Actually I wasn’t born in the wrong body I was just born in my body and then it was up to me to decide what I want to do with that
A fucking men
exactly. im going to be a fucking men
you know what. That’s a solid argument. I need these kinds of statements when I go to thanksgiving dinners with conservatives.
We’re born in a body, and we should be allowed to do what we want with it. This argument works also with tattoos. “ You know thats permanent” YEAH. if I’m gonna live in it, I should be able to do what I want to it.
I always wish there was a place I can take my body in like a Skyrim mod to just change it whenever I want.
also. I’d be a fucking men.
“What do you think FREEDOM means, Earl?”
“As the sole inhabitant and tyrannous despot of Me-vania, I will do whatever I want to with my sovereign territory, and I don’t care if you don’t like it because I wasn’t going to let you visit anyway.”
To include genitals or not to include genitals…. that is the question.
I think I was talked out of it by my team so we could have greater reach in conservative US schools. I think that normalizing differently shaped genitals is a really important message, and I suppose I don’t mind having that on the website instead.
[Hi, Boston! I’m Dr. Williams. You are probably familiar with the stereotypical male and female sexes for humans (these are called dyadic), but scientists have known for a long time that there’s way more options than that. We call these intersex, and it’s more common than you may think! These are normal and natural conditions and part of the beautiful diversity of human bodies. Just like we have lots of variation in hair color, nose shape, or height, we have many shades of gendered biology, too.
When it comes to our bodies, no two are exactly alike! Genitals are a great example of this. They come in all shapes and sizes and colors. Sometimes there’s a medical need for the body’s plumbing to be modified surgically at birth. However, doctors will often operate on infants with functioning genitals for no good medical reason - just to make their bodies look “normal.” This is terrible because it hurts children, makes lasting changes without consent, and sends a message that their bodies are not okay.
The truth is that all bodies are beautiful. But, your body doesn’t define you: you can have any gender identity or sexual orientation with any body type. Our bodies change as we grow. Sometimes our relationship with our bodies is part of how we understand our gender. The important thing is try to be a friend to your body and use words that feel good to you to describe it.
FYI box:The United Nations released a statement in 2013 condemning forced genital-normalizing surgery, but unfortunately, it still happens.11 Groups like InterACT are working to help advocate for the human rights of all children.]
This is a very rough draft from the upcoming version of the GENDER book I’m working on, posting here for community feedback. Please let me know what you think, where I am being problematic and how it could be better! If you prefer to respond anonymously or join the team to be a more active collaborator, you can write me at [email protected]
Feel free to use it as-is if you’d like to, though. It’s creative commons licensed so the only limitations are to share your source and don’t sell it.
in light of the texas abortion ban here’s a reminder to stop debating what counts as a human, baby, or life with pro-lifers because that is not a debate you can win. you can not win a philosophical debate about what counts as a person, and you will not change their minds.
what can be proven is that in no situation under united states law is an individual legally obligated to lend their body or organs for the sake of another life.
4.5 million people each year are in need of blood transfusion, the entire process of donating blood takes a little over an hour, it’s free, and a single pint of blood can save up to 3 peoples lives, but there is no legal obligation or requirement to donate blood in place.
it is illegal to take organs from deceased peoples’ bodies without permission. CORPSES. bodily integrity is prioritized by law, even after death.
it doesn’t fucking matter whether a fetus is a person, whether a fetus is alive, whether a fetus has a soul. it literally doesn’t matter. pro-lifers set up the argument through that lens (hence their name) to evoke empathy and pity and take the focus away from the actual process of pregnancy, which changes a person’s body FOREVER. that is not an exaggeration. whether the pregnancy is complicated and high-risk or totally smooth sailing, the birthing person will physically never be the same. if they’re lucky, they’ll come out of it with weight gain, differently shaped breasts, and changes to the cervix/vagina. if they aren’t, there’s a fucking laundry list of potential complications that could arise, that may eventually fix themselves, need surgical or therapeutic intervention, or never go away, like varicose veins, separation of the abdominal muscles, incontinence, prolapse, diabetes, postpartum depression, and chronic pain, just off the top of my head. and this makes no mention of the very real possibility of income disruption, as well as the financial cost of giving birth, and the chance of fucking death, which is even higher for underserved communities like black women.
there is no basis for a governing body forcing an individual to lend their body or organs for the sake of another life. that is the argument. period the end.
[Image description: a series of tweets. The first is from Victoria Holmes, @spyturtle96, timestamped 3:06 PM, 04 May 22, with text as follows:
“Adoptees have been saying non-stop for months if not years they’re getting ready for another baby scoop era and no one listened to us. And now "domestic supply of infants” is in a draft and people still won’t listen to us.“
It is tagged ”#adopteevoices".
The next two are from Kim Penn, @kim_penn The first is timestamped 10:08 PM, 02 May 22 and contains the following text:
“I’m a very small Twitter voice, but I am begging my non-adoptee followers to educate yourself about what adoption is, what it does, and how evil and corrupt the adoption industry was and is. Listen to #adopteevoices. And then get your asses in the fight with us to end the system.”
The second is timestamped 9:58 AM, 03 May 22, and contains the following text:
“I promise you, adoption is absolutely NOT the win/win, fucking fairy tale, happy ending you’ve been led to believe. For every #adoptee, our story begins with loss. That’s our baseline. Any "happy ending” without acknowledging that is empty and an illusion.“
It is tagged ”#adopteevoices".
The final three are a Twitter thread from Laney (followed by three Chinese characters), @Lane_Xue, timestamped 8:55 PM, 03 May 22. The first contains text as follows:
“My parents faced reproductive, economic, social, & political injustice. I was relinquished because they could not keep me & I’m an adoptee. I am not a fucking (chess pawn emoji). Do not use my family separation to justify your desire to control others reproductive health care.”
The second contains text as follows:
“Abortion is a reproductive decision.
Adoption is a parenting decision often made by poor, young, economically disenfranchised people not given the resources or support to raise their children.
Do not conflate the 2 to justify feeding the adoption industries demand for (baby’s face emoji).”
The third contains text as follows:
“Do not fucking ask adoptees if they’d rather have been aborted. Adoptees are already 4x more likely to attempt suicide than non-adopted people.
The reason someone needs an abortion is none of your business.”
All three are tagged “#adopteevoices”.
After the final tweet there is a link to ncbi.nlm.nih.gov with the beginning of a title, “Risk of Suicide Attemptin Adopted and Nonadpoted Off…”
Nah this ain’t it. Nobody should be making laws taking away others’ bodily autonomy. A law written by women to take away abortion rights would be just as bad as one written by men. You don’t get to tell me what to do with my body just because you have a similar one.
Love it when people act like proving “rape or incest” exceptions for abortion are even possible, lmao
Quick, prove you were raped so you can access an abortion! How? I don’t know! Maybe you’ll have to get a rape test done at the hospital and prove you have sufficient bruising? Maybe it’ll require filing charges? Maybe it’ll require a full ass criminal trial which is gonna take longer than 9 months, lol.
Prove you were a victim of incest! How? I don’t know, because if you’re a victim of incest you might very well be a young child who doesn’t have the emotional strength and knowledge to even describe the abuse that’s happening to you, let alone advocate for your rights. And even if you are an adult, I dare you to go in front of a judge and detail the sexual abuse from you brother/father/uncle and come out of that untraumatised, all to get permission to have access to abortion. Make sure you get the courage up in just a few weeks!
What about threats to life of the mother exceptions? Quick! What’s the line you draw there? If a mother has extremely high blood pressure and diabetes and is at risk of death early enough in the pregnancy, is that enough for a termination? What about if the mother has an ectopic pregnancy? Or do we have to wait until the mother is suffering from sepsis and shock, blood poisoning maybe? Do mental health issues ever factor in?
It is literally impossible to place such restrictions on abortion that actually work, that are feasible and acceptable to those that would otherwise ban abortions outright.
look, there are major issues with the way doctors are put on a pedestal and treated as infallible
when doctors are seen as always right, sick people who contradict them are always seen as wrong
when doctors are always believed, people who need medical help don;t get it because a doctor said there was nothing wrong with them
when doctors are seen as always knowing whats best, people go through the wrong treatments which can severely damage them
a climate in which people who hold power over vulnerable people are seen as unchallengeable is fucking dangerous and does literally get people hurt and killed
When doctors are seen as always right, people giving birth are treated like objects whose desires and consent mean nothing (TW: violence against pregnant people): [x] [x] [x]
1. “If you don’t like abortion, then don’t get one.”
This concept doesn’t work on anti-choicers because they preach that abortion is murder and therefore needs to be banned as a societal moral statement.
2. “Abortion is legal.”
Anti-choicers know abortion is legal, that’s why they’re trying to make it illegal. This is essentially saying, “Abortion should be legal because it is already legal.”
3. “People will die if forced to get illegal abortions.”
Anti-choicersdon’t care if people die while “murdering little babies.”
4. “I hope all these ‘pro-life’ people have adopted children, support expanded welfare, support universal health care, etc… .”
That’s why anti-choicers constantly talk about how people with unwanted pregnancies have to “face the consequences” of their actions: they see children as consequences for bad sexual behavior. What happens after the child is born doesn’t matter, because the person who gave birth to it has already been sufficiently punished.
5. “I hope all these ‘pro-life’ people support access to birth control and comprehensive sex ed.”
See above. The anti-choice movement doesn’t support these things because it’s the sex, not the fetuses, that it truly cares about.
6. “Planned Parenthood does so much more than abortion / Abortions are only 3% of PP’s services.”
Planned Parenthood represents exactly what anti-choicers hate: the choice to have sex without becoming a parent. Abortion is the biggest offender, but it’s the whole concept of having sex “without consequences” (i.e. a child) that anti-choicers hate.
7. “Even if a fetus was legally a person, bodily autonomy would still prevail.”
DON’T GIVE THEM THIS GROUND! Embryos and most fetuses aren’t sentient, don’t have feelings or thoughts or sensations or are aware that they exist. They are not people. Letting anti-choicers have the “personhood” argument gives them enormous ground to shame pregnant people and pass laws restricting legal abortion out of existence. It also has disastrous consequences for people who have miscarriages.
So what does work?
Anti-choicers’ entire platform depends on emotional manipulation with the “protect unborn children” rhetoric. They absolutely hate having the conversation re-centered on what’s actually under attack: the rights of pregnant people, specifically their right to bodily autonomy.
Most of the listed arguments don’t work because they’re still focused on the supposed “rights” of the embryo or fetus. Never debate embryonic rights; always re-focus the conversation back on pregnant people’s rights.
Read up. Anti-choice arguments are like happy meal toys: there’s only about six of them, you just have to collect them all. Remember to focus every point back on how it affects pregnant people. (Start here)
Don’t get suckered into calling the anti-choice side “pro-life.” Call them anti-choice or at least anti-abortion. The movement does not support babies or life.
Abortion rights are important! Don’t play into the anti-choice side by talking about how “we all want the abortion rate to go down.” The abortion rate shouldn’t go down if it means more people are forced to complete pregnancies they don’t want.
States in the US passed 288 abortion restrictions between 2010-2015. Many people in the US now have to drive hundreds of miles to get to an abortion clinic. Abortion has become virtually inaccessible to the poor. Trump just reinstated the global gag rule and made the Hyde Amendment permanent. Anti-choicers have been out pounding the pavement every day to get abortion restrictions passed for years. Holding their hands and talking about how we can find common ground in “reducing abortions” doesn’t work. You have to fight them.
Even animals have the freedom to terminate a pregnancy when conditions aren’t compatible with survival and the specious argument that humans are separate from and superior to beasts is how we ended up in this global climate catastrophe so fuck off with that.
Word of advice: If you know you don’t want to/aren’t able to go through a pregnancy, and you live in the US, either arrange to get both main and backup contraception NOW for the long term, or talk to your doctor about surgical options.
Too many Gilead-wannabe states are moving to cut off your options starting the moment a sperm gets within six inches of your body.
(1) Abortion services are essential to health care and access to those services is central to people’s ability to participate equally in the economic and social life of the United States. Abortion access allows people who are pregnant to make their own decisions about their pregnancies, their families, and their lives.
(2) Since 1973, the Supreme Court repeatedly has recognized the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy before fetal viability, and to terminate a pregnancy after fetal viability where it is necessary, in the good-faith medical judgment of the treating health care professional, for the preservation of the life or health of the person who is pregnant.
(3) Nonetheless, access to abortion services has been obstructed across the United States in various ways, including blockades of health care facilities and associated violence, prohibitions of, and restrictions on, insurance coverage; parental involvement laws (notification and consent); restrictions that shame and stigmatize people seeking abortion services; and medically unnecessary regulations that neither confer any health benefit nor further the safety of abortion services, but which harm people by delaying, complicating access to, and reducing the availability of, abortion services.
(4) Reproductive justice requires every individual to have the right to make their own decisions about having children regardless of their circumstances and without interference and discrimination. Reproductive Justice is a human right that can and will be achieved when all people, regardless of actual or perceived race, color, national origin, immigration status, sex (including gender identity, sex stereotyping, or sexual orientation), age, or disability status have the economic, social, and political power and resources to define and make decisions about their bodies, health, sexuality, families, and communities in all areas of their lives, with dignity and self-determination.
(5) Reproductive justice seeks to address restrictions on reproductive health, including abortion, that perpetuate systems of oppression, lack of bodily autonomy, white supremacy, and anti-Black racism. This violent legacy has manifested in policies including enslavement, rape, and experimentation on Black women; forced sterilizations; medical experimentation on low-income women’s reproductive systems; and the forcible removal of Indigenous children. Access to equitable reproductive health care, including abortion services, has always been deficient in the United States for Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) and their families.
(6) The legacy of restrictions on reproductive health, rights, and justice is not a dated vestige of a dark history. Presently, the harms of abortion-specific restrictions fall especially heavily on people with low incomes, BIPOC, immigrants, young people, people with disabilities, and those living in rural and other medically underserved areas. Abortion-specific restrictions are even more compounded by the ongoing criminalization of people who are pregnant, including those who are incarcerated, living with HIV, or with substance-use disorders. These communities already experience health disparities due to social, political, and environmental inequities, and restrictions on abortion services exacerbate these harms. Removing medically unjustified restrictions on abortion services would constitute one important step on the path toward realizing Reproductive Justice by ensuring that the full range of reproductive health care is accessible to all who need it.
(7) Abortion-specific restrictions are a tool of gender oppression, as they target health care services that are used primarily by women. These paternalistic restrictions rely on and reinforce harmful stereotypes about gender roles, women’s decision-making, and women’s need for protection instead of support, undermining their ability to control their own lives and well-being. These restrictions harm the basic autonomy, dignity, and equality of women, and their ability to participate in the social and economic life of the Nation.
(8) The terms “woman” and “women” are used in this bill to reflect the identity of the majority of people targeted and affected by restrictions on abortion services, and to address squarely the targeted restrictions on abortion, which are rooted in misogyny. However, access to abortion services is critical to the health of every person capable of becoming pregnant. This Act is intended to protect all people with the capacity for pregnancy—cisgender women, transgender men, non-binary individuals, those who identify with a different gender, and others—who are unjustly harmed by restrictions on abortion services.
(9) Since 2011, States and local governments have passed nearly 500 restrictions singling out health care providers who offer abortion services, interfering with their ability to provide those services and the patients’ ability to obtain those services.
(10) Many State and local governments have imposed restrictions on the provision of abortion services that are neither evidence-based nor generally applicable to the medical profession or to other medically comparable outpatient gynecological procedures, such as endometrial ablations, dilation and curettage for reasons other than abortion, hysteroscopies, loop electrosurgical excision procedures, or other analogous non-gynecological procedures performed in similar outpatient settings including vasectomy, sigmoidoscopy, and colonoscopy.
(11) Abortion is essential health care and one of the safest medical procedures in the United States. An independent, comprehensive review of the state of science on the safety and quality of abortion services, published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in 2018, found that abortion in the United States is safe and effective and that the biggest threats to the quality of abortion services in the United States are State regulations that create barriers to care. These abortion-specific restrictions conflict with medical standards and are not supported by the recommendations and guidelines issued by leading reproductive health care professional organizations including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Society of Family Planning, the National Abortion Federation, the World Health Organization, and others.
(12) Many abortion-specific restrictions do not confer any health or safety benefits on the patient. Instead, these restrictions have the purpose and effect of unduly burdening people’s personal and private medical decisions to end their pregnancies by making access to abortion services more difficult, invasive, and costly, often forcing people to travel significant distances and make multiple unnecessary visits to the provider, and in some cases, foreclosing the option altogether. For example, a 2018 report from the University of California San Francisco’s Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health research group found that in 27 cities across the United States, people have to travel more than 100 miles in any direction to reach an abortion provider.
(13) An overwhelming majority of abortions in the United States are provided in clinics, not hospitals, but the large majority of counties throughout the United States have no clinics that provide abortion.
(14) These restrictions additionally harm people’s health by reducing access not only to abortion services but also to other essential health care services offered by many of the providers targeted by the restrictions, including—
(A) screenings and preventive services, including contraceptive services;
(B) testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections;
(D) referrals for primary care, intimate partner violence prevention, prenatal care and adoption services.
(15) The cumulative effect of these numerous restrictions has been to severely limit the availability of abortion services in some areas, creating a patchwork system where access to abortion services is more available in some States than in others. A 2019 report from the Government Accountability Office examining State Medicaid compliance with abortion coverage requirements analyzed seven key challenges (identified both by health care providers and research literature) and their effect on abortion access, and found that access to abortion services varied across the States and even within a State.
(16) International human rights law recognizes that access to abortion is intrinsically linked to the rights to life, health, equality and non-discrimination, privacy, and freedom from ill-treatment. United Nations (UN) human rights treaty monitoring bodies have found that legal abortion services, like other reproductive health care services, must be available, accessible, affordable, acceptable, and of good quality. UN human rights treaty bodies have likewise condemned medically unnecessary barriers to abortion services, including mandatory waiting periods, biased counseling requirements, and third-party authorization requirements.
(17) Core human rights treaties ratified by the United States protect access to abortion. For example, in 2018, the UN Human Rights Committee, which oversees implementation of the ICCPR, made clear that the right to life, enshrined in Article 6 of the ICCPR, at a minimum requires governments to provide safe, legal, and effective access to abortion where a person’s life and health is at risk, or when carrying a pregnancy to term would cause substantial pain or suffering. The Committee stated that governments must not impose restrictions on abortion which subject women and girls to physical or mental pain or suffering, discriminate against them, arbitrarily interfere with their privacy, or place them at risk of undertaking unsafe abortions. Furthermore, the Committee stated that governments should remove existing barriers that deny effective access to safe and legal abortion, refrain from introducing new barriers to abortion, and prevent the stigmatization of those seeking abortion.
(18) UN independent human rights experts have expressed particular concern about barriers to abortion services in the United States. For example, at the conclusion of his 2017 visit to the United States, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights noted concern that low-income women face legal and practical obstacles to exercising their constitutional right to access abortion services, trapping many women in cycles of poverty. Similarly, in May 2020, the UN Working Group on discrimination against women and girls, along with other human rights experts, expressed concern that some states had manipulated the COVID–19 crisis to restrict access to abortion, which the experts recognized as “the latest example illustrating a pattern of restrictions and retrogressions in access to legal abortion care across the country” and reminded U.S. authorities that abortion care constitutes essential health care that must remain available during and after the pandemic. They noted that barriers to abortion access exacerbate systemic inequalities and cause particular harm to marginalized communities, including low-income people, people of color, immigrants, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ people.
(19) Abortion-specific restrictions affect the cost and availability of abortion services, and the settings in which abortion services are delivered. People travel across State lines and otherwise engage in interstate commerce to access this essential medical care, and more would be forced to do so absent this Act. Likewise, health care providers travel across State lines and otherwise engage in interstate commerce in order to provide abortion services to patients, and more would be forced to do so absent this Act.
(20) Health care providers engage in a form of economic and commercial activity when they provide abortion services, and there is an interstate market for abortion services.
(21) Abortion restrictions substantially affect interstate commerce in numerous ways. For example, to provide abortion services, health care providers engage in interstate commerce to purchase medicine, medical equipment, and other necessary goods and services. To provide and assist others in providing abortion services, health care providers engage in interstate commerce to obtain and provide training. To provide abortion services, health care providers employ and obtain commercial services from doctors, nurses, and other personnel who engage in interstate commerce and travel across State lines.
(22) It is difficult and time and resource-consuming for clinics to challenge State laws that burden or impede abortion services. Litigation that blocks one abortion restriction may not prevent a State from adopting other similarly burdensome abortion restrictions or using different methods to burden or impede abortion services. There is a history and pattern of States passing successive and different laws that unduly burden abortion services.
(23) When a health care provider ceases providing abortion services as a result of burdensome and medically unnecessary regulations, it is often difficult or impossible for that health care provider to recommence providing those abortion services, and difficult or impossible for other health care providers to provide abortion services that restore or replace the ceased abortion services.
(24) Health care providers are subject to license laws in various jurisdictions, which are not affected by this Act except as provided in this Act.
(25) Congress has the authority to enact this Act to protect abortion services pursuant to—
(A) its powers under the commerce clause of section 8 of article I of the Constitution of the United States;
(B) its powers under section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States to enforce the provisions of section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment; and
(26) Congress has used its authority in the past to protect access to abortion services and health care providers’ ability to provide abortion services. In the early 1990s, protests and blockades at health care facilities where abortion services were provided, and associated violence, increased dramatically and reached crisis level, requiring Congressional action. Congress passed the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (Public Law 103–259; 108 Stat. 694) to address that situation and protect physical access to abortion services.
(27) Congressional action is necessary to put an end to harmful restrictions, to federally protect access to abortion services for everyone regardless of where they live, and to protect the ability of health care providers to provide these services in a safe and accessible manner.
(b) Purpose.—It is the purpose of this Act—
(1) to permit health care providers to provide abortion services without limitations or requirements that single out the provision of abortion services for restrictions that are more burdensome than those restrictions imposed on medically comparable procedures, do not significantly advance reproductive health or the safety of abortion services, and make abortion services more difficult to access;
(2) to promote access to abortion services and women’s ability to participate equally in the economic and social life of the United States; and
(3) to invoke Congressional authority, including the powers of Congress under the commerce clause of section 8 of article I of the Constitution of the United States, its powers under section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States to enforce the provisions of section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment, and its powers under the necessary and proper clause of section 8 of article I of the Constitution of the United States.
The latest Narcotica podcast sits down down with Harm Reduction Coalition’s, Eliza Wheeler. Eliza has been working in harm reduction, distributing syringes & naloxone directly to people who use drugs for over two decades, & reflects on how easily the bedrock values and principles of the movement can be compromised and co-opted by political forces when it goes mainstream. Eliza talks about how funds for naloxone end up in the wrong hands, how syringe access deals with NIMBYism, & how the heart of her harm reduction philosophy is bodily autonomy.
Quick Reminder that if your respect for the bodily autonomy of others stops where your personal pleasure begins, then you have waay more work to do to practice what you preach. All sentient beings should have their bodily autonomy respected based on their sentience. This includes non human individuals.
[Image description: a series of tweets. The first is from Victoria Holmes, @spyturtle96, timestamped 3:06 PM, 04 May 22, with text as follows:
“Adoptees have been saying non-stop for months if not years they’re getting ready for another baby scoop era and no one listened to us. And now "domestic supply of infants” is in a draft and people still won’t listen to us.“
It is tagged ”#adopteevoices".
The next two are from Kim Penn, @kim_penn The first is timestamped 10:08 PM, 02 May 22 and contains the following text:
“I’m a very small Twitter voice, but I am begging my non-adoptee followers to educate yourself about what adoption is, what it does, and how evil and corrupt the adoption industry was and is. Listen to #adopteevoices. And then get your asses in the fight with us to end the system.”
The second is timestamped 9:58 AM, 03 May 22, and contains the following text:
“I promise you, adoption is absolutely NOT the win/win, fucking fairy tale, happy ending you’ve been led to believe. For every #adoptee, our story begins with loss. That’s our baseline. Any "happy ending” without acknowledging that is empty and an illusion.“
It is tagged ”#adopteevoices".
The final three are a Twitter thread from Laney (followed by three Chinese characters), @Lane_Xue, timestamped 8:55 PM, 03 May 22. The first contains text as follows:
“My parents faced reproductive, economic, social, & political injustice. I was relinquished because they could not keep me & I’m an adoptee. I am not a fucking (chess pawn emoji). Do not use my family separation to justify your desire to control others reproductive health care.”
The second contains text as follows:
“Abortion is a reproductive decision.
Adoption is a parenting decision often made by poor, young, economically disenfranchised people not given the resources or support to raise their children.
Do not conflate the 2 to justify feeding the adoption industries demand for (baby’s face emoji).”
The third contains text as follows:
“Do not fucking ask adoptees if they’d rather have been aborted. Adoptees are already 4x more likely to attempt suicide than non-adopted people.
The reason someone needs an abortion is none of your business.”
All three are tagged “#adopteevoices”.
After the final tweet there is a link to ncbi.nlm.nih.gov with the beginning of a title, “Risk of Suicide Attemptin Adopted and Nonadpoted Off…”
I did my thesis on eugenics and forced sterilization in Canadian history (indigenous specific) and the next cis woman to say that men should collectively be forced to get vasectomies for points on some kind imaginary scoreboard of rights is getting sent a copy of the records I had to sift thru of men, mostly indigenous, racialized, developmentally disabled, or poor men, being sterilized against their wills and often without their knowledge.
I once again must remind people that “don’t like abortion, get a vasectomy” isn’t the gotcha you think it is, and that reproductive justice means supporting people who are targeted by the state both for forced birth AND for sterilization and child apprehension, as they’re linked closely.
Abortion Ruling: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver(HBO)[source]
“John Oliver discusses the leaked draft opinion that looks set to overturn Roe v. Wade, how we got to this point, and where we may be headed.” [18 min 25 sec]
ok, real honesty hours. I’ll tell you about my hysterectomy. my hysterectomy with bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy which I had at the age of 20. my vagina is now sewn blind on the inside, and I am dependent on synthetic hormones for the rest of my life to avoid undergoing menopause in my 20s. but I have a certain point I want to get through.
one time I was talking to a strongly gendercrit radfem, and I told her how after my surgery I didn’t feel mutilated or incomplete at all - unlike many detrans radfems from the West that I talked to - but rather safe, relieved. she told me she heard something similar a lot from those who come from conservative countries, especially with abortion bans. women from Russia, Poland, Egypt, Iran etc. I happen to come from one of those, a conservative country with an abortion ban. I had sex dysphoria - still do to an extent - I don’t know all the sources of it, but I can tell for sure the political climate I grew up in heavily influenced my feelings towards my reproductive system in particular. I’m gay anyway, but it makes me feel safe to know if I get raped by a male (and that happened in my life) I would have 0 chances of pregnancy, and if the patriarchy and local politics got worse I would always be useless as a wife and mother so nobody would try to exploit me that way (maybe they’d kill me instead but that’s preferable). it feels different than just being on contraception or w/e, it’s ultimate freedom. in my country, even plan B is only available by prescription, and issuing said prescription is something any Christian doctor can legally refuse. unless you go abroad, you’re helpless.
all of my life I had tokophobia (phobia of pregnancy) and I was taught that my reproductive system was something that could be used against me, that could be utilized against my will and even used to hurt me (via rape and forced pregnancy) or it would hurt me on its own (i.e. being told I’d end up wanting biological kids because of “biological clock” even though the vision made me want to vomit and it made me terrified of my own body working against me), and I knew males only saw my value in that so I figured if I no longer have any use as a wife and mother, they’ll leave me alone.
it felt like having a ticking time bomb taken out of me.
now it can’t hurt me anymore. but I admit - I know - that it’s really a fucked up, unhealthy way to feel about my own body and my body parts; regardless, that’s the way I felt, being a dysphoric, tokophobic, homosexual female and a csa & rape victim growing up in a conservative country with extremely few reproductive rights. mind it, I am in med school, I knew the possible risks and complications of undergoing the surgery at such a young age. I was then in second year. I still felt positively about it. I knew it would grant me the ultimate safety, forever.
as for the point I wanted to make. this is exactly why allying with conservatives to fight TRAs is the dumbest thing in existence. you’re trying to put out a fire by pouring gasoline on it. in my country, the TRA movement is barely present. it wasn’t responsible for me feeling that way. conservatism was. lack of agency was. by supporting conservatives, you’re causing your own problem. I still live here, and I still don’t regret my surgery, but maybe you can work to make other young gay females not feel the way I did. you will never archieve that by supporting those who cause it in the first place.
this is ok to share btw, actually I want people to read it and know
