Jennifer Killpack-Knutsen ([info]green_jenni) wrote,
@ 2007-02-10 10:46:00
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Entry tags:choice issues, feminism, reference

Resource Page: Choice Debate
I've found in the past few weeks that just about every post I make about choice, I get at least one person, and sometimes more that want to debate the same things I'd already debated in an earlier post. So in the effort to be a little more efficient, I've decided to build this post as a resource page that I'll link to on the side bar and refer new commenters to.

Jen's Green Journal Posts on Choice

Most of these posts have several comments from "pro-lifers" and my responses to them.

When I was pro-life

Pro-Consent

Clarification: for Allie

66%

February is Misogyny Month at the Utah Legislature

77%

Morally responsible and loving choice

Calling all scripture enthusiasts

Utah Taliban: Keep your religion off my body

Can someone give this guy a logic transplant?

Blog for Choice Day – Why I’m Pro-Choice

Today is Blog for Choice Day



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FAQs from ImNotSorry.net
[info]green_jenni
2007-02-10 06:10 pm UTC (link)
I'm Not Sorry.net has some great answers to pro-lifers questions, I'll post some of the them here. To read the complete FAQ section go to http://www.imnotsorry.net/FAQ.htm

What about adoption? Why didn’t you consider that as an alternative?


One of the anti-choicers’ favorite arguments against abortion is that women who have abortions are depriving prospective adoptive parents. However, one only has to take a look at the literally hundreds of thousands of children in foster or state care to know that is not the case. Unfortunately for the great majority of these children, they will not be considered for adoption because they have committed a grave sin—they’re no longer babies. It is rare that you’ll hear a prospective adoptive parent sigh, “Oh, I just want a seven-year-old so much!” We have always had huge respect for people who adopt older or special needs kids. Contrary to popular belief, adopting kids from the state is not that expensive. Some states will bend over backwards to help out people who want to take in these kids. Yeah, it’s definitely not easy to handle them, but those who can appreciate that parenthood isn’t one long Hallmark moment and are willing to stay the course know that going in. Another reason for not going with adoption that’s been cited by many of us is the thought of the now-grown child showing up on our doorstep expecting an Oprah-type happy reunion with their “real mom” or weepily demanding to know why we gave them up. As far as we’re concerned, whoever signs the adoption papers is the parent, and we’re completely for adoption records being sealed other than the medical history of the bio-parents. If you’re going to give the kid up for adoption, accept that and move on. Don’t write letters, don’t send gifts, don’t go for visits, and respect that fact that the kid is no longer yours. Adoptive parents also need to stop giving kids ideas that they are not his/her “real parents.”

But children are a precious gift from God! Who are you to reject what God has given you?


Looks like it's time for a little elementary sex education. Children are conceived through sexual intercourse between a man and a woman with either no or failed contraception. We’ve slept with men who thought they were God, but the actual Big Guy himself has no hand in it. And there’s quite a few people on the planet who (hang on to your hats) don’t believe in any sort of deity. We would like to believe that if there was a supreme being of some sort, it wouldn’t sit around saying, “Hmm, I think that I’ll give this 14-year-old girl who still sucks her thumb and sleeps with her teddy bear a baby. And hey, what about that woman who was just raped? A baby would cheer her right up, I bet. How about the low-income woman who uses birth control faithfully? Hey, babe, you just won the Rate Of Failure Lottery!” And if it did do those things, well, who’d blame us for rejecting it?

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More FAQs from ImNotSorry.net
[info]green_jenni
2007-02-10 06:14 pm UTC (link)
But for all you know you could have aborted the person who could have cured cancer or AIDS, or the one who would have brought world peace! How can you live with yourself knowing that?


There's some particularly ludicrous billboards prevalent in the southern United States that make statements like "I would have cured cancer, but you aborted me," and INS gets posts in the guestbook with much the same sentiments. I propose in the interest of fairness that billboards be put up that state "I would have raped and murdered nineteen women, including your daughter, but you aborted me" or "I would have started World War III, but you aborted me". The potential for evil is just as strong as the potential for good. Osama bin Laden, Charles Manson and Adolf Hitler were once cute little babies too.

Well, if you didn’t want to get pregnant, you should have kept your legs closed! Why didn’t you just say no?


Ah, now we’re getting to the real issue. Remember, it was only very recently that women have been “allowed” to enjoy sex, and a lot of people are still suspicious of women who are free in their sexuality, a leftover from the joyless Puritans who founded this country. Quite frankly, we’d prefer it if the anti-choicers would just come out and say, “Since our religion or upbringing tells us that enjoying sex is a sin and we’re so sexually repressed we squeak, we think that any woman who has sex for any reason other than to conceive is a whore. And that includes rape, which wouldn’t happen if you didn’t lead that guy on by looking in his direction for two seconds or wearing that short little skirt or owning a vagina.” Also, we consider the “why didn’t you keep your legs closed” thing pretty funny anyway, considering that many of the abortions performed in America are on married women who already have kids (and whose husbands probably complain that they don’t open their legs enough).

Why are you so selfish as to deny a child life?


Isn’t it selfish to have a child to carry on a family name? To “patch up” a failing relationship? To have “someone that’ll love me no matter what”? Because you're a certain age and all your friends have babies and you feel left out? To attempt to get a child of the “correct” sex (“we have a boy, now let’s try for a girl!”)? To perpetuate genes? To prove that you’re a woman who can “have it all”? To give one’s nagging parents a grandchild? To "prove your love"? It’s very difficult to justify an addition to the six billion-plus people on this planet without the use of the word “I.” Look at the millions of dollars that are poured into fertility treatments. How sad it is that adoption has become a "last resort" because people have been brainwashed into believing that somehow parenthood doesn't count unless the child is "your own." If that's not selfish, we don't know what is. We humans have inordinately high opinions of ourselves, controlling the population of “lesser” species but insisting that every human fetus ever conceived be born “just because” it’s human. We’re already seeing the effects of too many humans on this planet. If children are our future, as the pundits are so fond of saying, they’re really going to hate us when they grow up. But for all you know you could have aborted the person who could have cured cancer or AIDS, or the one who would have brought world peace! How can you live with yourself knowing that?

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FAQs continued
[info]green_jenni
2007-02-10 06:19 pm UTC (link)

Well, what if your mother had aborted you? How would you feel about that, huh?



It's a mystery to us why "pro-lifers" throw out this particular bit of nonsense on a regular basis. Again, how selfish is that--to believe that we're such special little snowflakes that the world would have come to a shuddering halt should we not have been born? What if our mothers had aborted us? We wouldn't have existed. So what? Things that don't exist have no opinions one way or another. To be blunt, it's a stupid and pointless argument and anyone who actually thinks that it's a good one deserves to be ridiculed.

So you just encourage women to sleep around and run down to the abortion clinic to rid themselves of the “inconvenience,” rather than taking responsibility for their actions, right?



Wrong. We encourage people simply to think before having sex, because a lot of nasty complications, both physical and emotional, would be avoided. But accidents do happen, and mistakes are made. Having children should not be used as “punishment” for a birth control failure or an error in judgment. Women who have had mental illnesses or problems with drugs or alcohol are often confronted with unwanted pregnancies, but we would much rather hear about a drug addict that had four abortions than a drug addict who had four children she neglected. But you know what would really reduce abortion rates? If parents taught their children to love themselves first and not depend on another person for their happiness. We need to teach kids that masturbation is a healthy sexual expression, that it’s not for “losers that can’t get any” or a sin, and is 100% guaranteed not to cause pregnancy or disease. We need to let them know that sex should never be taken lightly, that it is the most intimate thing that two human beings can do, and neither a man nor a woman should ever use it as a weapon or a trap.

So you killed an innocent child because you panicked and didn't give any thought to it at all, didn't you?



On the contrary. Considering how many girls and women spend more time thinking up creatively spelled names and and sighing dreamily over adorable little babies on TV than considering the realities of motherhood, we'd say that those of us who chose to abort have given the whole situation a lot of thought. We knew that a child born at this particular stage in our lives would not have a good life, whether it was due to finances, emotions, problems in our relationships, or other reasons. Some women have always known that they did not want to be mothers, but because doctors refused their requests for sterilization ("But you're so young! You've never had children! What if you change your mind?"), they take their chances with birth control failure, and sometimes they lose. And some of us know what we're going to do long before the specter of pregnancy is raised. We'd hardly call that panicking.

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Healthcare And Financial Strain
(Anonymous)
2007-02-11 12:18 am UTC (link)
Your blog is rocking, you are providing great stuff on this stupid bill.

I didn't see this addressed on I'm Not Sorry FAQ but someone, please someone needs to talk about how the Republicans are driving up abortions with their financial policies toward the bottom 99% along with the Republican opposition to basic affordable healthcare. Are these wingnuts able to connect the dots? It just pisses me off to no end.

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you do iz besz
(Anonymous)
2007-07-13 02:03 pm UTC (link)
Hello

Looks good! Very useful, good stuff. Good resources here. Thanks much!

Bye





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