Blogging for Choice - rant mode ON (cover your ears, Mom)

There is no dialogue to be had. Today is the 35th anniversary of Roe v Wade in the US. Via AlterNet:

Today, Governor Mike Huckabee is scheduled to travel to Georgia to commemorate the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. There he plans to join Georgia Right to Life to lend his support, as well as the focus of the national media, to HR 536. This legislation, also called the Human Life Amendment, is a state constitutional amendment that reclassifies the most effective and popular forms of contraception as abortion. The goal of the amendment is to create a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade while also defining life as beginning at fertilization. The anti-abortion movement believes that hormonal contraception (the pill, the patch, the depo shot, the nuva ring, the IUD) can destroy a fertilized egg. By setting in law the assertion -- the unproveable assertion -- that life begins at the moment of fertilization, the most common forms of contraception become abortion.

For anyone harboring feelings that Huckabee is not perhaps the worst of the potential GOP candidates, here is what HR 536 will do (emphasis by moi):

James Bopp, a leading anti-abortion attorney, in a memo to pro-life activists, explained what the practical applications of HR 536 would be. Establishing in law that life begins at the moment of fertilization could lead to, he writes, "enforcement of homicide laws against pregnant women, restricting the activities of pregnant women, outlawing contraception and so on." He continues, "The big picture is that the Human Life Amendment creates uncertainty in the law leaving it up to future legislatures to establish implementing laws and up to enforcement officials and courts to sort out what the law might mean in various applications." In other words, let's leave your right to use contraception up to your local assemblymember, district attorney and sheriff.

Let me be clear. This is the ultimate goal of the "pro-life" movement - complete and unfettered fertilization whether you like it, want it, or not. Let me be equally clear in my response. FUCK NO. Oh, and also - MY LIFE, MY BODY IS NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS. No, my caps lock is not stuck, I'm yelling. These people who are so clinically obsessed with the lives of others that they devote entire ceaseless blogs to it, they justify violence and arson - what the hell is their problem? Because you KNOW they don't give a FUCK about you personally. If your best friend was 16 and pregnant, kicked out of the house, and had the baby? They do not give a FUCK about her. She's just a welfare queen now.

How about your good friend, who was thrilled to be pregnant, and then found out something was horribly, fatally wrong, and that as the fetus, which she loved very much, grew and developed a nervous system, this thing that was wrong would cause it constant and severe pain, suffering greatly only to be stillborn or die shortly after birth? They don't give a FUCK about her either, because she's just a murderous baby killer to them. Better that baby suffer immeasurably, be born, suffer more, and die, than have its life mercifully taken. They. don't. care.

It's bad enough that their incremental planning is attempting to legislate a very rare, very necessary medical procedure because in their Precious Moments Figurine-addled mindset, evil women only have late-term abortions for convenience. Do they think for one second that if my sister were going to die unless she had a later pregnancy terminated, that me, her husband, our mother, her friends - that any of us would want her to choose to let the baby live instead of her? To take her beautiful presence from our lives, and leave a motherless baby instead? FUCK NO. It would break our hearts, surely, but it would be the less painful of two options. Oh, and it would be none of your damn business, anyway, would it.

See, the anti-abortion movement doesn't give a fuck about anyone except the abstract fetuses and uteruses of women, who they don't give a fuck about. Their ultimate goal is the absence of contraception, as most recently evidenced by Mike Huckabee, who is running for POTUS, going around supporting HR 536, the Human Life Amendment. It's not enough for them to mind their own business. Hey, if your religion tells you not to use birth control, that's fine with me. Breed until you have a Quiverfull and your teeth fall out, see if I care. Your family is none of my business...you starting to see how this works? You don't want an abortion? Great! I don't really care, I'm certainly not going to encourage anyone to do something that they are against. (Although, there are many instances of abortion clinic picketers having abortions, but that's different. Heh.) Don't have one, keep your own daughter from having one, hell, keep her from getting the pill too, because you know she's a virgin because she signed a pledge and went to creepy Dad & Daughter Prom! You know that she never would get the idea to even have sex, because you certainly didn't condone it by talking about how pregnancy happens and how to prevent it. Also none of my business. Amusing, yes, but not my place to judge.

I don't have kids. The reasons why are none of your business. For all you know, maybe I can't. Maybe I shouldn't. Whatever my reasons are, they are mine, not for you to go sticking your nose in and telling me that I must either 1) not knock boots with Mr. Prole - ain't gonna happen; or 2) take the chance, every time, during all the years of marriage, that a pregnancy will occur. FUCK NO. Not to mention that none of them give a shit about me anyway, remember? But they want to take away my preferred method of birth control because I might destroy a fertilized egg? Fuck that, and fuck them.

Kid down the street, the slutty looking 15 year old? None of your business if she gets buckets of condoms from the free clinic, or gets on the pill, or has an abortion. She's not your kid. Her pregnancy of lack thereof does not effect you. Fetus fetishists only care about that abstract little prawn-looking pre-born fetus, that they wouldn't care about if it were born.

As for restrictions, well who gets to decide? The government? A judge? Which judge? Who gets to decide that the teenage incest victim gets to have an abortion, but the teenager who got carried away one night doesn't? Who decides that a woman who was violently raped (which she would have to prove, but to who?) gets to have an abortion but a mom who already has 6 kids and can't handle another physically, emotionally, or financially, cannot? I think we all should know by now that the government is the last entity we want making these decisions.

I'm for Reproductive Liberty for all women because I trust women to make our own family decisions, even if I don't agree with them, and I don't trust the government to decide for us. And I also know the slippery slope that starts with unnecessary restrictions on abortions (based on rhetoric and strawmen and with no consideration for women's lives and health) and ends with contraception being outlawed. There is no dialogue to be had with people whose ultimate goal is the complete lack of control of women over our bodies. There is no middle ground.