#the same way i have to acknowledge how my mom's addiction shaped her abuse of me!!! how her being molested shaped her abuse of me!!!! fuck!

[theapplesweremonitored]

Hi there! I had a question. So, I'm on the fence about pro-life/pro-choice. Women's bodies are their own and they should have a say in what happens to them. But...At the same time, they're pregnant with a to-be baby. And I'd really like to see know someone else's view. Like, I said. I'm on the fence and I just want someone else's opinion on the matter. That's, if you don't mind talking about it.

That’s cool, I don’t mind at all! In fact, here’s a few other posts that may be of interest to you and have really shaped my own perceptions.

Tbh, I’m not the most unbiased or, uh, sensitive of people to ask about this, but I suppose that’s the point and I’ll do my best to answer in a way that doesn’t devolve into ranting. (Edit: this got very long and kind of rambling, but hopefully it doesn’t come off as mean.)

First off we need to establish that I’m asexual, aromantic, at times agender, and have less than zero desire to be a part of any stage of the human reproductive process. In all honesty, pregnancy is a very special kind of body-horror to me, and that likely factors into my reaction to the self-styled “pro-life” side. Because, when you get right down to it, much of the “pro-life” side isn’t pro-life, it’s pro-fetus.

You’d think if a person was pro-life, they’d care about, say: the homeless epidemic, or how America likes to march into foreign countries and murder a shit-ton of people, or all the queer/lgbt+ people who are victims of hate crimes. They’d care about people of color who are murdered by the police every day, or the thousands of kids abused by a system meant to protect them, or women (and, of course, others) who are victims of domestic violence or rape culture. But the thing is, a lot of them aren’t.

Because, like I said, a lot of them only care about the fetus, and care nothing for the woman* who’s carrying it. Once that baby is born, they cease giving a fuck because obviously if it’s been born, then their job is done, and they don’t care what happens next. They don’t care if those women carrying the fetus was raped, or got drunk and didn’t use protection, or did absolutely everything “right” and still got pregnant. They don’t care that those women don’t want to be pregnant; those women don’t want to give up forty weeks of their life to what (when you think about it clinically) amounts to a parasite; those women don’t want to give birth; those women don’t want to be responsible for raising a child, and often don’t have the means to do it right.

A frighteningly large amount of “pro-lifers” are white Christians who refuse to acknowledge the complexities of pregnancy, childbirth, and child-rearing. They argue that “life begins at conception” but say nothing about the life or lives that may be ruined by that conception (and subsequent birth). They use the Bible to justify forcing women to carry an unwanted fetus to term, and then also use it to justify hate crimes against queer/LGBT+ people, discriminatory treatment of PoC, and the general subjugation of women. Oh, and we can’t ever forget the Islamophobia and general air of xenophobia that usually accompanies them as well.

In essence, a more accurate description of the pro-life side is anti-choice, because that’s what it comes down to.

Listen, I don’t mean to be a dick about this.

I get that you haven’t made up your mind and that the idea of terminating a potential human being (and I stress this word because like 90% of abortions take place during the first trimester, when it is more accurate to call it an embryo) probably squicks you out.

I totally understand that.

But it’s important to be aware that for a lot of people on the anti-choice side, their little crusade is just another way to express their bigotry and their hatred of women, often queer/LGBT+ women and women of color.

Story time:

My grandmother on my mom’s side got pregnant out of wedlock when she was sixteen. That became my Aunt Dawn (for whom I was named) and she’s the sweetest, most well-meaning woman… maybe not in the world, but that I’ve ever met, certainly. But guess what? Grandma Kathy didn’t want her. She was sixteen, she made a dumbass decision, and didn’t want to have a kid. But you know what her parents did? They told her they were taking her to get an abortion, bundled her up in the car, drove several states away, and dropped her at a “home for fallen women.” They didn’t tell her where they were leaving her, or for how long, or anything. Just that she could come back “home” later. “Later” meaning after she gave birth to my Aunt Dawn.

Listen, I love my Aunt Dawn. Out of literally all of my family, and hoo-boy there’s a lot of them on either side, she’s basically the only one that I even like, let alone love. But my grandma didn’t want my Aunt Dawn and she shouldn’t have been forced to have her. She shouldn’t have been lied to and abandoned and blackmailed into having and raising a child. And it took a toll on her, let me assure you.

Okay, I like my grandma well enough, okay? But she isn’t exactly the healthiest person, she doesn’t have the healthiest relationships, and doesn’t make the healthiest decisions. She’s had five daughters and two sons by several different men, she’s poor and unemployed, and I’m pretty sure she’s had some issues with drinking.

If I were able to go back in time and help her get an abortion, I fucking would. Even knowing that it would mean that me and my sisters and my nephew and my mom and my Aunt Dawn wouldn’t exist, I would still do it. (It sounds terrible, but I don’t care much about my uncles and cousins. They’re all a bunch of fucked up assholes.)

And now let’s talk about my sisters. I have a lot. I have one who got pregnant in her senior year of high school and had to drop out; my nephew is going to be four now in a few months and she’s only just gotten a job that pays a living wage.

I have another who’s currently pregnant and with the guy who knocked her up even though he’s and idiot and an asshole and makes her cry; I fear for the future of both her and the kid that’s on the way because those futures are not gonna be fuckin pretty.

I have two (adopted) sisters who are actually sisters themselves; only half, though, because their dad is a piece of shit who couldn’t keep it in his damn pants and didn’t even try. He’s in prison now and blames his parents for everything that’s gone wrong in his life, up to and including the fact that he isn’t fit to take care of his kids. (I know this because he’s my step-dad’s kid and sent a long series of texts to that effect to my mom a few months ago.) My new little sisters’ moms are both drug addicts who couldn’t be trusted with their daughters. And, of course, my sisters have another sister by another woman (who’d also had drug problems but is now clean and takes care of her daughter) and a brother that I don’t know much about.

And then, of course, there’s my other sisters on the other side of things, who are desperate to have children. I have one who’s been trying with her husband for a couple of years now, who’s had fertility treatments and has visited multiple doctors to try to figure out what’s up with her junk, because we know it’s something but don’t know what. She’s slated for some kind of surgery soon.

I’ve also got another sister, my oldest, who wants kids. She just got married to an old friend of hers who I had never even heard of until I was invited to the wedding. She stayed in a relationship with an abusive ex-Navy Seal for years because he kept dangling the possibility of having kids with her like a fucking carrot. They had physical fights, she had to take all kinds of medication for anxiety and shit, and liked to combine them with alcohol because being in a relationship with him was such a fucking trial on her psyche.

My immediate family alone pretty much runs the gamut of reproductive experiences, barring (to my knowledge) sexual assault and the fact that (to my knowledge) they’re all cis.

What I’m saying is: there’s a lot of shit out there. A lot. There’s girls who got pregnant on accident, and never even consider abortion. There’s girls who got pregnant on accident, and never got access to abortion. There’s girls who want to get pregnant but can’t because of medical reasons. There’s girls who want to get pregnant and men use that to abuse and manipulate them.

I support all of them. I support those that never consider abortions; I support those that want abortions; I support those that want to carry to term; I support those that are desperate to get pregnant in the first place. I support each and every one of them, for all that I am completely unable to empathize with those that want kids in the first place.

I support them because, even though I have no idea what any of that must feel like, it’s their choice and I respect that. Anti-choicers, pro-lifers, whatever you wanna call them, they don’t respect that. They treat pregnancy like it’s the be-all and end-all of human existence and experience. They treat women who get pregnant and want to abort as if they’re stupid, irresponsible, the devil himself, etc.

Now, if you’ve made it all this way, then I’d like to apologize for all the detours and digressions and also congratulate you on getting through them all. As you may have noticed, I’ve got some thoughts on the subject in general as well as some tangentially-personal experience. What it all boils down to is this: while it may affect us, while it may impact the course of our lives, unless it is us who is the one who is pregnant, it’s not our decision. We can have opinions; we can offer advice; we can counsel the one who is pregnant. But, when it comes right down to it, the only one who gets to make the decision of whether to carry to term or abort, is the one who is pregnant.

And, to me, that’s all there is to it.

*not everyone who becomes pregnant is a woman and may be instead nonbinary/genderqueer or a man who was assigned female at birth. However, I very much doubt that someone who cares very little or (more likely) absolutely nothing for a person’s body autonomy will care anything for respecting their gender identity.

#slice of life #anon asks #answered asks #reproductive rights