Reply #11: I NEVER SAID you did! (edited).

[Jackie97]

Well, it wasn't meant to come off that way anyway. I just believe that the results of what's done are more important than what people mean to do.

Iverglas, I do not believe that this is only about abortion. The issue of abortion rights and other means of reproductive rights have ALWAYS gone hand and hand. Margaret Sanger advocated birth control rights and went to jail for it. However, we know darn well that birth control was not the only thing she was wanting to push toward. She also wanted abortion rights. She wanted women to have full access to reproduction rights (unless they had certain medical conditions, but I won't open up that can of worms because most people today agree that she was wrong for saying that). On the other side of the aisle, we had people who didn't want women to have the right to birth control or abortion. THEY WANTED WOMEN TO BE BABY MACHINES. The purpose of this is to make women dependent on men and to build up for a military in one's country. It might also be to increase the power of the church.

It only makes sense to me to believe that the man who wants endless war might also want women to be turned into baby machines for the pupose of building for a future military of greater quantity. If more of these babies being born are poor, the better because many people who join the military are poor people trying to get out of their position.

I acknowledge that reducing abortion is just a side effect of what we do and not our original aim, but the difference does it make if it is the side effect. It's not what one thinks they're doing that matters. It's what results actually come out of it that matters. Who told me that before?

Therefore, it is important to let the public know that pro-choicers prevent abortions a heck of a lot more than anti-choicers do. That might not be our original aim, but it sure as heck is the result. Results are what matters the most. You act like I'm doing something bad by pointing this out even though I think you said it was not bad to point it out when you said "People who are pro-choice are indeed, most commonly, also concerned about many other aspects of women's (and not just women's) well-being, and it doesn't hurt to let people know that, given how few people tend to be actually rational when it comes to considering policy options." I know. Maybe I'm phrasing things wrong. Maybe it was my original title about pro-choicers wanting to reduce abortion too. Okay, so you don't want to reduce abortion, but unwanted pregnacies. Fine. Why do you want to reduce unwanted pregnacies? Is it not to prevent the consequences of them? I think that people want to reduce unwanted pregnacies so women won't have to choose between being a mother before they're ready and having EXPENSIVE surgery (which often is not free). There's got to be a reason why you want to reduce unwanted pregnacies.

And to be honest, I don't like the platform of saying that pro-choice is only about abortion simply because the anti-choice movement doesn't make it about just abortion anymore. They make it about blocking access to birth control and blocking real sex education, BOTH OF WHICH ARE DANGEROUS AS HELL. I didn't see anybody die of an illegal abortion, but I will see more people dying of AIDS soon if the battle against abstinence only isn't considered to be just as important as abortion. I can't say that a lack of birth control will directly lead to a death epidemic, but I don't want to see that on either. If abortion got made illegal today, the anti-choice movement (not representative of all anti-choicers) would not stop there. They wouldn't stop until they had birth control criminalized and kids not being told about sex until their wedding night (only they'd learn it on the streets). That's a lot of what life was like in Sanger's day. No abortion rights. No birth control rights. I don't want to see things go back to that.

Maybe pro-choice isn't the word to call those other issues, but I sure as hell as tired of those issues being considered background issues when they're so important. Anything that's going to cause an AIDS epidemic deserves just as much attention as abortion does.

But to make it clear, I wasn't meaning to say that pro-choicers aims are to reduce abortion. My goal was to say that they do things that end in the result of less abortions, so we shouldn't be fought on this just because people don't like our position on abortion. Later.

Edited to change the first sentence.