TW: discussion of abortion, mistreatment of women, rape, abuse
Following the closure of a UK abortion clinic in July of 2015, women’s charities and sex positive charities have been calling for buffer zones to be established outside abortion clinics.
But it’s a free country! I hear you cry. Indeed, we are incredibly lucky to live in a country where each woman is free to choose, whether that be to choose abortion or to choose to disagree with abortion.
However, the flaw in this “free country” argument is that yes, this is a free country, until you use said freedom to encroach on another’s.
For hundreds of years, and still today, women’s bodies have not been their own. They have been treated as incubators, sold like cattle, gawked at, and been abused. In the UK, we now (for the most part) have the right to make our own decisions concerning our own bodies, “own” being the operative word. A woman down the street may not make the same decision as me, nor may I make the same decision as my best friend, and that’s just fine.
It saddens me to see women restricting the rights of other women, when we have fought long and hard to be able to take back ownership of our bodies.
I am not suggesting that everyone be pro-life, it is entirely your own decision, but please, don’t force your opinions on anyone else. Should you wish to protest, do it elsewhere!
You have no idea the amount of time, thought and emotion that may have gone into the decision to go to the clinic that day. There are a multitude of reasons why a woman may have to or want to get an abortion, and, quite frankly, they are none of your damn business. The woman in the video below articulates this point exactly:
So take a breath, take a step back and reflect on what you’re actually doing. You’re using your freedom to protest someone else’s freedom to choose. How can that mean that we are all free?
The idea of the buffer zones is that we can all keep our freedom.
I don’t know about you but I am totally obsessed with Call the Midwife, each Sunday we have to sit down with a cup of tea and watch an hour of pencil skirts and placentas. I think it comes with the territory of having a midwife for a mother, anything remotely baby orientated we have to watch. But its not just her, I love this little snapshot into an obstetric past.
But the really interesting thing to me is that how lucky we are to live such in a fortunate time period and place, in terms of the health care available and the free contraceptives. Not only that, but we now live in a time when we have the freedom to make our own choices of how we wish to live our lives.
In the show we have seen the lengths that women have gone to when they have found themselves pregnant in a time when they really couldn’t afford to be. In Episode 3 [Spoiler Alert] of the latest series, an unmarried teacher finds herself pregnant by her married lover. In these times where it was taboo to a single mother, she felt the need to perform an abortion upon herself to disastrous affect. Instead of carrying it out successfully she pierced her uterus and had to have a hysterectomy.
In 1960, when this episode was set, abortion was still illegal, to the degree that the women who did this to themselves were questioned by the police. Originally outlawed in Lord Ellenborough’s Act (1803) and later the Offences against the Person Act of 1828,punishment was so severe that there was the rusk of death penalty. It feels shocking in modern society that a women could receive such punishment after coming to such an agonising decision.
It wasn’t until 1967 that the Abortion Act was passed in the UK, in which the government decreed that to reduce the rate of disease and death associated with illegal abortion that the procedure should be legalised on the grounds that if a continuation of pregnancy would cause either: physical or mental injury to the woman, to her existing children, or if the child was likely to be severely handicapped. This was all to be provided free of charge as part of the service of the NHS which was established in 1948. At this point the abortions could still be performed until 28 weeks, in 1990 it was amended to 24 weeks.
In England, Scotland and Wales we are lucky that these laws were passed, as only across the Irish sea other women do not have this choice. Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013 ensures that they can’t, apart from where continuing the pregnancy would pose a severe risk to the pregnant persons life. These irish women have to plan trips to travel to the UK, in order to have an abortion carried out, if they should decide to.
The actions of the Abortion Act became part of the sexual revolution and gave people a freedom of choice. Any woman who felt that she could not cope with a child at that point or that the baby would end up living a andicapped life could safely have an abortion. The backstreet, unsanitary conditions of abortions of the past are no longer, no one will die in preventable circumstances because they had to resort to unsafe methods.
I suppose I should probably start by explaining what I mean by “Pro-choice = pro-life”, before you condemn me as an uneducated idiot. Pro-choice is the school of thought that says that the decision to have, or not have, an abortion is the decision of the individual pregnant woman in question, and pro-life is the idea that any fertilised egg counts as a human life and to have an abortion is equivalent to murder.
“So how can you say they are the same thing?” I hear you say. By removing a woman’s right to choose, you are often condemning her to a life she does not want. I am by no means suggesting that a woman who continues with an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy will despise her child, because often she won’t. But she will live a life that she did not want, which isn’t exactly pro-life, is it? So maybe we can start to use pro-life to mean pro-female life, a stance which seeks to value women’s lives and choices.
We are lucky in the UK to live in a country where attitudes to abortion are comparatively modern. It is legal and free for a woman to have an abortion (yay). This doesn’t mean that everyone is pro-choice, and there are still plenty of barriers to this choice (you can read more about this here), but compared to the 74 countries (yes, 74!) where abortion is illegal, except in extreme circumstances, we are pretty lucky.
These countries are:
RED COUNTRIES ON THE MAP: ABORTION ILLEGAL IN ALL CIRCUMSTANCES OR PERMITTED ONLY TO SAVE A WOMAN’S LIFE.
South America:Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Gustamala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nigaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Venezuela,
Middle East and North Africa:Kuwait, Morocco, Saudi Arabi
Asia and Pacific:Pakistan, South Korea, Thailand
Europe:Poland
El Salvador has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the world, partially due to the fact that 67% of sexual violence victims are under the age of 17. The men who commit these crimes can be sentenced to 6-10 years in prison. The victims who choose to seek out illegal abortions to liberate themselves from some of the consequences of these crimes could be sentenced to up to 50 years in prison, five times the punishment of the man who forced her into the situation, if new legislation is passed.
Before you stop me and say “but she chose to get rid of her baby, she could have just kept it, so she’s just as bad”, many of these women are too young to care for a baby and/or not in a position where they could financially care for a baby. Few women, few people, would choose to bring a child into a world where they know that that child will go to bed hungry every night, won’t have clean water to drink, and will never have the chance to go to school, if they knew there was another way.
By introducing these increased penalties, not only women who choose to have abortions, but also the innocent victims of obstetric emergencies, will be punished. Women have already been imprisoned for allegedly attempting to have abortions, when actually their babies were still-born. Perhaps one of the most painful experiences a woman could have, topped off with a jail sentence. As if she hadn’t suffered enough?
If you’d like to try to block this new legislation in El Salvador, and support a woman’s right to choose, please sign this petition, and show you’re pro-(female) life.
White Evangelical Christians are on the front-lines of America’s ‘pro-life’ movement. But not so long ago this group was disinterested in abortion and largely apolitical. They’re a crucial faction of Donald Trump’s base, motivating him to further restrict abortion rights across the country. So how did it all change?
Yesterday, the House passed H.R.7 - a bill that would deny abortion coverage to millions of women. Don’t let anti-choice politicians trick you into thinking that this bill is “harmless.” It’s anything but.
Being “okay with abortion but only when the pregnant person’s life is in danger” is a nonsensical belief.
There’s no such thing as a pregnancy that’s 100% safe. So what’s the threshold for chance of death that should be required for an abortion? 10%? 50%? 99%? And who gets to decide that?
1) Supreme Court draft opinions do not leak. Ever. It is unknown and unprecedented. It just does not happen.
2) Supreme Court clerks are generally right-out-of-law-school graduates and if whoever did this gets caught they will never be allowed to practice law. No state bar is ever going to take them. Their legal career is done for. This person risked their entire future.
I hope the court can’t prove anything. May we never know their name.
the supreme court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade is not official yet. someone leaked a draft of the opinion that the members of the court have been circulating and revising (the draft was created by justice samuel alito).
which is insane by the way. it’s the first time that a draft of a supreme court decision has ever been leaked in the entire history of this country.
it makes perfect sense to feel grief or panic or dread or sadness or anger or whatever you’re feeling right now. this is fucking terrible and scary. just for the sake of avoiding misinformation, i wanted to clarify this because i think a lot of the headlines have been misleading, and the info gets even more misconstrued when it’s rephrased on social media and stuff
I’ve noticed that when I remind people that “women’s issues” affect men too- periods, pregnancy, abortion, higher sexual assault, etc- they react very dismissive. Like, “oh yeah, trans men too, i guess.” And it’s because they don’t view trans men’s issues as men’s issues, they view them as a subsect of women’s issues. People, including many, many allies, just straight up do not conceive of trans men as men. They certainly may believe us when we say we identify as men, but in their minds we are always just a different flavor of woman- and I know this because I have gotten this point of view in my own head, where I have to remind myself that my issues are, in fact, men’s issues. Not women’s. Not “non-men’s.” Abortion is a men’s issue. “Pink taxes” are a men’s issue. These are things that affect men.
Ask some people that question, and they will probably say something simple like “It’s a procedure used by doctors to terminate a pregnancy.”
Ask someone else the same question and they may scream back something like, “It’s the murder of an unborn child.”
Others heatedly deny it’s murder, because it’s “the woman’s body” and she has the right to terminate the unwanted “fetus”.
Besides that, it’s legal, ruled so by the U. S. Supreme Court itself.
End of story, right? Well…maybe.
Let’s see what Webster has to say. “1. Induced termination of pregnancy before the fetus is capable of survival as an individual. 2. Any fatally premature expulsion of an embryo or fetus from the womb.”
So, it seems even Webster dodged the point, except to call the life within the woman a “fetus” or “embryo.” No mention of “human life.” Although, Webster does use the term “fatally.”
In my opinion, “fatally” refers to the death of someone or something. Or to kill someone or something.
Others may view it differently
Which brings on the question: Are you pro or anti-abortion?
As for me, I have to go with the antis. The life in a pregnant woman’s body is indeed “human.” How can you say otherwise? Life is life.
And as for the old adage that “It’s the woman’s body and her right?” No. No. No. There are two bodies involved – the potential mother and the baby she carries. Or fetus if you prefer.
The great Supremes can rule it lawful until the cows come home, but a life still has been taken and violently, or “fatally,” as Webster would have it.
However, there are several exceptions to my stand on the subject. I believe in cases involving sexual assault – rape – or incest, and where the mother’s life is in possible danger, the woman has the right to to get an abortion if she so desires. Forced to have a child in such circumstances could have dire consequences in her future.
Otherwise, the Pros can jump up and down and do back flips to the moon and back. But, when it all settles back down, a death or deaths do occur.
A pregnant woman is not unlike one of our apace ships. The lives of the crew on a spacecraft depend solely on their ship.
Food, shelter, clothing, air, water. The whole nine yards.
The same applies to the mother to be.
She is the spaceship for that life growing within her body. It depends totally on her natural bodily functions for its food, shelter, air, etc.
Abortion “violently” interrupts that process, killing the life inside her. That is the gospel. You can take it to the bank. No court ruling, No “It’s her body” claim can be justified.
I am not advocating overturning Roe vs Wade. I am just insisting that abortion be labeled for what it really is: The violent taking of a human life.
Stop playing games, Pros. If you want to kill your babies, then go right ahead. But do it with the full understanding of what you are truly doing,
That’s all.
I’ve seen anti-choicers compare pregnant people to all sorts of inanimate things, from houses to boats to life-support machines.
Some moral dilemmas are interesting. I saw a post comparing abortion to a blood transfusion. The example goes as follows:
Person A is in need of a super rare blood type and will die if they don’t get it.
Person B is the only person with that blood type who is available within the limited time frame.
It is up to Person B as to whether they give some of their blood to Person A, as both have bodily autonomy. Person B does not have to give blood.
I find this interesting. While on one hand, I do not believe Person B should be forced to give their own blood, I do think it would be immoral for them to not do so. Evil even.
I feel this situation fails to argue for abortion, but a major reason it fails is I am not sure how to handle the situation. Not to mention, in deploying this situation they are acknowledging that the fetus is a human being.
I dare say, I probably am in favor of some kind of negative action being taken against Person B if they let Person A die. I am unsure what that punishment should be, but I think I do support one.
You can’t force someone to donate blood. There is no ethical way to punish them for not donating blood even if you think it’s immoral. There could be MANY reasons why they choose not to give blood. You might think it’s immoral for them to not give blood, but so is forcing them to.
And just because you think something is immoral doesn’t mean it should be illegal.
And here we see more evidence that the anti choice crowd actually doesn’t understand what the word choicemeans.
Funny though, considering that the pro life attitude in these same situations is usually “you shouldn’t have had sex then”.
Except for foster kids. Who y'all like to trot out on parade to “prove” how abortion isn’t necessary. While ignoring actual fostered teens/adults who are telling you to stop because fostering/adoption has massive issues inherent in the system.
Almost like none of you actually know what you’re talking about. But we knew that already.
Daily reminder, life is a continuous process that began at least 3.5 billion years ago and anyone who says otherwise is preaching religious doctrine and not objective facts.
You don’t have to be religious to be pro life or to not acknowledge science. I personally think from liking science that living things were around far beyond 3.5 million years ago when we consider the study of dinosaurs and sea creatures. A single creature or human is created when our own life begins at conception. (I am speaking of when the sperm and egg join as one, for clarification).
I said 3.5 billion, not million. Important distinction. I realize that not everyone who is against abortion is catholic but they’re still following catholic doctrine whether they like it or not. Also, why start at conception? Isn’t sperm already a living thing? Why not say life begins at ejaculation? Oh right, because this is actually about controlling women’s bodies.
This morning, we delivered upwards of half a million signatures to Senator Patty Murray in opposition to Rep. Price’s confirmation for Secretary of HHS! We #WontBePunished by Trump nominees who want to take away our health!
His past record of punishing women and families includes voting to:
Repeal the Affordable Care Act
Defund Planned Parenthood
Ban abortion coverage
Now, raise your hand if you already feel victimized by the nomination of Rep. Tom Price for HHS Secretary.
That’s what we thought.
The good news is that you can take action RIGHT NOW by letting your elected officials know where you stand! We need you to tell the Senate to oppose the confirmation of Rep. Tom Price for HHS Secretary: www.bit.ly/RejectPrice. Then, encourage your family and friends to do the same!
Are you with us?
Urgent! There’s still time to tell the Senate to reject Rep. Tom Price!
Rep. Tom Price’s first confirmation hearing is scheduled for next Wednesday, January 18th. We need you to take action now and join the thousands of All* Above All supporters who’ve spoken out against this Trump nominee intent on interfering in our health decisions. Add your name: tell the Senate to reject Rep. Price’s nomination: bit.ly/RejectPrice.
His past record of punishing women and families includes voting to:
Repeal the Affordable Care Act
Defund Planned Parenthood
Ban abortion coverage
Now, raise your hand if you already feel victimized by the nomination of Rep. Tom Price for HHS Secretary.
That’s what we thought.
The good news is that you can take action RIGHT NOW by letting your elected officials know where you stand! We need you to tell the Senate to oppose the confirmation of Rep. Tom Price for HHS Secretary: www.bit.ly/RejectPrice. Then, encourage your family and friends to do the same!
This week is going to be tough one - full of Trump foolishness, nominations nonsense, and who knows what else. To inspire you in the face of all this, here are some of the throwback moments I’m holding close from the last year. It’s easy to look back on 2016 with a pessimism: after all, the reality of Donald Trump as our next President has shaken many of us to our core. But we cannot let that erase the fact that in many ways, 2016 was a year of women kicking butt all over the place, whether it was with athletic prowess, astrophysics, policy, or musical brilliance:
10. Women shine at the Olympics.
It may seem like a long time ago now, but 2016 was the year of the Woman Olympian. They broke records: Simone Biles’ feats of gymnastic excellence made her the most decorated U.S. gymnast ever in a single Olympics, while Katie Ledecky brought in four golds and a silver medal as she broke not one but TWO world records. They also broke barriers: Ibtihaj Muhammad became the first American athlete to compete in the Olympics while wearing a hijab. She also won a bronze medal in fencing. As Muhammad said to US Magazine, “A lot of people don’t believe that Muslim women have voices or that we participate in sport…I want to break cultural norms.”
From gymnastics, to swimming, to fencing, women Olympians inspired us all.
What do we say about King Bey’s Lemonade that hasn’t already been said in a million think pieces and tribute gifs? First came the surprise “Formation” video. Then the explosive Super Bowl performance. Then the transformative Lemonade. THEN, she capped it all off with that defiant and joyful performance of “Daddy Lessons” with the Dixie Chicks at the damn COUNTRY MUSIC AWARDS.
Whatever else we say about 2016, it will go down as the year Beyoncé slayed. And slayed. And slayed. OK.
8. Latina Scientists discover Einstein’s gravitational waves.
This year, Argentina-born Dr. Gabriela Gonzalez and Mexican-American Dr. France A. Cordova accomplished the impressive feat of detecting gravitational waves from two black holes colliding, a discovery that confirms many of Albert Einstein’s theories about the universe. This discovery by these Latina scientists is one for the history books!
In 2013, Purvi Patel was imprisoned and sentenced to 20 years for feticide and the neglect of a dependent—all because she ended a pregnancy on her own. The story is shocking – after all, no woman should fear arrest or jail for ending a pregnancy, losing a pregnancy, or seeking medical help. A small measure of justice was won for Purvi when she was released from prison in September. This case also creates an important precedent that strikes back against disturbingly widespread state laws that criminalize a woman for ending her pregnancy.
A major highlight from this year’s Oscars was Lady Gaga’s performance of her Oscar-nominated song, “Til It Happens To You.” She was introduced by Vice President Joe Biden and ultimately joined onstage by survivors of sexual assault. This was an important moment of visibility for survivors of sexual assault, who also made headlines later in the year when the #NotOkay hashtag moved women from around the world to share their stories of sexual assault and rape.
Back when it was just sinking in that Trump would be the Republican nominee, 100 women posed nude while holding mirrors as part of an art installation protesting the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio. While their motives and politics were reportedly very diverse, there’s no question that the women’s agency over their bodies carried extra resonance this election season. Whatever their reasons, it was a powerful moment and brave demonstration.
This year saw women across the planet declaring their human rights and resisting schemes to take those rights away. Polish women organized a massive strike to protest an abortion ban. It was incredible to watch – and is a tactic we may need to learn from if Trump, Pence, and their cronies in Congress have their way.
3. The Supreme Court declares that abortion must be accessible in real life.
Think back to late June: people gathered on the steps of the Supreme Court to hear the happy news – in a 5:3 decision, SCOTUS struck down Texas’ clinic shutdown law, HB 2. This landmark decision affirmed that a woman should be able to get an abortion with dignity, respect, and WITHOUT politicians standing in the way. In the wake of that decision, several other clinic shutdown laws fell. While there is still a lot to be done, this was a huge moment.
2. “This is not normal.” Michelle Obama responds to Trump’s videotaped admission and history of sexual violence.
When Michelle Obama took the stage in New Hampshire shortly after the video surfaced of our now President-elect bragging about sexually assaulting women, she articulated beautifully and painfully what so many of us had been feeling. It’s worth quoting at length:
“It’s that feeling of terror and violation that too many women have felt when someone has grabbed them, or forced himself on them and they’ve said no but he didn’t listen — something that we know happens on college campuses and countless other places every single day. It reminds us of stories we heard from our mothers and grandmothers about how, back in their day, the boss could say and do whatever he pleased to the women in the office, and even though they worked so hard, jumped over every hurdle to prove themselves, it was never enough.
We thought all of that was ancient history, didn’t we? And so many have worked for so many years to end this kind of violence and abuse and disrespect, but here we are in 2016 and we’re hearing these exact same things every day on the campaign trail. We are drowning in it…
This is not normal.”
With this speech, Michelle gave us the mantra we’ll need to get through the next four years, and face down the regressive policies Trump has promised. This. Is. Not. Normal.
1. A major party presidential candidate spoke out against the Hyde Amendment!
Even as we grieve, and cry, and even fear for our safety and the lives and well-being of those we love, we must remember this: More than 64 million Americans voted for a future where women are treated as human, and where the amount of money you have doesn’t determine whether you can get an abortion. Sixty-four million Americans voted to move forward, not backward, for love instead of hate, compassion instead of division. By a margin of more than 2 million, Americans voted for Secretary Hillary Clinton, the candidate who supported women’s health and rights and spoke out against the Hyde Amendment. While we won’t get to welcome her into the White House, we’ll always remember when she said:
“Any right that requires you to take extraordinary measures to access it is no right at all… [N]ot as long as we have laws on the book like the Hyde Amendment making it harder for low-income women to exercise their full rights.”
Here’s what I’ve learned from this year: women are STRONG AS HELL. We can do anything. We are resilient, we are talented, we are driven, and we resist. And that’s exactly what we’ll need to do to hold onto what we’ve won and keep fighting forward for as long as we have to.
This morning, we headed to Capitol Hill with a BOLD message for the new Congress: We won’t be punished by politicians who want to shame or bully us, deny our coverage, or put women and doctors in jail.
This means that in Texas, the remaining health centers that provide abortion are able to stay open, and some of the health centers that HB2 already shut down could possibly re-open at some point in the future.
Outside Texas, the decision could impact some cases on targeted restrictions on abortion providers — but will be evaluated on a state-by-state basis.
In the long-term, the ruling could ensure stronger constitutional protections for access to abortion across the US. Yessss!
