Word just in. Pro-choicers want to reduce abortion too.

[Jackie97]

Just because many of us don't see abortion as immoral or something that needs to be justified doesn't mean we don't want to reduce them.

Why do I keep reading things on here that suggest that pro-choicers don't want to reduce abortion?

We're the ones who support programs like Planned Parenthood, which try to make contraceptives better available to women.

We're the ones who advocate that birth control pills be covered by an insurance company.

We're the ones who advocate real sex education instead of that "Just say no" junk. We also don't lie to kids about what causes pregnacy and STDs the way some people teaching abstinence only do. We want to keep kids from getting pregnant, and experts say our way is better than the abstinence only method because most kids taking the virginity pledge will eventually break it.

We also advocate more social programs to help single mothers. We don't do that to reduce abortion, but I bet it helps reduce it.

In short, we're the ones trying to prevent unwanted pregnacies. The anti-abortion movement is the one trying to get in the way of all of these things. Why don't people see that more? Why do I often get ignored whenever I point this stuff out?

[MichiganVote]

1. In the early years of this country, abortion was common

and the Quakers utilized it too.

[BlueEyedSon]

2. "Legal, safe and RARE."

DUH.

[musette_sf]

3. I agree with you in theory, however

before this can happen, elective pregnancy termination must no longer be demonized. It is the very demonization of the procedure that is the core of the argument.

Of course, the above would require anti-choicers to accept the fact that a zygote is not a fetus is not a baby. I had a post on DU a few weeks ago where I likened that specious argument to a dispute in a diner: "I ordered fried chicken, what the hell are these fried eggs here?"

As long as superstition obscures the facts on elective pregnancy termination, the pro-choice movement will not be seen as pro-"life".

FWIW

[Jackie97]

6. Agreed.

We need to change the culture to stop demonizing abortion. I was in class the other day trying to discuss the natural approach to law (where one goes by their morals). This guy in my group insisted that all natural people would be against abortion being legal because it's immoral. I just had to argue that it's not immoral and that not allowing it was immoral (because it's irresponsible to bring kids in the world unless you can afford him). He backed off on that point.

Argh! Any other ideas for promoting abortion as moral? I'm fed up with this culture claiming differently.

[ExclamationPoint]

4. That's true

Pro-choice is more Pro-Equality for women than pro-abortion. Abortion's only happen when the proper precaution isn't taken, and that is usually caused by little intelligence on the subject.

[Lefty48197]

5. Guess what fundies, preventing teen pregnancies prevents abortions too

.

[EC]

7. One thing I learned in Kitty Kelley's book

that really surprised me, was a Bush put up the first cash to start Planned Parenthood...
<snip>

Bush Family Staunchly Supported Planned Parenthood
Prescott Bush--and the Bush family--were staunch supporters of Planned Parenthood, an organization that advocates family planning in the United States and worldwide in order to protect the health of women and to combat poverty. The Bushes lived in Connecticut, the state where a successful landmark suit was brought challenging state laws against contraception. The Supreme Court's 1965 decision in Griswold v. Connecticut affirmed the right of couples to use contraceptives. The decision was based on the right to privacy and is the precedent for the court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade.

But in l950, when Prescott Bush ran for the U.S. Senate from Connecticut, many states still outlawed birth control devices and the Republican right wing backed such laws. Late in the campaign, press reports that Bush contributed to Planned Parenthood caused an uproar among conservatives and Bush lost the election by one-tenth of one percent. Political observers said that the issue of family planning had most certainly cost him the election. Prescott Bush would later win a senate seat and serve two terms.

<snip>


So who uses issues to win elections, * could go either way depending on where he'd get the votes....

[iverglas]

8. why, why, why ...

Why do I keep reading things on here that suggest that pro-choicers don't want to reduce abortion?

I dunno. Why do you beat your dog?

I can only tell you why something happens if it happens.

You appear to be reading statements (like mine) that "abortion should be rare" is an inappropriate thing for someone who advocates reproductive rights to say as if the people making them (like me) were saying that "abortion should be encouraged" or "abortion is a good thing".

And that would be misrepresentation. You have asked a loaded question: the premise -- that things have been said here that suggest that pro-choicers don't want to reduce abortion -- is false. The question can't be answered.

What do *I* want? I want women to be able to avoid unwanted pregnancy.

I want women to have access to the technology they need for that purpose: for good technology to be readily available at affordable prices (which may mean free). I want women to have the personal resources, and social supports, that they need in order to organize strategies to avoid unwanted pregnancy: to understand risks and be able to assess risks, to resist coercion and other forms of pressure to engage in high-risk behaviour, to have and be aware of their opportunities for future successes of all kinds (education, employment, family) so that they are less attracted to the high-risk behaviour and have better reasons to avoid it.

I want women, and all of us, to understand that unintended pregnancy is not a plague that we can eradicate like smallpox. There is no vaccine against it: we cannot innoculate little girls against unintended pregnancy, no matter how much sex ed and how many pills we offer them, how high their self-esteem and how much respect their male peers have for them, and how wonderful their opportunities for success in life. Individuals engage in sexual activity, and sometimes, despite anyone's best efforts, unintended and unwanted pregnancy will result. It is not necessarily evidence of the individual's stupidity or ignorance or vulnerability. It is sometimes just evidence of the force of our emotional and biological make-up, our individual urge to connect sexually and our species' urge to perpetuate itself.

I want to reduce the rate of unwanted pregnancies just as I want to reduce the rate of illiteracy. At least some women could have avoided unwanted pregnancy if the various resources they need for that purpose had been made available to them. At least some people could have avoided illiteracy in the same way.

But given that we are human, with the wide range of individual characteristics that exist under that umbrella, some people will have unwanted pregnancies and some people will be illiterate, no matter what resources are available to them, or despite their best efforts.

I'm not going to advocate that the strategy that those individuals use to solve their problem be "rare". I won't proclaim that I believe that abortion should be rare, or that I believe that working at jobs that don't require literacy should be rare. What people do to solve their own problems is their business, not mine, unless they happen to ask for my advice. I have a responsibility to offer help to people so that they can try to avoid those problems if they wish. I have no business expressing an opinion about what they do to solve the problems.

NO ONE says that cardiac surgery should be rare, despite the fact that it would be better if fewer people needed cardiac surgery, and that much of the need for cardiac surgery could be avoided by encouraging less risky behaviours and providing better resources for engaging in less risky behaviours. We DO talk about those things: getting children involved in physical activity, teaching them about proper nutrition, providing resources to avoid or quit smoking (we don't do enough, of course, but that's another matter).


In short, we're the ones trying to prevent unwanted pregnacies. The anti-abortion movement is the one trying to get in the way of all of these things. Why don't people see that more? Why do I often get ignored whenever I point this stuff out?

I dunno; sounds like another loaded question to me. ;)

The anti-choice brigade doesn't give a shit about unwanted pregnancies and the women who have them, and you know it. They want to stop women from having abortions, and more broadly, from controlling their own bodies and lives. So why you think they'd be impressed that reproductive rights defenders want to assist women in avoiding unwanted pregnancies, I don't know.

Why would they want to spend all that money, and provide people with ways of engaging in the sexual activity that they (claim to) disapprove of without getting pregnant, when all they have to do is stop women from having abortions?

Yes, of course, not everyone who disapproves of abortion is a vicious misogynist deep down. Some might actually prefer their daughters to have the resources to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancy. So go ahead and play to them.

But if that's the response you're playing to -- genuine concern about other people (and society as a whole, which is also disadvantaged by unwanted pregnancies) -- why the hell not do it directly? Why not say that you want to help women avoid unintended pregnancies?

We don't say that cardiac surgery should be rare; we say that we want to help people avoid heart disease. That seems to be a pretty clear and popularly accepted message. The message would obviously be a whole lot murkier, and the campaign to help people be healthier would be a whole lot less successful, and people with heart disease would be potentially at greater risk of service reductions, if we just went around saying "cardiac surgery should be rare", don't you think?

[Jackie97]

9. Thank you for better illustrating my point.

I wasn't accusing you or those like you of anything. I've thought you made good points on this forum on subjects related to this.

It's just that every once in a while, we get a poster say something like "Don't we want abortions to be rare? What are pro-choicers doing to make it happen?" I get tired of that. We're doing a heck of a lot more than anti-choicers are doing to stop abortion just by helping women in general. We might not be doing it to reduce abortion, but that's what the end result is. By contrast, the anti-choice movement wants to do things that will get women pregnant more often and end in many people (probably kids in my country) getting STDs and dying. VERY pro-life, don't you think?

Elsewhere, I've also been speaking with some anti-choicers on the internet who seem to think that we're all about having irresponsible sex. This was a while back. They'll say stupid stuff like "Use birth control" or something. That's when I bring up what the movement representing their freakin cause is doing. They ignore me. It ticks me off.

No, we shouldn't have to say that we want to make abortion rare. I also know that birth control is not 100% effective. I just wanted to make the point that the pro-choice movement is not just a movement to enable women to get abortions. Abortions are not the only thing we care about. We care about a woman's right to control her body in general and we care about an individual's right to know how to control their own body. We're fighting against the people in which if they had their way; abortion, birth control, and knowing "safe sex" would be illegal. The anti-choicers are the ones bringing on more abortions, not us. We care about women in general. The anti-choice movement doesn't. That's my point. My point isn't to say that pro-choicers should play the dumb "I don't like abortion either" line. It's just that what we do reduces abortion in the end.

[iverglas]

10. I DON'T WANT to stop abortion!!!

We're doing a heck of a lot more than anti-choicers are doing to stop abortion just by helping women in general.

I am not doing ANYTHING to stop abortion. Reducing the rate of abortions might be a side effect of something I do, but that is neither positive nor negative to me, and it is not my intention.


I just wanted to make the point that the pro-choice movement is not just a movement to enable women to get abortions.

YES IT IS! By definition. The "pro-choice" position is the position that women must not be denied the ability to carry out their own choices about their pregnancies. Not choices about birth control, not choices about where to live or work or about how many children to have or about anything else.

People who advocate(d) the abolition of slavery may also want to raise the minimum wage and provide public education to all children and do a whole lot of other nice things. But abolitionist movements ARE "just" about abolishing slavery.

In a diverse and developing society, there are many problems and many possible approaches to solving them. Each of us might have, in our heads, our own Big Master Plan for solving all of the problems (i.e. what we each see as problems) and establishing utopia. Not many of us are likely to agree on any particular Big Master Plan. But good numbers of us can agree on what must be done about particular, discrete problems.

Abolishing slavery solves the problem of individuals being denied the exercise of their right to carry out their own choices as to how to live particular aspects of their lives. It doesn't solve the problem of homelessness or illiteracy or child abuse. And if we waited until we had developed, and all agreed on, a Big Master Plan to solve all those problems before abolishing slavery, we'd be waiting a very long time, and a lot of people's rights would be violated in a lot of very nasty ways for all that time.

Abolishing restrictions on women's access to abortion (or stopping such restrictions from being implemented) isn't going to solve the problem of unintended/unwanted pregnancies. But it is going to stop (or prevent) the violation of women's rights in the particular nasty way in question. And that can be done without making sex ed and contraception universally available, or achieving economic equality for women, or eliminating homelessness and poverty, etc. etc.

It may be wise to try to portray one's self as a few cuts above the devil incarnate when trying to persuade others to one's side. 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.

But women's right to an abortion is a separate issue. It is not dependent on any other policies or programs being in place, or on the good nature of the people who oppose interference in that right. It is the right of every individual woman -- regardless of why she wishes or needs to exercise it.

The anti-choice are only the ones "bringing on more abortions", by denying women the means of avoiding unwanted pregnancy, if women have access to abortion. If the anti-choice can make abortion illegal, they will solve that problem.

Or so they say they think, and the fact that outlawing something does not stop it will not be accepted as valid reason not to outlaw it by those who don't actually give a shit whether abortions happen or not, which as we know the anti-choice zealots in the crowd actually don't give a shit about. Any more than they give a shit about women with unwanted pregnancies.

Make improving access to the means to avoid unwanted pregnancies (which includes access to the means to make some pregnancies wanted that would otherwise be unwanted) a plank in your platform, by all means. But recognize that it is not going to sway the people who don't give a shit in the first place, and do not tailor your message to *them*. They have their own reasons for their positions, and those reasons are bad reasons, and there is no policy that you can propose that is going to meet their criteria, i.e. that is going to place women under their control, which is what they want.

[Jackie97]

11. I NEVER SAID you did! (edited).

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.

[REP]

12. Pro-Liars Don't Care About Abortion; They Care About Sex

Pro-liars don't care about abortion; in fact, they love abortion, the later and more barabric the better. What they don't like is women having sex and they especially don't like women having sex and liking it. Look at what comes up in an abortion thread: "if she didn't want a baby, she should have kept her legs together!" "if you can't do the time, don't do the crime!" Look at the worries over emergency contraception and the morning after pill - not that they weren't safe and effective, but that they might promote (gasp!) promiscuity (faint!). Even worse, they might be out having a lot of sex with almost no chance of getting pregnant and having a baby.

[Jackie97]

14. Exactly!

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

That's the whole heart of the anti-choice movement. It's to get those "sluts" back in the house under a man's submission, to keep her from being independent.

I honestly don't believe that all anti-choicers are like that, but I do believe the movement itself is like that. I also believe that many Americans (including many pro-choicers) look down on women like this. Imagine.

[WildClarySage]

18. That's exactly right.

and they don't view a fetus as a 'baby' they view it as a punishment.

Which is why they won't support it after it is born.

[iverglas]

13. of course things go hand in hand

Defending women's reproductive rights commonly goes hand in hand with opposing the invasion and occupation of Iraq, for instance. In the minds of us who see it that way, the two are very closely connected indeed. But the two are "unrelated" in the minds of many other people.

Remember the anti-war movement (well, I seem to recall there being one ...) and the whole concept of common fronts. Some people who oppose(d) the invasion and occupation of Iraq saw it as a manifestation of USAmerican imperialism and necessarily connected to all other aspects of USAmerican action in the middle east, and in fact all USAmerican foreign policy, and domestic policy ... . Some people were just pacifists at heart. Some people had pragmatic objections to this particular war (the absence of justification, the cost), but not to USAmerican foreign policy or to war in general. So attempts to incorporate broader policy positions into the anti-war effort were for the most part just divisive.

There are right-wing libertarians who defend women's reproductive rights, but have no interest in paying taxes to operate well-woman clinics, or in having the public schools engage in sex ed activities. There are pragmatists who know that, in the present circumstances, no govt. in the US is going to start funding universal child care programs, and don't want women's reproductive rights to be seen by the right-leaning electorate as part and parcel of some Big Master Plan to expand welfare programs.

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.

Sure. But nobody tacked "abortion rights" onto the anti-war effort. Focus can be important sometimes, to achieve a goal that is of immediate and extreme importance, and that can be more readily explained if it isn't balled up with a bunch of other stuff.

Women's right to abortion is a very simple matter. It exists independently of any reasons why a woman has an unwanted pregnancy or wants to terminate a pregnancy. It is a right. There are limits to the ways in which the exercise of that right can be restricted, just as there are for other rights. There's no getting around that; it is the very bottom line.

If we defend free speech, we don't go off on tangents about how if people would just stop electing Bushes we wouldn't need to be holding rallies, and if we put more money into creating jobs for disadvantaged youth they wouldn't be signing up to be cannon fodder in the war we're protesting. We defend free speech because it is a right. And we don't have to explain why we want to speak, or suggest ways to get us to shut up.

Yes, there are things that many but not all prochoicers also advocate could be expected to result in a lower abortion rate. But anyone can advocate non-interference in women's fundamental right to choose, in respect of women's own pregnancies, without agreeing that active measures should be taken to assist women in avoiding unwanted pregnancies, and without having to produce other ways to achieve the goal that someone else wants to impose on women, i.e. stop women from terminating unwanted pregnancies.

There is no goal. Rights exist independently of anyone's notion of what the purpose of them is. The overall goal of human rights, one might say, is to ensure that individuals have the ability to live their lives as they choose. And that's the goal of the pro-choice movement, because it is a movement to defend the ability to exercise rights.

All other goals are secondary, or at least different in nature. The goal of giving people the means to live their life as they choose is not the same as preventing interference in how people live their lives.

[Jackie97]

15. You make good points.

I might address some of them later.

I was just thinking abou the idea of making access to birth control and abstinence only seperate focus points outside the pro-choice movement. I would definately be interested in doing it with abstinence only, but I don't know how easily it could get off the ground. This would be a focus on people who don't even have the right to vote (and are therefore considered unimportant politically). The rights of minors have just always been a big issue to me though.

Thanks for the reply. Later.

[HockeyMom]

16. What is Abortion?

So many of the extreme pro lifers even consider birth control pills to be abortion (i.e, pharmacists refusing to dispense) because they MIGHT "kill" (prevent implantation) of a fertilized egg. Slippery slope, VERY slippery slope.

[Heddi]

17. no, not slippery at all

Here. I'll refer to my Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary (as I have often done during these "what IS abortion?" or "what IS a fetus?" questions that pop up so often)

Just for the record, Taber's is really *THE* source of choice for Doctors, Nurses, and other medical professional. I've never heard a word of disagreement regarding their definitions or descriptions.

Abortion: the spontaneous or induced termination of a pregnancy before the fetus reaches a viable age. THe legal definition of viability --usually 20 to 24 weeks--differs from state to state. Some premature neonates of fewer than 24 weeks or 500g are viable. Symptoms of spontaneous abortion include abdominal cramps and vaginal bleeding, sometimes with the passage of clots or bits of membrane or tissue

Abortifacient: Anything use to cause or induce an abortion

Contraceptive: Any process, device, or method that prevents conception.

Conception: 1. The mental process of forming an idea 2. The result of a pregnancy marked by the implantation of a fertilized ovum in the uterine wall. SEE; contraception, fertilization, implantation

Fertilization: 1. the process that begins with the penetration of the secondary oocyte by the spermatozoon and is completed with the fusion of the male and female pronuclei. This usually takes place in the fallopian tube. Viable spermatoza have been found in the tube 48 hours after the last coitus. After the ovum is fertilized, the diploid chromosome numer is restored in teh zygote, cell division begins. the blastocyst then enters the uterus, where it may implant for continued nurture and development

Implantation: Embedding of the developing blastocyst in the uterine mucosa 6 or7 days after fertilization.
-----
So no, not really a slippery slope at all, once you realize the difference between abortion and contraception