By the way, I read a study recently (unfortunately, lost the link) that indicated that substantially more Americans support abortion rights in cases of rape than in cases of mental health. So I both agree with muravyets and also suspect that that says something about our culture's concept of "mental health."
The concept of trauma is familiar, in part because of PTSD's prevalence in the media, IMO. Blah blah militarycakes.
Because there is no other instance that is comparable to pregnancy, IMO, which I tried to explain in post #186.
To you.
I actually completely agree, and that's
precisely why it needs to be in the hands of individuals rather than the state.
No, that is not logical to me. To me, there is a difference between miscarrying and aborting.
They're both sad, no? They both end in a potential life lost, no?
What if that life loss had been preventable?
For example: my ladydoctor keeps trying to convince me to take vitamins "just in case." (There's this growing movement to consider all women of childbearing age "pre-pregnant," which quite creeps me out, thank you.) Well, if I followed his advice, I'd be morbidly obese and pissed off all the time, and I'd never be able to get anything done. All those medicines that make normal people's stomachs hurt make me ravenously hungry - aspirin, antibiotics, vitamins. Even the
child vitamins make me hungry. And I don't mean, hungry an hour later; I mean hungry all damn day. So I eat vegetables. Actually, I love vegetables so I'd do that anyway.
Certain vitamin deficiencies have been associated with
anencephaly and spina bifida as well as miscarriages.
However, the quality of life issues for me are not worth taking that risk for a pregnancy I haven't chosen (yet) - what am I supposed to do, spend age 20-45 constantly eating? Wonder what my blood pressure'll look like in ten years? Particularly because I have spina bifida occulta, and it's not a big deal - just some lower back pain.
Anyway, why shouldn't the state be able to step in there, as well?
Am I being selfish? Why not?
Plus, concluding that women should be sent to sterilization camps in tantamount to the slippery slope fallacy.
Not when it's actually happened,
here, in
this country, in
conservative "pro-life" states, up
through 1974. Roe v. Wade = 1973. Hmm...
In one case a father suspected of incest asked the eugenics board to sterilize his daughter:
"This fourteen year old girl lives in a very poor home environment. Both parents appear to be limited, and the father admits to incestuous feelings for (his daughter) to his wife. Mrs.___ has been reported to the agency for sexual promiscuity by her own daughter but does make some efforts to give supervision. After the father admitted his feelings for ___ the mother had ___ carefully examined by a physician who reported that she had had intercourse.... The parents wish sterilization for ___ as they are afraid she will become pregnant."
...She first heard about abuses in the early 1970s, such as a woman who was unable to deliver her full-term baby — and discovered that her cervix had been sewn shut without her knowledge. Stories then emerged of Native American women and girls going in for C-sections or tonsillitis and coming out with tubal ligations.
Native American women were used in Depo-Provera trials without being informed of the risks. Those having
Norplant capsules implanted in their arms were then being told that no one had the training to remove it, even when it caused complications. Women in labor were told by the Indian Health Service that they would not be helped unless they agreed to be sterilized.
including a 10-year-old who was castrated.
Elaine Riddick was 13 years old when she got pregnant after being raped by a neighbor in Winfall, N.C., in 1967. The state ordered that immediately after giving birth, she should be sterilized. Doctors cut and tied off her fallopian tubes.
“I have to carry these scars with me. I have to live with this for the rest of my life,” she said.
Riddick was never told what was happening. “Got to the hospital and they put me in a room and that’s all I remember, that’s all I remember,” she said. “When I woke up, I woke up with bandages on my stomach.”
Riddick’s records reveal that a five-person state eugenics board in Raleigh had approved a recommendation that she be sterilized. The records label Riddick as “feebleminded” and “promiscuous.” They said her schoolwork was poor and that she “does not get along well with others.”
<snip>
It wouldn’t be until Riddick was 19, married and wanting more children, that she’d learn she was incapable of having any more babies. A doctor in New York where she was living at the time told her that she’d been sterilized.
“Butchered. The doctor used that word… I didn’t understand what she meant when she said I had been butchered,” Riddick said.
Still think pregnancy should be any business of the state?
I don't feel that I've been flippant at all. I certainly don't feel flippant. If that is coming across, I apologize.
I don't mean flippant towards me. You're always quite kind. I mean flippant towards the point of view of a woman who chooses abortion. You're not even
attempting to understand it; you're just handwaving it as selfish mcselfishpants.
If I were trying to convince you to change your fundamental beliefs, that'd be one thing. But I just don't think you're critically examining those beliefs or your own argument.
I happen to think that this skill is valuable not just for argumentation but also writing fiction.
If you want to write about the special mother-child relationship, for example - if you want work informed with that spirit, a la Amy Tan - you need to think about it from points-of-view besides your own, right?
This is sort of a tangent, but personally - I wouldn't be able to write fiction if it weren't for POV shifts. It's a skill I've had to cultivate.
I'm meditating on this idea of being anti-abortion but pro-choice. Basically, that's what I am since I have never been a picketer or whathaveyou.
I like this much better. Planned Parenthood does more to prevent abortions in a day than most pro-lifers do in their entire lifetimes.
In fact, at Planned Parenthood where I live, old, white-haired men stand out on the sidewalk from time to time holding up signs and when I see them, my immediate and visceral reaction has always been, "Oh what the fuck would you know about it! Asshole!" So, go figure.