“I think it’s great that more pro-life people are finally speaking up about it…It’s always been a touchy subject, but you have to stand strong on your beliefs. Contraception is the root cause of the explosion of the amount of abortions in the world.”
With November 7 rocketing towards us, it’s time for the so-called “moderates” out there - politicians and voters alike - to wake the fuck up to the right wing’s (read: evangelicals’) end game, particularly regarding women’s autonomy. Though they like to frame the debate re: reproductive rights, specifically abortion, in terms of life (”the baybees, think about the baybees!”), there’s nothing “pro-life” about their agenda. Make no mistake: they are anti-choice. Not just “anti- a woman’s right to choose whether or not to abort the parasite residing within her,”* but “anti- a woman’s choice to fuck without experiencing the consequences of an unplanned pregnancy.”
Exhibit #1: Their increasingly fervent assault on women’s access to contraception.
Emboldened by the anti-abortion movement’s success in restricting access to abortion, an increasingly vocal group of Christian conservatives is arguing that it’s time to mount a concerted attack on contraception.
Their voices were raised in Rosemont on Friday and Saturday at an unusual anti-abortion meeting that drew 250 people from around the nation to condemn artificial birth control. Experts at the gathering assailed contraception on the grounds that it devalues children, harms relationships between men and women, promotes sexual promiscuity and leads to falling birth rates, among social ills.
“Contraception is more the root cause of abortion than anything else,” Joseph Scheidler, an anti-abortion veteran whose Pro-Life Action League sponsored the conference, said in an interview.
See, your reasonable, “moderate” (theoretical) pro-lifer would recognize that contraception is actually the single most effective means of reducing the need for abortion. Our government’s enthusiastic support for abstinence-only education has demonstrated what feminists have known all along: you can’t stop people from fornicating. Ain’t gonna work. Besides, why should they? I know it’s hard to comprehend, but not all folks share your same set of values. For example, this statement:
Damon Clarke Owens, another speaker and president of New Jersey Natural Family Planning, believes contraception changes sex from a “unconditional gift of self” to a conditional act that turns away from “God’s gift of children.”
seriously makes me want to go out and buy a Baby Jesus Butt Plug, just so I can defile Owens’ deity’s image. Repeatedly. Even though I’m not really into that kind of thing.
It must be difficult to walk upright, what with such thick skulls and all, but not all people are Christians. And not all Christians share the same single (misogynistic, homophobic, insert your “ism” here) interpretation of Teh Bible. Shocking, I know. Plus, there is this little thing called separation of church and state. So your particular strain of superstition, while entertaining, cannot be used to justify which rights y’all decide to dole out to the populace.
But wait! Clark has more gems of wisdom to impart to us immoral heathens:
“If the sex act has nothing to do with a child, then what happens if contraception fails?” he asked. “Abortion becomes a backup for failed contraception, another way of getting rid of the unwanted and devalued child.” **
Again, I know we’re contending with that thick skull issue, but…if every American knew how to properly use contraception, had access to it, and made use of it consistently, then there would be very few abortions. And for every broken condom and missed pill, a dose of EC. Voila - problem almost completely solved!
Yet, Bible Beaters, champions of Teh Patriarchy, and other women-haters don’t want to hear it.
“We’ve been trained to steer clear of discussing contraception, as if it were a distraction. I’m tired of this ‘Don’t get off the subject’ mentality. Contraception is the subject.”
Women (and sympathetic men) - it starts with your right to choose whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term. Let them strip you of that right, and they’ll come for your birth control pills, condoms, IUDs, and EC next. And they won’t rest until you’re trapped in a sappily sentimental version of the ’50s, where you’re perpetually barefoot and pregnant, a nice submissive little thing that honors her husband as if he were God incarnate.
So go Google your county’s website, find and print out a voter ballot, and research each and every candidate listed on that baby. Support candidates who support your right to abort, your right to contracept, your right to choose - your right to bodily autonomy.
It’s my body, and I’m fucking sick of fundies, godidiots, and political opportunists who use and abuse it like a battleground.
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* Yeah, I said it. And if the self-loathing beyatches of the Cunt Bag Brigade ™ gotst a problem with my equating a fetus (a fetus, not a baby, you silly wimmins) with a parasite, then take it up with the editors at dictionary.com, who define “parasite” thusly:
“Biology. An organism that grows, feeds, and is sheltered on or in a different organism while contributing nothing to the survival of its host.”
** “Child”? Now we’re really confusing terminology, eh?
fetus - embryology (used chiefly of viviparous mammals) the young of an animal in the womb or egg, esp. in the later stages of development when the body structures are in the recognizable form of its kind, in humans after the end of the second month of gestation.
child - a person between birth and full growth; a boy or girl
Feti are not babies, you med school rejects!
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Tagged: feminism feminist reproductive+rights abortion contraception godbags godbaggers religion sperm+magic
