The Very Basis of the Anti-Choice Movement is the Idea that Women Just Don’t Matter.

I have a point, and I’m bound to get there, but it’s going to be a little circuitous, so bear with me.

I read a lot of Sci Fi.  A lot.  Now, one thing that a lot of good SF that deals with colony ships and crews being stranded far from where they intended to be points out is that while children are necessary for perpetuating the species, the people who are the greatest loss to these stranded crews are adults with knowledge and experience.  Because in a lot of these SF storylines, once that person dies, that knowledge dies with them, and it may be as grandiose as how to fix the stardrive, or as “lowly” as knowing how to test native vegetation to see if it’s poison.

I guess what I’m saying here, is that most of the Anti-Choicers would never survive the wreck of their starship.

When you put the well-being, not of children, but of non-viable embryos over the well-being of actual people who are living in the world, working, paying taxes, in most cases according to the Guttmacher Institute already raising children, you devalue the lives of the women supporting those embryos.  You turn them into little more than mobile incubators.  Subsequently, you also devalue the children she already has. Because if you cared about people, you’d care about the life that woman would have, the struggles another mouth to feed may well bring her, and the children she already may have.

But you don’t.

You view women as stupid and expendable.  You view them as creatures to be tricked and thwarted out of knowing what is best for them and their extant families, whether that family consists of just them, them and a partner, or them any children they already have.

My Hero!

Blogger Karnythia over at The Angry Black Woman Blog posted about the therapeutic abortion that saved her life.  Salon.com picked it up, and the Anti-Choicer hate mail has been pouring in, led by infamous Anti mouthpiece Jill Stanek, who, it should be noted, was fired from her job as a nurse by lying about the hospital she worked at killing babies.  And no, I’m not linking to that professional troll.

You really should go read Karnythia’s piece, it’s powerful, and moving.  I’ve been one of her Livejournal friends for years, in spite of periodically pissing her off I’m sure, and I remember when this happened.  The worry when she wasn’t posting, and updates by local friends, letting all of us out in the aether know what was going on.  Her story has not changed, and I find her a hell of a lot more credible than Jill Stanek.

The most distressing part of the incredible popularity of this story is the sheer numbers of Anti-Choicers telling her that the right thing to do would have been to die instead of having the abortion, leaving her two existing children motherless.  I’ve braved the comment threads at Salon and at the ABW blog, and it’s not pretty.  In fact it’s pretty fucking awful, and Karnythia’s stronger than I am to have braved this as gracefully as she has.  These people are DEMANDING that she provide her medical records to prove that she needed the abortion, that the first doctor really did refuse to perform the abortion.

Many of these assholes, because I’m done being nice, I was done even before they started attacking my friend, seem to think that the only right and proper thing for her to do was to die and save everyone all this bother.

Because, in their worldview women, all women, are expendable.  We are only worth what our wombs can provide.

If you want proof of that, just go read those comments, both at ABW and Salon.  But I recommend not eating before you do, it’s pretty fucking sickening. *

*I’m not even getting into the rampant and disgusting racism evident in the comments as well.  Really, if you wanted proof that the Anti’s were disgusting human beings who shouldn’t be allowed near children, this is it.