When you express opposition to abortion on demand, your words mean that you view all of this as perfectly fine: My death. Their deaths. Their poverty. Their children’s poverty. You would condemn real people to death, to a life of misery and suffering. And for what? For this:
Image courtesy UNSW Embryology, via Iris Vander Pluym.
OH WAIT, I’m sorry. I got mixed up. That’s ^ a mouse embryo up there, not a human embryo. Sure looks a lot like that human embryo, though. And yet, nothing like a mouse. Weird.
Read the whole thing, and bookmark it, and send it on to that person in your life who either cares more about little globs than they do actual women, or those who are so indifferent to women that their health and safety doesn’t matter as much as voting the way their church wants them to vote.
Your previous post on abortion and losing a friend made me want to stand and applaud. And the post that you’ve linked to is absolutely excellent. I have often thought it might be instructive to provide a poster of perhaps five embryos and one pregnant woman, with the question “Which one is the human being?” Iris Vander Pluym’s post does better.
What is eyeblinkingly bizarre is the first comment to that post. How can someone fail so radically to comprehend what has been said?
That post was amazing to me. Excellently written, and very well-said. Loved the embryo pictures. And the discussion of personhood.
(Cute cat, and awesome photo! Iris, you rock!)
Is that sleeping bat picture right? Maybe this is just my ignorance being demonstrated, but the face looks like it was added in from somewhere else. (Or maybe I’m taking things too seriously and missing a “true fact” joke.)
Most of these anti-choice folks DON’T care about these little globs at all. If they did, we’d have teachers driving BMWs, and every school would have an orchestra, and food bank volunteers would spend most of their time playing Angry Birds because there wouldn’t be enough food-insecure families to keep them busy. No, being “Pro-life” is only a figleaf to hide how these self-righteous slimeballs are only really interested in punishing what they see as slutty behavior in women (not in men, of course).
Iris Vander Pluym’s statement is strong, eloquent, and fierce – highly recommended.
Because she wrote on a WordPress blog, and because WP won’t recognize my (apparently expired) old password but won’t allow my name or email address to register a new account because they’re already in use, please allow me to post the comment here that I couldn’t there:
Anti-choice arguments are weak as hell (except to those permanently perched in an ivory tower), but those who make them seemingly never understand why they produce the backlash they do.
I can’t add anything to the assertions of autonomy made by women above, but I do want to make an observation: the anti-abortion movement (a network of dozens, maybe hundreds, of organizations) NEVER* stands up for more widely available contraception, NEVER* demands widespread and comprehensive sex education, and NEVER* supports research on improvements for either of these. We know (from the continuing examples of every other developed nation on Earth) that the number of abortions and unwanted childbirths – and STIs! – can be reduced drastically, yet the antis won’t even give lip service to proven effective methods favoring their own (purported) goals. Yet they still think of themselves as innocent and benevolent, called hypocrites and worse out of pure meanness by those in “the culture of death”.
In point of fact, they are hypocrites and worse: much worse.
*So far as I know – can anyone name any exceptions among those groups?
Your words were just fine, Dana, just as Iris’ were just fine for her. For the life of me, I just don’t get why those who are unequipped with uteri think they have the right to dictate to those who have them. I think they need a nice steaming cup of STFU.
That is a great post. Unfortunately, the people in my life who most need to read it are also the ones who will dismiss it out of hand because it’s “angry” and contains the word “fuck.”
Your previous post on abortion and losing a friend made me want to stand and applaud. And the post that you’ve linked to is absolutely excellent. I have often thought it might be instructive to provide a poster of perhaps five embryos and one pregnant woman, with the question “Which one is the human being?” Iris Vander Pluym’s post does better.
What is eyeblinkingly bizarre is the first comment to that post. How can someone fail so radically to comprehend what has been said?
That post was amazing to me. Excellently written, and very well-said. Loved the embryo pictures. And the discussion of personhood.
(Cute cat, and awesome photo! Iris, you rock!)
Extremely powerful, indeed. Badass level.
Is that sleeping bat picture right? Maybe this is just my ignorance being demonstrated, but the face looks like it was added in from somewhere else. (Or maybe I’m taking things too seriously and missing a “true fact” joke.)
Most of these anti-choice folks DON’T care about these little globs at all. If they did, we’d have teachers driving BMWs, and every school would have an orchestra, and food bank volunteers would spend most of their time playing Angry Birds because there wouldn’t be enough food-insecure families to keep them busy. No, being “Pro-life” is only a figleaf to hide how these self-righteous slimeballs are only really interested in punishing what they see as slutty behavior in women (not in men, of course).
Thanks for the signal boost Dana, and to your commenters for the kind words.
Scr… Archivist: I was just being a shameless smartass with that “baby bat” picture. Apologies.
Iris Vander Pluym’s statement is strong, eloquent, and fierce – highly recommended.
Because she wrote on a WordPress blog, and because WP won’t recognize my (apparently expired) old password but won’t allow my name or email address to register a new account because they’re already in use, please allow me to post the comment here that I couldn’t there:
Anti-choice arguments are weak as hell (except to those permanently perched in an ivory tower), but those who make them seemingly never understand why they produce the backlash they do.
I can’t add anything to the assertions of autonomy made by women above, but I do want to make an observation: the anti-abortion movement (a network of dozens, maybe hundreds, of organizations) NEVER* stands up for more widely available contraception, NEVER* demands widespread and comprehensive sex education, and NEVER* supports research on improvements for either of these. We know (from the continuing examples of every other developed nation on Earth) that the number of abortions and unwanted childbirths – and STIs! – can be reduced drastically, yet the antis won’t even give lip service to proven effective methods favoring their own (purported) goals. Yet they still think of themselves as innocent and benevolent, called hypocrites and worse out of pure meanness by those in “the culture of death”.
In point of fact, they are hypocrites and worse: much worse.
*So far as I know – can anyone name any exceptions among those groups?
Your words were just fine, Dana, just as Iris’ were just fine for her. For the life of me, I just don’t get why those who are unequipped with uteri think they have the right to dictate to those who have them. I think they need a nice steaming cup of STFU.
That is a great post. Unfortunately, the people in my life who most need to read it are also the ones who will dismiss it out of hand because it’s “angry” and contains the word “fuck.”