Sunday, July 10, 2011

Sarah Response

The responses I wrote were not arguments for or against abortion, for the most part, they were just showing you where you had holes in your arguments - you asked me to point out the holes, so that's what I did.

And okay, I misspoke (typed?). I meant zygote. A zygote doesn't have any of those characteristics, and yet you still consider it to be a person (because it contains DNA). And having the beginnings of those characteristics doesn't mean that they have those characteristics.

Here's another fun fact - only 60-80% (from Dr. John P. Ortiz, University of Utah School of Medicine, testifying before the president's Council of Bioethics in 2003, thanks newsreview.com) of zygotes actually attach themselves to the uterine wall to start growth. This means that 20% of these "people" come out during menstruation.

You're telling me that abortion is not about gender equality, and I'm telling you right now that abortion is VERY MUCH about gender equality. Women are the only people that can have babies. That makes abortion a woman's issue.

You even make the point yourself. You quote Margaret Sanger - "[Our objective is] unlimited sexual gratification without the burden of unwanted children. [Women must have the right] to live, to love, to be lazy, to be an unmarried mother, to create, to destroy." Men unequivocally have these rights (minus the unmarried mother one, because they aren't women. They can be single dads, though!). You claim that these rights are a sign that women are "greedy." And you know what? Women have the right to be greedy, just as much as men have the right to be greedy.

To claim that women need to give up these rights, this "greed" to carry a baby to term, whether they want it or not, reduces them to nothing more than an incubator.

And you claim that abortion causes irreparable harm to the mother, both physically and emotionally. This is opinion. Have you ever spoken to a woman that's had an abortion? Have you asked her questions about it? The reason why pro-choice people often say that they want abortion to be "safe, legal, and rare" is that yes, it would be great if there were fewer abortions, because it often is a physically and emotionally difficult procedure for the women who choose to undergo them. On the other hand, not all women feel this way, and they should not be shamed for the choices they make either. Men are not shamed for causing these pregnancies - the women should not be shamed for how they carry (or don't carry) the pregnancies out.

And yes, Margaret Sanger may have been a racist. Margaret Sanger was a white woman with power living in the 1920s. Her racism is not a surprise. Her racism, however, does not make abortion wrong. It makes her a racist. She lived in a very different era than we do now, and was an incredibly privileged and occasionally narrow-minded, bigoted woman. Just because she was the one that was the catalyst for a movement doesn't mean she was right about everything. In that same stroke, it doesn't mean she was wrong about everything, either.

I've seen this written too - our founding fathers were also racists. They kept slaves. It was a reflection of their time and of their position in society. This doesn't mean that all of their ideas or the things they did for our country were bad. To reject the work that Margaret Sanger did for her discriminatory opinions, and to not reject others who acted the same way, is inconsistent.

Margaret Sanger's most important cause was birth control and contraception. Birth control and contraception are most of what Planned Parenthood provides. Birth control and contraception are NOT BAD THINGS. People should be educated about birth control and contraception from the time they understand what sex is. People should not be ashamed about buying and using birth control and contraception. Birth control and contraception are a matter of improving public health for both men and women. Denying it on either side is bad for people, period.

Sometimes, being on a birth control pill means that fertilized eggs don't stick to the uterine lining, and therefore are menstruated out. Does this mean that women on the BCP are murderers too? Where do you draw a line? Would you make the BCP illegal? I'm not ashamed to tell you that I take it, and that I have friends that take it, though the reasons why are absolutely none of your business.

Would you make the Pill illegal, then? Even though it's able to help women and girls like me with a whole variety of different medical issues? This is a matter of women's health. Denying it would be a matter of women's rights.

What about women who have stillbirths and miscarriages based on their living environment, or due to a drug they were taking, or were told that carrying a pregnancy to term would be risky for them, but continued the pregnancy anyway? Or women that just have miscarriages, even if there is no evidence that their habits caused them? Is it their fault? Are they murderers too? Regardless of whether or not you think so, there are women in jail and women being prosecuted for homicides for these reasons. Here's an article, so you can tell I'm not making this stuff up: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/24/america-pregnant-women-murder-charges

If you think that abortion is still irrelevant to women's rights, the fact that men may continue to perform these activities legally while the woman who is carrying their child is deemed a murderer if these activities end up causing a miscarriage should show you that it certainly is. If, like before, you think these rights shouldn't matter if the woman is carrying a child, you are again reducing her to incubator status.

Furthermore, you claim that being autonomous is not a requirement for life. I agree that we all depend on people to some degree, but I'm talking about physical autonomy. If you walk into and out of a building, you are not feeding off another human. You are not eating what they eat, you are not pumping their blood, you are not reshaping their body. This dependence is COMPLETELY different than asking your parents for gas money or buying somebody groceries. Fetuses are burdens to their mother in a COMPLETELY different way than a kid is a burden to their parent. And like I said before - and as before, this is not a slight against you - you are male, and you will never understand this. You can't.

This is from Wikipedia's entry on Planned Parenthood:

Federal legislators have also proposed laws that would ban Planned Parenthood from receiving federal money for any purpose.[42] By law, Planned Parenthood cannot allocate any federal funding for abortions.[41]

A lot of Planned Parenthood's funding comes from outside sources as well, like people who donate. People who donate to Planned Parenthood are not murderers by association. That is patently ridiculous.

And I never said you did support war! But I did say that if you believe that "the killing of innocent human life is ALWAYS evil," you should be as vocal about ending the war as you are about ending abortion. You should be on street corners, you should write to your congresspeople, you should post about it on Facebook.

I said the concept was similar, not that I put humans and trees on the same page.

And by the same notion, instead of doing all you can to support women facing difficult pregnancies, you should be doing all you can to make sure these unwanted pregnancies DON'T HAPPEN. Educate. Make contraception available. Make sure that rapes go reported and that women feel comfortable going to the authorities with a rape charge. Make sure more rapists are prosecuted (according to RAINN, the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network, 15 of 16 rapists never spend a day in jail and 60% of rapes go unreported. Here's some interesting data on the subject: http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/reporting-rates).

Genocide is "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group" (wikipedia again). This is perpetrated out of hate and intolerance on a massive scale, in a systematic and organized manner. Your statement that "abortion is genocide," essentially makes the claim that women the world over are guilty of perpetrating genocide, which is inappropriate and ignorant. I know that you're a good person - please don't make this comparison again.

I hope that you've got some answers for me - sorry it took so long to respond!

And in the event that the comment gets misinterpreted, as I have a feeling it might, I definitely agree that kids are burdens to their parents. Kids are huge burdens to their parents. Just not in the same physical way that a fetus is a burden on its mother. That's all!

4 comments:

  1. You know what, Sarah? I didn't say that men were to be exalted for getting a woman pregnant. It really saddens ME to see another teenage girl saying, "Well, if two people created a baby, it is a girl's right to kill that child." Clearly you have not read my comment in depth, for I state that a child should not have to suffer for the parent's mistakes, not just the woman's. I think you are very mistaken as to why to oppose the death penalty; I am way more pro-life than anti-death penalty. This is why: innocent children (who by the way, should never, ever be referred to as "a cluster of cells") versus mass murderers? Obviously, I care more for the kids. Yeah, there's a fundamental difference between the two, and the difference is that one has committed murder (or some other atrocity) and one could be murdered. Let me clarify one last thing, so you can completely comprehend my stance on this. Young women who are pregnant and decide to keep their child should be treated with love and respect for their hard decision. Young women who decide to abort their child should be counseled, for statistics show that 9 out of 10 women regret their abortions. Killing never should be an option.
    Allison

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  2. Oh, by the way, after reading this last comment of yours, Sarah, I just wanted to ask if your mom thinks that you are a "HUGE burden" to her. My mom, thankfully, loves me and I her for choosing life. Without my parents, I would not be alive today. And also, though pregnant women may have more difficulties because of their condition, that does not give them a right to kill their kids.

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  3. I agree with Allison on this topic, and I think that relating abortion to the death penalty is completely irrelevant. Those convicted of crimes that are punishable by death have made a choice, while aborted children have made no choices that are worthy of death. Therefore, those who call themselves "pro-choice" obviously do not believe in giving children a choice.

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  4. Hey Sarah,
    I just thought of a decent analogy to try to explain how wrong abortion is. Here's the scenario: you and a friend want to do well on your ACTs (don't we all!), but you can't seem to remember the answers. So, you both decide to steal the answers and use them on the test. I think we can both agree that this is a morally wrong thing to do. On top of it all, you get busted for cheating, but out of loyalty, you do not turn in your friend. Here's the dilemma: you could, before any of this becomes known to the public, break into the school and steal/destroy your ACT results or take the blame for it. Now I will relate this to abortion. Having intercourse before marriage is a risky thing to do, and if a girl finds out she is pregnant, don't you think she should own up to her actions and have the child rather than going for the easy (and wrong) way out? I'm not trying to excuse the father; he is rather like your friend in my little scenario. The father should admit his wrongdoing as well. But, in my experience, if one decides to violate one's ethics, the spiral of bad behavior seems to irresistibly pull at one until one is overwhelmed and unable to make things right. I don't think that killing can be justified by stating that, "Oh, I am in school, therefore I can't keep a kid at this time." That's taking the easy way out, or stealing the paper, if you will. One should take responsibility for one's actions and realize one's mistakes. My cousin found herself an unwed mother at the age of seventeen, and although she regrets her actions, she never regrets having a beautiful boy (He is about twelve right now!). He is the light of her life, and it is impossible to imagine life without him. I just want to say one more thing to you about abstinence before marriage, but I want to appeal to you as a woman. Since I am a church-going girl, I do not believe that intercourse before marriage is morally right, but even more so than that, I have chosen not to have relations before marriage. Let me explain why. I am saving myself for the love of my life, who I pray will save himself for me. How joyous and special will my marriage be if there is no jealousy or hurt over past relations. I want my husband and I to make our own experiences together and I know that I don't have to take a "test-drive" as so many people claim. If I am in love, truly in love, I could never be disappointed. If two people truly love each other, they can wait until marriage. Marriage is about love, not just love between a man and a woman, but between a man, a woman, and God. As my dear Sherlock Holmes once said, "Therein lies our salvation."
    Thanks,
    Al

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