through pregnancy, adoption, single parenthood, harvesting eggs, sperm banking, etc), and those services should be accessible and affordable.
- We are perfectly capable of being wonderful parents and raising amazing, well-adjusted children.
- Men can and do give birth. Not all those that give birth are mothers.
- Women can and do impregnate people. Not all those that impregnate are fathers.
- “Mothers” and “fathers” aren’t the only type of parents that exist.
- We have a right to obtain government issued identification documents that acknowledge our identities (even nonbinary ones!) without having to undergo costly surgery we may not even want.
- We shouldn’t have to conform to a coercive, gendered script for the comfort of cis people nor should we be expected to live or perform a typical trans* narrative to be taken seriously.
- We should be able to use public restrooms without being attacked, mocked, or arrested.
- Our identities and bodies shouldn’t be caricatured for the amusement of society.
- We are people. We are valid. We are here to stay.
This is a work in progress. Any additions are welcome!
Reblogging here so more people will see this and also to plug my new trans*-centered repro justice blog.
[TW] Center for Reproductive Rights Files Case Revealing the Horrifying Reality of El Salvador's Ban on Abortion
Manuela’s story demonstrates the fatal consequences of El Salvador’s law and why it must change
03.21.12 - (PRESS RELEASE) El Salvador’s absolute ban on abortion has resulted in tragic and often fatal consequences for the women living in that country — resulting in the arbitrary imprisonment of women suffering from miscarriages and complications in their pregnancies, according to a petition filed today with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights by the Center for Reproductive Rights and local Salvadoran organization Colectiva de Mujeres para el Desarrollo Local (Agrupación Ciudadana por la Despenalización del Aborto Ético, Terapéutico y Eugenésico de El Salvador).
Today’s petition was filed on behalf of “Manuela” (a pseudonym) and her family. Manuela was a 33-year-old Salvadoran mother of two who was convicted of murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison after suffering severe complications giving birth. El Salvador has one of the most extreme abortion bans in the world—prohibiting abortion even when necessary to save a pregnant woman’s life and imposing harsh criminal penalties on both women and physicians.
“Women are paying a high price, in many cases with their lives, for El Salvador’s absolute ban on abortion,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), a global legal organization dedicated to advancing women’s reproductive health. “El Salvador’s laws have turned emergency rooms into crime scenes, forcing pregnant women to live under a dark cloud of suspicion. The international community must come together to demand an end to this cruel treatment of women and make a commitment to safeguard fundamental reproductive rights.”
From the moment Manuela arrived at the hospital seeking emergency health care, slipping in and out of consciousness and hemorrhaging, doctors treated her as if she had attempted an abortion and immediately called the police. She was shackled to her hospital bed and accused of murder.
Manuela was sentenced to 30 years in prison without ever having a chance to meet with her lawyer, without an opportunity to speak in her own defense, and without the right to appeal the decision. Shockingly, the judge overseeing her case said that “her maternal instinct should have prevailed” and “she should have protected her child.”
After several months in prison, it was discovered that the visible tumors Manuela had on her neck for which she sought medical care several times without being accurately diagnosed, was advanced Hodgkin’s lymphoma — a disease that likely lead to the severe obstetric emergency she suffered.
Tragically, Manuela did not receive the appropriate treatment for her disease and died in prison in 2010, leaving behind her two young children. Her illness could have been caught earlier if she had received adequate medical attention when she consulted about her tumors in years prior, and if medical officials treating her during her emergency paid any attention to her condition, rather than focusing on reporting her to authorities.
This legal campaign marks the first time an international judicial body will hear the case of a woman imprisoned for seeking medical care due to obstetric emergencies, as a result of a total abortion ban. The case argues that El Salvador’s absolute ban on abortion violates a number of human rights, including the right to life, right to personal integrity and liberty, right to humane treatment, and the right to a fair trial and judicial protection.
“Salvadoran women have been unjustly persecuted by their government for far too long,” said Mónica Arango, CRR’s regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean. “We are bringing Manuela’s case before an international human rights body so women won’t suffer the same tragic fate, and El Salvador can finally be held accountable.”
The Center for Reproductive Rights will also issue a report later this year detailing the stories of Salvadoran women affected by the country’s absolute ban on abortion.Abortion was once legal in El Salvador under a narrow set of circumstances, but even these limited exceptions were removed in 1998, as documented by CRR in a report released in 2000. Now El Salvador is among five countries in Latin America and the Caribbean — including Nicaragua, Honduras, Dominican Republic, and Chile — where abortion is absolutely prohibited even when the woman’s health or life is at risk. More information about abortion restrictions around the globe is available at CRR’s interactive World Abortion Laws map.
Under current Salvadoran law, anyone who performs an abortion with the woman’s consent, or a woman who self-induces or consents to someone else inducing her abortion, can be imprisoned for up to eight years.
But like Manuela, many women who miscarry or experience emergency obstetric complications are charged with aggravated murder, for which they can be imprisoned for up to 50 years, and subsequently spend decades behind bars.
“Liberalizing restrictive abortion laws, like El Salvador’s, is essential to saving the lives and protecting the health of millions of women across the globe every year,” said Northup. “Study after study has shown there are no positive outcomes to banning abortion outright.”
A recent study by the World Health Organization and the Guttmacher Institute reinforced the fact that restrictive abortion laws are not associated with lower rates of abortion. According to the study, the 2008 abortion rate in Latin America—a region where abortion is highly restricted in almost all countries—was 32 per 1,000 women of childbearing age, while in Western Europe, where abortion is generally permitted on broad grounds, the rate is just 12 per 1,000.
*Pregnant people, not just cis women.
This is what I like to call #ProlifeBeliefsInAction. These are the real life consequences of abortion bans and personhood amendments. When embryos are viewed as having rights of their own lawmakers and doctors are forced to forget that unlike actual people, embryos are inside of someone else; and that person has rights of their own.
With personhood amendments we see all pregnant people as suspicious and guilty until proven innocent when it comes to any “irresponsible” behavior and even a miscarriage. Their own lives and health become secondary to protecting a non-autonomous, non-sentient, non-viable embryo or fetus from the person it’s inside of. Suddenly pregnant people experiencing natural occurrences like miscarriage or wanting to act in their own health’s best interest are contextualized as an actual threat.
These laws obfuscate the fact that pregnancy creates a vulnerable state for people and that no pregnancy is guaranteed to go to term without complications. So when things go horribly wrong, as they’re apt to, it’s deemed a criminal failure on the part of the pregnant person and not the unfortunate and unpredictable occurrence that it is. These laws, in effect, turn pregnant people into a special class of people whose right to bodily integrity is called into question or suspended altogether, leading to discrimination and human rights violations.
Further proof that both the fetus focus fallacy and “prolife” policies kill and vilify pregnant people.
How very telling. But then again, your propaganda always is.
You felt the need to illustrate an abortion post with a person who is noticeably pregnant. This ignores the reality that 78.9% of abortions happen during the embryonic stage and 88% happen within the first 12 weeks. Most abortions look something like this:
And the embryo looks something like this:
You also felt the need to compare the fundamental rights to privacy and bodily integrity to a geographic location? Property rights? People’s bodies are not “locations” to be fought over. Everything about this seeks to trivialize the right to be in control of your body and free of coercion. It’s telling that the only time you reduce bodies to a piece of property like a house is when that body is pregnant. Well, news flash: bodily integrity doesn’t dissipate with pregnancy and arguing that it does creates a special, and discriminated against, class of people. Equal Protection Clause be damned, I guess?
It’s all very misogynist as well. Where did their head go? Why must you eroticize pregnancy and their body without giving them an identity, a face, a life? Is it because their dreams, considerations, and circumstances might elicit more sympathy than an embryo and that would defeat your purpose? Or is is just that the “location’s” face isn’t important and would distract from the “life” within? Which is what you really care about.
(Source: closertothelost)
McDonnell: TSA Pat Downs Are ‘Invasive,’ But Ultrasound Bill ‘Respects The Dignity Of Women’
In November of 2010, Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) joined the public outcry against the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) security precautions in airports by describing body scans and mandatory pat downs as crossing “the line” in regard “to people’s concerns about privacy” and “beneath the dignity” of air travelers. But just two months later, the anti-abortion McDonnell had no problem violating women’s privacy and freedom to make medical decisions by throwing his support behind a measure that originally required women seeking abortions to undergo ultrasounds in which a wand is inserted into the vagina.
Following a public outcry, McDonnell revised the measure to exempt women from the more invasive procedure, but not before encountering the wit of comedian Jon Stewart, who characterized the bill as “a TSA pat-down inside their vagina.” McDonnell addressed the contradiction between supporting mandatory ultrasounds for women and opposing “invasive” TSA pat downs during a radio interview this morning on WTOP and claimed that there is no comparison between the legislation and the enhanced security procedures:
MCDONNELL: There are things that are required in the interest of public safety, like TSA procedures. There are ways to accomplish the same result without an invasive patdown. […]
I believe this is something that respects the dignity of women by making sure they have necessary information.
And while McDonnell has regularly attacked President Obama’s health care reform plan as an unfunded mandate, he brushed off concerns that the ultrasound bill would create an unfunded mandate for women. He described the ultrasound as a necessary mandate that provides women with more information before having an abortion. “If there are legitimate mandates for health and safety, obviously I’m for those,” he explained.
The ultrasound bill passed the Senate earlier this afternoon and now heads to McDonnell for his signature.
__________________________________________________
*pregnant people, not just women.
This is the second time conservative cis men have decried TSA pat-downs as being against our liberty and bodily autonomy while simultaneously denying bodily autonomy to those who can get pregnant. I’m.just.so.shocked.
Not to mention these ultrasound laws don’t change minds, they destroy the doctor-patient relationship, they remove all consent, and they make abortion more expensive and therefore less accessible to low-income people. Awesome.
Indian High Court Rules That the Decision to Abort a Pregnancy Rests with the Wife, Not the Husband
In a significant decision, the Punjab and Haryana High Court last week ruled that the right to abort a pregnancy in a marriage rests with the wife and not husband.
“A woman is not a machine in which raw material is put and a finished product comes out. She should be mentally prepared to conceive, continue the same and give birth to a child. The unwanted pregnancy would naturally affect the mental health of the pregnant woman…” said the court.
Stressing that marital intimacy between a couple does not automatically translate to the woman’s consent to child bearing, Justice Jitendra Chauhan said, “Mere consent to conjugal rights does not mean consent to give birth to a child for her husband.” Welcoming the judgement, Jagmati Sanwan, All India Democratic Women’s Association national vice-president said, “If the family conditions are unsuitable, no woman would like to give birth to a child because after all, she is the one who takes care of the children for all practical purposes. We see around us that fathers often desert their families after a couple of deliveries. But children become a part and parcel of the mother’s physical and emotional world. She invests much into their well being and she alone suffers. Hence, the rights of whether to give birth or not, should be with her.”
Take note, America.
Ciscentricism aside, this is awesome. However, it pains me to see people reblogging this with commentary along the lines of, “Well, if those backwards people in India get this concept, why can’t the GOP here?” Uh, that will never be okay. Full stop.
(Source: abokononist, via stfuconservatives)
It’s her body, can’t she do whatever she wants?
A good perspective: the embryo isn’t an appendage, if it was, it would have different DNA. The embryo/fetus has different DNA and is therefore a separate entity; a new life.
Actually, it’s not a separate entity when it’s attached to the person carrying it via umbilical cord.
- Way to completely burn down a straw man of “my body, my choice”! I love antichoice amphibology.
- Expecting one class of people to have different or lesser bodily integrity rights due to pregnancy is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause.
- Appeals to nature and cissexism don’t fly.
- On the argument of unique DNA being the standard for granting personhood: cancer fits that criteria perfectly. Also that would make identical twins one person and a chimera two people. So, no.
- Convenience? Antis we’ve been over this before. STFU.
Rand Paul may singlehandledly bring down the TSA this morning, after getting detained in Nashville. Good for him.
Paul apparently set off an airport security full-body scanner “on a glitch,” a spokesman in Paul’s office told ABC News.
The Paul staffer said TSA agents would not let Paul walk back through the body scanner and were demanding a full body pat-down.
The Paul spokesman said his office called TSA administrator John Pistole about the incident this morning.
The fun part, of course, is that this totally plays into his civil-liberties playbook.
Except for those bodily autonomy civil liberties for pregnant people. He was on his way to an anti-choice rally.
(Source: shortformblog, via keepyourbsoutofmyuterus)
A little while ago, @SenRandPaul tweeted:
Today I’ll speak to the March for Life in DC. A nation cannot long endure w/o respect for the right to Life. Our Liberty depends on it. #ky
Then, @RonPaul, his daddy (who fully supports FEDERAL constitutional amendment to ban abortion), tweeted:
My son @SenRandPaul being detained by TSA for refusing full body pat-down after anomaly in body scanner in Nashville.
Oh, irony. You have made my morning.
I HATE IT when my bodily autonomy is not considered a right. The worst, right Rand and Ron?
You whiny rich white cis hetero dudes. Suddenly it’s a big deal when YOUR rights are impinged or curbed. Give me break.
“What’s your problem, Rand and Ron? Someone telling you what you have to do w/ your body and you don’t like it? Oh.” - pregnant people everywhere
(Source: keepyourbsoutofmyuterus)
Pro-Life Testimony
Too bad that that ISN’T true.
Life began eons ago and is a continuous process.
The sperm and ovum are alive. So is the zygote.
How can life BEGIN at conception if the components forming the zygote were alive as well?!
This person is a pathetic excuse for a nurse if she doesn’t believe in protecting her patients human right to autonomy/bodily integrity. Fucking disgusting.
The right to bodily integrity is the bedrock of informed medical consent. Therefore if you’re antichoice this profession isn’t for you. You either don’t seem to understand what the concept means or, more disturbingly, you don’t care. It’s people like you who I wouldn’t trust to take my temperature let alone attempt to save my life. You’d probably come to the conclusion my chemo is mass murder because an invisible man in the cafeteria told you so.
![bebinn:
ohmyloria:
antivian:
bebinn:
craftychristianmamma:
Don’t punish the child for the horrific acts of the father.
Don’t revictimize the survivor by forcing them to let their body be used against their will for months on end. You have no fucking idea what that’s like.
^This
Not going to comment on the issue because its clearly a touchy subject. Granted it is not the child’s fault, the mother is the one with control. It is always the mother’s choice. Life is unfair and cruel, and choosing whether to keep or give up a baby isn’t fair either. But what child wants to grow up knowing he or she is a product of rape? I don’t know, I think its no one’s business but the mothers.
It’s not the fetus’ fault it exists like it’s not the bullet’s fault it’s lodged in your stomach, like it’s not the knife’s fault it’s buried in your chest, like it’s not the rope’s fault it’s wrapped around your throat. You can’t blame those things for the harm they’re doing you, but that doesn’t mean you don’t get to remove them from your body.
This is so despicable. Rape survivors are fully capable of making their own decisions, believe it or not antis. I just cannot and will not ever understand how someone can mandate compulsory pregnancy and birth. Scum of the earth doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel about this type of thinking.
“Which child [sic] has the right to life?” Neither, but again you know that, or you should as so many prochoice people point it out to you on a daily basis.
“The ‘compassion’ of the wicked is cruel.” My thoughts exactly every time I think about the lying misogynists who run CPCs or who legislate pregnant people’s rights away for their political games under the guise of “caring” about women. That’s precisely the type of help and compassion no one will ever need.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lwvpaagX8U1r7q6kho1_500.png)
Don’t punish the child for the horrific acts of the father.
Don’t revictimize the survivor by forcing them to let their body be used against their will for months on end. You have no fucking idea what that’s like.
^This
Not going to comment on the issue because its clearly a touchy subject. Granted it is not the child’s fault, the mother is the one with control. It is always the mother’s choice. Life is unfair and cruel, and choosing whether to keep or give up a baby isn’t fair either. But what child wants to grow up knowing he or she is a product of rape? I don’t know, I think its no one’s business but the mothers.
It’s not the fetus’ fault it exists like it’s not the bullet’s fault it’s lodged in your stomach, like it’s not the knife’s fault it’s buried in your chest, like it’s not the rope’s fault it’s wrapped around your throat. You can’t blame those things for the harm they’re doing you, but that doesn’t mean you don’t get to remove them from your body.
This is so despicable. Rape survivors are fully capable of making their own decisions, believe it or not antis. I just cannot and will not ever understand how someone can mandate compulsory pregnancy and birth. Scum of the earth doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel about this type of thinking.
“Which child [sic] has the right to life?” Neither, but again you know that, or you should as so many prochoice people point it out to you on a daily basis.
“The ‘compassion’ of the wicked is cruel.” My thoughts exactly every time I think about the lying misogynists who run CPCs or who legislate pregnant people’s rights away for their political games under the guise of “caring” about women. That’s precisely the type of help and compassion no one will ever need.
Unlike cars, houses, and boats, our bodies have that pesky tendency to be attached to actual people.
Nice dehumanization, though.
Property rights=/=bodily integrity, but thanks for making it clear that, like a boat or a house, pregnant people’s bodies are property that can be bought, sold, and controlled by others. In addition, you play into the trope that women who refuse to be nurturers to everyone else (even when it will kill them) are not “womanly” enough or women who dare to say NO are somehow evil.
A+ for misogyny!
![prochoicegeneration:
Why does it not surprise me that you are among the throng of anti-choicers who believe that a pregnant person doesn’t know what they are doing when they choose abortion? A person who chooses abortion is very aware of what pregnancy is and what would happen if carried to term, which is why they choose abortion. They understand what pregnancy and birth would mean for them and they understand their own reasons for ending it. Stop assuming those who choose differently are ignorant and start trusting pregnant people. Not to mention that this photo is very revealing of what the anti-choice crowd cares about: the fetus, and the fetus alone. All we see of the pregnant person are arms and a belly.
(Also the percentage of pregnancies terminated at that stage of pregnancies are very rare, in fact, there are a lot of articles floating around about the conditions that lead to a late-term abortion.)
—Maria
[TW mention of rape]
Inevitable Preggobelly you just show up all over my dash, all dehumanizing and such :) No, seriously, you people need to stop acting like paternalism is your day job. Why the condescending scare quotes around the word choice? Do you truly not value human rights at all? This is about the fundamental right to decide how and when your body is utilized, and by whom. Would you say the same thing to someone who didn’t want to be raped? Would you put scare quotes around their “choice” not to be assaulted? Because it’s essentially the same thing. You don’t get to denigrate someone who is saying NO to how their body is being used and utilizing their rights to do so.
I don’t care how much sex someone is having, there’s still no secular reason to mandate any obligation to a zygote. None. If you need to shit all over disabled people, poor people, scared teenagers, trans* people, rape survivors, people of color, and people that just never want to be pregnant than your cause is nothing to be proud of. And having written about mandatory ultrasounds before, let me tell you something: they do nothing except traumatize people. Would you want to have an invasive internal ultrasound after being brutally raped just to make a piece of shit antichoice politician feel better about the whole situation? Really? Even though people that willingly choose to see an ultrasound virtually never change their minds?
[Ellen] Wiebe has done some of the few studies worldwide that attempt to look at women’s reactions to viewing an ultrasound pre-abortion. The research can’t speak directly to laws like the proposed Texas bill, Wiebe told LiveScience, because in that study “nobody was ever forced to do something they didn’t want to do.” But it is the closest thing to research anyone has ever done on state sonogram policies.
The study, published in 2009 in the European Journal of Contraception and Reproductive Health Care, found that, when given the option, 72 percent of women chose to view the sonogram image. Of those, 86 percent said it was a positive experience. None changed their mind about the abortion.
In another study, this one published in 2009 in the journal Contraception, Wiebe analyzed how many women chose to look at the embryonic or fetal tissue removed during an abortion. Only about 28 percent of women were interested – “they’re curious,” Wiebe said – but of those, 83 percent said that viewing the embryo or fetus did not make the process more emotionally difficult. (source)
Now ask yourself a question. WHY do these people never change their minds? Can you guess or do you lack all self-awareness? It’s partially because it shows them what a bunch of liars you are. They see images like this day in and day out, and then come time to get an abortion and the sonogram/products of conception look nothing like what you say. And it’s also partially because pregnant people know exactly what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. Because by the time a pregnant person has made the call to the clinic, gotten an appointment, traveled to the clinic, filled out paperwork, and sat in a waiting room for 30 minutes, they tend to have their minds made up. Given the antichoice climate of the United States right now, many people capable of getting pregnant already know what they will do before they’re even pregnant. It’s condescending and paternalistic to act like pregnant people don’t know what an abortion does or that they have an embryo inside of them that could develop into a fetus that if born will be a human baby. Please.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lwn9x5Iazz1qhip0oo1_1280.jpg)
Why does it not surprise me that you are among the throng of anti-choicers who believe that a pregnant person doesn’t know what they are doing when they choose abortion? A person who chooses abortion is very aware of what pregnancy is and what would happen if carried to term, which is why they choose abortion. They understand what pregnancy and birth would mean for them and they understand their own reasons for ending it. Stop assuming those who choose differently are ignorant and start trusting pregnant people. Not to mention that this photo is very revealing of what the anti-choice crowd cares about: the fetus, and the fetus alone. All we see of the pregnant person are arms and a belly.
(Also the percentage of pregnancies terminated at that stage of pregnancies are very rare, in fact, there are a lot of articles floating around about the conditions that lead to a late-term abortion.)
—Maria
[TW mention of rape]
Inevitable Preggobelly you just show up all over my dash, all dehumanizing and such :) No, seriously, you people need to stop acting like paternalism is your day job. Why the condescending scare quotes around the word choice? Do you truly not value human rights at all? This is about the fundamental right to decide how and when your body is utilized, and by whom. Would you say the same thing to someone who didn’t want to be raped? Would you put scare quotes around their “choice” not to be assaulted? Because it’s essentially the same thing. You don’t get to denigrate someone who is saying NO to how their body is being used and utilizing their rights to do so.
I don’t care how much sex someone is having, there’s still no secular reason to mandate any obligation to a zygote. None. If you need to shit all over disabled people, poor people, scared teenagers, trans* people, rape survivors, people of color, and people that just never want to be pregnant than your cause is nothing to be proud of. And having written about mandatory ultrasounds before, let me tell you something: they do nothing except traumatize people. Would you want to have an invasive internal ultrasound after being brutally raped just to make a piece of shit antichoice politician feel better about the whole situation? Really? Even though people that willingly choose to see an ultrasound virtually never change their minds?
[Ellen] Wiebe has done some of the few studies worldwide that attempt to look at women’s reactions to viewing an ultrasound pre-abortion. The research can’t speak directly to laws like the proposed Texas bill, Wiebe told LiveScience, because in that study “nobody was ever forced to do something they didn’t want to do.” But it is the closest thing to research anyone has ever done on state sonogram policies.
The study, published in 2009 in the European Journal of Contraception and Reproductive Health Care, found that, when given the option, 72 percent of women chose to view the sonogram image. Of those, 86 percent said it was a positive experience. None changed their mind about the abortion.
In another study, this one published in 2009 in the journal Contraception, Wiebe analyzed how many women chose to look at the embryonic or fetal tissue removed during an abortion. Only about 28 percent of women were interested – “they’re curious,” Wiebe said – but of those, 83 percent said that viewing the embryo or fetus did not make the process more emotionally difficult. (source)
Now ask yourself a question. WHY do these people never change their minds? Can you guess or do you lack all self-awareness? It’s partially because it shows them what a bunch of liars you are. They see images like this day in and day out, and then come time to get an abortion and the sonogram/products of conception look nothing like what you say. And it’s also partially because pregnant people know exactly what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. Because by the time a pregnant person has made the call to the clinic, gotten an appointment, traveled to the clinic, filled out paperwork, and sat in a waiting room for 30 minutes, they tend to have their minds made up. Given the antichoice climate of the United States right now, many people capable of getting pregnant already know what they will do before they’re even pregnant. It’s condescending and paternalistic to act like pregnant people don’t know what an abortion does or that they have an embryo inside of them that could develop into a fetus that if born will be a human baby. Please.
(Source: inchristhopeisfound)
![stfuhatemongers:
He is an expert on children apparently.
[TW for murder of a child]
“Pro choice is believing a mother has the right to murder her child, or am I crazy.”
How much fail can you possibly cram into 17 words? Mother? Not until I’ve given birth. Murder? Try not to beg the question or dress up your personal assertions as facts. They’re not. And crazy? Love the ableism.
Abortion and killing a child are vastly different for a number of obvious reasons.
Abortion involves one person making a medical decision for themselves that is based in human rights, reproductive rights, and the Constitution. Murder is violating the bodily integrity of someone else in an unlawful situation that doesn’t involve self-defense.
Abortion is about maintaining your own bodily integrity, murder is violating someone else’s.
Pregnancy always has the potential to be life threatening and must be consented to continuously. The only way to revoke consent is abortion. A small child is not conflicting with a person’s rights and is not life threatening. There is no need or justifiable reason to harm them. If you no longer consent to being a parent you have other options. You can put them in foster care, let them live with other family members, put them up for adoption. Why would prochoice advocate killing children? And you act as if that position is contradictory. It isn’t. Which brings me to my last point:
An embryo is non-sentient and non-autonomous. It relies solely on the pregnant person for it’s survival, but does not have a claim to a person’s body non-consensually. It’s literally inside of a person who undeniably has rights. A child is a person, is sentient, and is biologically autonomous. It’s is still socially dependent, but it’s very existence does not conflict with the life, health, or bodily integrity of anyone else. We’re not fighting for the right to kill whatever we please, merely the right to not be pregnant. It’s telling you refuse to acknowledge the difference.
Seriously, anytime you want to stop with the hyperbole and rhetoric.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lwn8hhtucY1qc1k10o1_500.png)
He is an expert on children apparently.
[TW for murder of a child]
“Pro choice is believing a mother has the right to murder her child, or am I crazy.”
How much fail can you possibly cram into 17 words? Mother? Not until I’ve given birth. Murder? Try not to beg the question or dress up your personal assertions as facts. They’re not. And crazy? Love the ableism.
Abortion and killing a child are vastly different for a number of obvious reasons.
- Abortion involves one person making a medical decision for themselves that is based in human rights, reproductive rights, and the Constitution. Murder is violating the bodily integrity of someone else in an unlawful situation that doesn’t involve self-defense.
- Abortion is about maintaining your own bodily integrity, murder is violating someone else’s.
- Pregnancy always has the potential to be life threatening and must be consented to continuously. The only way to revoke consent is abortion. A small child is not conflicting with a person’s rights and is not life threatening. There is no need or justifiable reason to harm them. If you no longer consent to being a parent you have other options. You can put them in foster care, let them live with other family members, put them up for adoption. Why would prochoice advocate killing children? And you act as if that position is contradictory. It isn’t. Which brings me to my last point:
- An embryo is non-sentient and non-autonomous. It relies solely on the pregnant person for it’s survival, but does not have a claim to a person’s body non-consensually. It’s literally inside of a person who undeniably has rights. A child is a person, is sentient, and is biologically autonomous. It’s is still socially dependent, but it’s very existence does not conflict with the life, health, or bodily integrity of anyone else. We’re not fighting for the right to kill whatever we please, merely the right to not be pregnant. It’s telling you refuse to acknowledge the difference.
Seriously, anytime you want to stop with the hyperbole and rhetoric.
I’ve heard a lot of pro-choice people say that it doesn’t matter if a fetus is a human being because protecting him/her would give them rights no other living being has - the right to use another’s body.
But if a fetus is a human being then we are also giving the person carrying the fetus a right that no one else has - the “right” to kill another human being without consequences.
The question really boils down to what is more important - the right to bodily autonomy or the right to life?
So instead of telling me why it doesn’t matter if a fetus is a human being or not, prove to me that the right to bodily autonomy is more important than the most fundamental of all human rights - the right to life.
Well, that is very simple. if we valued the right to life above the right to bodily autonomy, the organ donation wouldn’t be voluntary, but an obligation. Blood donation wouldn’t be voluntary, but mandatory; after all, it isn’t fair at all that people can just decide not to donate blood because they don’t feel like it while countless people in hospital beds that need that blood are left to die. Tissue donation would also be mandatory. It would be ridiculous for people to have to consent to donating their organs when they are dead because they obviously will not be using them, and with things like hearts in such short supply and highly needed, countless lives could be saved by them. But because in our society, even dead people’s bodily rights are more important than born people right to life, this isn’t the case and taking the organs of a dead person who didn’t consent when alive is illegal.
Justifiable Homocide wouldn’t exist in cases where a person’s life is in danger as it currently is (Justifiable Homocide is justifiable in cases of great bodily harm, not just in cases of life or death.)
The right to life isn’t even as important as property rights in some cases. In the winter, countless homeless people die on the streets from having no place to go. They freeze to death. I don’t see citizens being mandated to house homeless people in their houses in the name of the homeless’ right to life. If a homeless person broke into my house, I would be well within my rights to toss his ass back out on the streets to die.
I’m not allowed to steal food, even if I’m starving to death because the food would be some one else’s property.
I wouldn’t be allowed to steal money to pay for an operation to save my life, because my rights to life>other people’s right to property.
The fact of the matter is, the right to life only includes your own resources and resources other people willingly give to you. That’s how it works in society. Something doesn’t belong to you? Then you can’t claim “right to life” and take it against the owner’s consent. You’re only entitled to your own body, your own money, your own house. If you’re violating some one else’s rights, people are allowed to use the minimal force necessary to stop you.
I can not think of a single instance in society where some one can justfiably infringe on the rights of another person under the “right to life” and have it be legally standing. It seems the only case people ever make this argument is abortion. Suddenly in that case, the right to life trumps everything and everyone and its the most sacred thing ever. Meanwhile, in the rest of society, that is not the case.
Emphasis mine. Thank you for taking the time to spell this out for our antichoice friends. I would have thought it to be blatantly obvious that if something’s entire existence directly conflicts with my health, my life, my right to life, and my bodily integrity that it gets no rights and certainly none that could ever trump mine.
The Myth of Biological Personhood
As the focus of philosophical discourse, courtroom sagas, political platforms, and even incidences of violence, the question of personhood—when life begins—has been the underlying issue in all debate over abortion.
Perhaps the most misunderstood part to the whole controversy is the implausibility of ever reaching consensus. Such agreement could only be achieved if people were to lay aside their individual belief systems. And turning to science to settle the argument won’t help because personhood can’t be determined by science; there is no empirical evidence by which to judge it, there is no biological moment in human development that signals life has begun.
At a conference held over a decade ago to discuss the issue of personhood, leading scientists, legal experts, and theologians concluded that, if brain death is viewed medically as the end of human life, then no beginning of human life is logically possible before brain life. And since fetal brain activity doesn’t emerge any earlier than five months and isn’t reasonably developed until seven months, then, medically, personhood begins near the juncture of the second and third trimesters—after 99 percent of all abortions have been performed. Furthermore, despite the existence of brain functioning, there is still the issue of independent viability.
The Supreme Court avoided taking a position on the issue of personhood in its 1973 landmark Roe v. Wade decision, when it observed that the question of when a human life begins cannot be referred to some expert discipline for resolution. And in their 1989 amici curiae brief prepared for the Supreme Court case of William Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, 167 scientists and physicians, including twelve Nobel laureates, argued:
“There is no scientific consensus that a human life begins at conception, at a given stage of fetal development, or at birth. The question of “when a human life begins” cannot be answered by reference to scientific principles like those with which we predict planetary movement. The answer to that question will depend on each individual’s social, religious, philosophical, ethical, and moral beliefs and values.”
The brief further noted that “science cannot define the essential attributes of human life any more than science can define such concepts as love, faith, or trust.”
So if science can’t biologically determine personhood, what can? It is the responsibility of society to define and protect personhood, and therein lies the problem.
Proponents of abortion generally argue that personhood begins at birth, when the fetus is no longer biologically attached and dependent on the mother’s body. The woman must have full autonomy over her person, and it is solely within her discretion whether to allow her body to house a fetus until birth.
Anti-abortion advocates, on the other hand, insist that personhood begins at the “moment of conception” when sperm and ovum initiate interaction. Regardless of the viability of the fetus, they would afford it protections and rights, even to the exclusion of the host. This denies the woman autonomy over her body and undermines her personhood.
Anti-abortionists most often misunderstand or misconstrue a woman’s right to bodily integrity and autonomy as an argument over “property rights.” But the issue goes much deeper and is far more profound. Unlike a coat we can put on or take off, unlike a house we can enter or leave, our bodies are inextricably connected to our personhood. It is the very fabric of our being. And it’s through our body and its limitations and extensions that we ultimately become a particular type of person.
If someone else controls my body I lose the basic right of self-determination. If the law controls my body, it is violating its most basic obligation to me. Such violation is called slavery and society finds it unacceptable in all other circumstances; it must find it equally unacceptable in regards to abortion. Just as one cannot be coerced into donating blood or organs, a woman must not be coerced into donating her body.
In the end, the dividing line between nonperson and person could be determined as the point at which the fetus becomes an accepted member of the human community—when it is welcomed into society as a biological, independently functioning entity. Science can’t determine this, only our values and ethics can.
Karen Ann Gajewski is an editor with the Humanist.
[emphasis mine. pregnant people, not just women]
