Category Archives: abortion rights

Just Another Thing To Do: A Pro-Choice Essay

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I do not have a uterus.

I cannot tell a woman what to do with her uterus.

If I did have a uterus, I still could not tell a woman what to do with her uterus. I also still could not tell a transgender man what to do with his uterus. And others would not have the right to tell me what to do with mine.

I am a huge fan of Emily’s List (look it up; they’re awesome) and I am vehemently pro-choice. I try to be polite and delicate about it sometimes, because I know that abortion is a sensitive topic for some people, but it is not for me. For me, abortion is a medical procedure—except that unlike having teeth pulled or having an appendectomy, it is not a procedure that I will never undergo. Also, unlike tooth-extraction and appendectomies, it is a contested topic. In fact, it is still being contested today (and not just in distant parts of the world to which I am afraid to travel), which is more than a little mind-boggling to me.

But I do not believe that opponents of female reproductive rights are mindless, misogynistic lunatics who want to turn women into baby-making slaves. I do not have many friends who are opposed to abortion rights, but those who are tend to be educated and know how to express and articulate their beliefs without shouting “baby-killer.” In most cases, their beliefs have a foundation in their personal religious beliefs.

If your religious beliefs state that life begins at conception, then I understand that. But I do not understand why you would expect for me to believe that—or conduct myself as if I believe it. I believe in ghosts (not in supernatural ghosts that levitate chairs or start fires or other things like that). And I honestly forget, at times, that not everyone believes in ghosts (although it makes sense; I wouldn’t expect for someone who has never had an experience with something to believe in it, per se). That said, I don’t consciously expect for other people to believe in ghosts. And I certainly don’t expect for people to conduct themselves as if they did believe in …

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Paul Ryan: A Legitimate Danger to Women’s Rights

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I have to admit, I was pretty shocked when Mitt Romney announced Paul Ryan as his running mate.  I’d been almost positive his veep candidate would be female, in large part because Romney’s ratings among women are pretty abysmal.

Playing that card failed miserably for John McCain four years ago, but believe it or not, Sarah Palin almost seems sort-of-kind-of-at-least-a-little-bit acceptable when you take a closer look at Paul Ryan.

I knew relatively little about Paul Ryan when the news broke, other than that he’s a Congressman from Wisconsin and something of a golden boy in the Tea Party.

I received a forwarded e-mail from my mother today, however, that concerned me.  Deeply concerned me.

Now, the subject line was “5 Facts About Paul Ryan and Women”, and since I know what side of the political spectrum my mother hails from, I wasn’t surprised by its existence.  I get mass e-mails from all directions of politics (someone–I’m pretty sure it was my brother despite his denials–signed me up for Rick Santorum’s mailing list), and it’s always interesting to see rhetoric at work, to observe two completely different spins on the same issues, the same numbers.

In other words, I read all political mailings with a grain of salt.

Usually.

The e-mail I received today, though, a forward from Ultra Violet, was a bit different. It had the usual hard-swinging, attention-catching lines, but it also included footnotes … in other words, the wild accusations against Paul Ryan’s political stances on women’s issues are well-documented.

1. He voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Think women deserve to earn the same pay as men for the same work? Paul Ryan doesn’t. And the pay gap costs women and their families close to $431,000 over their lifetimes.

In a nutshell, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is, as its name suggests, legislation intended to ensure that women have the same compensation opportunities as their male colleagues. It is, to be fair, very complex and not as clear-cut as Ultra Violet would have you believe.

That being said, The National Review admits that “many conservatives question the existence of a wage gap in the first place” and that “instead of helping workers, the Paycheck Fairness Act could actually make their jobs harder by increasing costs to the businesses that hire them.”

2. He opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest. It’s not just that Paul Ryan has voted 59 times against a woman’s right to choose—which he has. He would even rather let a woman die than allow her to have an abortion. He’s supported a bill to allow hospitals to refuse to provide abortion care to a woman, even if she could die without it.

Yes, this is also true. Frightening as hell, but true. In fact, Paul is not averse to women being prosecuted for having abortions. Prosecuted.

From The Daily Beast:

This disregard for the exigencies of women’s lives—the dismissal of their choices as amoral exercises of “arbitrary will”—was thrown into high relief during his 1998 run for congress against Democrat Lydia Spottswood. Both candidates backed a ban on so-called partial-birth abortion, but Spottswood believed there should be exceptions in cases where a woman’s life or health is endangered. “Ryan said he opposes abortion, period,” reported the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “He said any exceptions to a ‘partial-birth’ abortion….

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Get Thee To A Nunnery

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I’m sure that most of you have heard by now about the Vatican’s “crackdown” on American nuns. Essentially, most American nuns and American nun organizations are spending “too much” time and energy on helping to combat poverty and too little time opposing same-sex marriage and abortion rights.

Nuns are not the female equivalents of Catholic priests. Nuns are the female equivalents of monks. They are in positions of service to the Church and their communities, where priests are in positions of service to the Church but also in positions of authority (along with service) when it comes to their parishioners. Nuns do not lead mass or take confession; they are recognized for the work that they do.

I can see where the Vatican is coming from on this, and I’ll get to that in a moment, but when your complaint is that someone is spending too much time caring for the poor, the sick, and addicts, you should at least realize that your criticism is going to sound a little weird and may not be taken well.

To my mind, nuns are the most popular Catholics. Probably not the severe, ruler-wielding nuns of a couple of generations ago (I do not care if it is on the hand; hitting children is detestable), but contemporary nuns are fairly popular, likable figures. Do you guys remember Sister Peg from Law & Order: SVU? She was a recurring character, a nun who gives out clean needles to addicts and tries to help prostitutes without interfering in their lives. Horrible things would happen to her sometimes because she put herself into dangerous situations in order to help others, but she kept doing her work because she believed in helping people. When watching SVU, you felt bad whenever bad things happened to her, no matter what your feelings towards the Catholic Church might be.

While that’s a fictional and somewhat dramatic portrayal of contemporary American nuns, I do not think that it is inaccurate as far as values and attitudes are concerned.

Now, I disagree with the Vatican. I believe that same-sex marriage should be legally recognized everywhere, and I believe that every woman should have the right to choose. But I do understand where they are coming from with these criticisms.

From their perspective, it’s like the Vatican is the parent and American nuns are the child who is doing lots of work and extra credit and making straight As in most of their classes but neglecting a few classes. I can see how they would want for nuns to work in this area (I guess that saying “the Church wants for nuns to focus more upon pushing social injustice” is a bit melodramatic).

But I think that trying to force this issue right now is a mistake on the part of the Vatican. I am sure that these organizations of nuns have many motivations for choosing their priorities as they have, but one motivation has to be that opposition to marriage equality continues to diminish, and I honestly don’t think that female reproductive rights are going away on a national level any time soon (despite a number of attempts in the past few years). And while nuns enjoy some popularity and familiar recognition now—which the Church, in many places, does not—part of that might be due to the fact that they are focusing upon doing good works that just about everyone can support. If nuns start taking hard stances on social issues, as the Vatican is insisting that they do, then they may lose some of that popularity and good public image, which could, in turn, make it harder for them to do the work that they really want to be doing.



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Bubba Carpenter’s Mississippi Abortion Law: “Let ‘Em Use Coat-Hangers”

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At first, I thought this was just a journalist poking fun. I thought it was a cheeky explanation of the video I was about to watch. Surely no one would really say “But hey, you have to have moral values. You have to start somewhere, and that’s what we’ve decided to do,” as a response to critics saying your new law to “literally [stopping] abortion in the state of Mississippi.” Because you do realize what’ll eventually happen, right? That it would bring the return of coat hanger abortions? And no one in their right mind would consider something like that, yes? Especially not a State Representative! … Right?

Wrong! That is exactly what Mississippi Republican State Representative Bubba Carpenter said. That was his actual response! All of this was caught on video and posted on YouTube, but if you try to view the video now it, of course, has been taken down by request. Me, I’m virtually speechless. I have no words to express how idiotic, loathsome, and just downright unfathomable this behavior is. Even those words don’t feel like enough.

His exact speech was:

“We have literally stopped abortion in the state of Mississippi. Three blocks from the Capitol sits the only abortion clinic in the state of Mississippi. A bill was drafted. It said, if you would perform an abortion in the state of Mississippi, you must be a certified OB/GYN and you must have admitting privileges to a hospital. Anybody here in the medical field knows how hard it is to get admitting privileges to a hospital. … It’s going to be challenged, of course, in the Supreme Court and all — but literally, we stopped abortion in the state of Mississippi, legally, without having to [deal with]  Roe vs. Wade. So we’ve done that. I was proud of it. The governor signed it into law. And of course, there you have the other side. They’re like, ‘Well, the poor pitiful women that can’t afford to go out of state are just going to start doing them at home with a coat hanger.’ That’s what we’ve heard over and over and over. But hey, you have to have moral values. You have to start somewhere, and that’s what we’ve decided to do. This became law and the governor signed it, and I think for one time, we were first in the nation in the state of Mississippi.”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again … your values do not have to be everyone else’s values, because, quite frankly, that is not part of the government’s job. If we’re speaking in generalizations, then I’m sorry, Mississippi, but you have no values and no morals. The only thing you have is an agenda and it’s a poor one, at that.



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