in the wrong era. Soundly refuting
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Audacity of Truth
"Diplomacy":
"People are saying what in the world is going on with North Carolina, we look like Mississippi." - NC Gov. Bev Perdue (D) on the passage of Amendment One, 5-11-12
Why is it that the only women who can be “pro-woman” are radical liberal pro-abortion feminists?
Cassy Fiano has a must-read post up today about an exchange a pro-life blogger had with a pro-choice blogger over the issue of ‘provocative’ pro-life ads being displayed in New York subways in which the ad implies guilt and/or depression over either a woman deciding to have an abortion or over someone in that woman’s life who encouraged her to have one. The various ads (seen at the Abortion Changes You website). But one in particular really rankled the pro-abortion crowd to the point that one of them took it upon themselves to deface the ad. Here’s the before and after shot:
Abortion Changes You - before and after pix
The ‘debate’ between pro-life blogger Lori and pro-abortion blogger Jessica goes as one typically does, with Lori being mystified as to why pro-abortion women, women who claim to want a woman to be “fully informed” on the issue of abortion before deciding whether or not to have one, always seems to be outraged when alternative arguments – even the very tamest of ones – against abortion are presented (the Tim Tebow “controversy” comes to mind), while Jessica goes on the predictable “pro-life women are anti-woman” rant, acting offended that pro-lifers would suggest that abortions are done for purposes of convenience before admitting later in the post that … yes, a lot of abortions are done for the convenience reasons.
As longtime readers already know, this is a subject I’ve written about many times (see the “Abortion” and “Feminism” categories for more). What really irks radical liberal feminists is the fact that 1) there actually are women out there who don’t follow the rad fem dogma on abortion and sex and 2) the myth that ‘most’ women don’t have abortions for convenience purposes has, over the last decade or so, slowly been busted.
For years, the pro-abortion crowd have tried to insinuate that most women have abortions due to health reasons (either the mother’s or the baby’s) or due to rape or incest. But that’s simply not true, and the stats at the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute (see pages 14 and 17) bear that out. The fact is that most women have abortions for birth control reasons. They either didn’t use birth control themselves and/or neglected to ask the man in the equation to use a condom. Or, more importantly, they didn’t bother saying “no” to unprotected sex, a highly irresponsible decision that has the potential to cost an unborn child its life. It’s especially irresponsible for the woman to make the choice to have unprotected sex, considering she’s well aware of what the consequences could be to her body.
Yeah, I know pro-abortion women like to “blame men” for a woman getting pregnant and having to make the choice as to whether or not to keep the baby, and while men do share some of the blame for not being responsible, the added responsibility is on the woman, because nine times out of ten it is she who is the one deciding whether or not she’ll allow the man to have sex with her. If a woman says no, unless she is raped unprotected sex will not happen. And as a result, there will be no messy decision-making process as to whether or not to keep the child that may result from the irresponsible (and unsafe) act. This ain’t exactly rocket science, folks.
The bottom line is that the absolute best way a woman can be “pro-woman” is make sure she’s and her fellow females are educated and informed on the need to be responsible for all choices they make in life, including the choice as to whether or not to have sex – protected or not.
Fiano:
It’s like they practically salivate over the thought of another woman getting an abortion. I don’t know why, but it’s sickening how much feminists try to actively convince women to have abortions. And of course, never mentioned is the option of not getting pregnant if you absolutely cannot handle a baby at the moment. There’s birth control, and if you can’t afford that, the solution is simple: don’t have sex. But of course, telling a feminist that women shouldn’t have sex if they aren’t ready for a baby might make their head explode. I mean, really, dare you tell women that they should keep their legs shut if they aren’t ready to get pregnant?! Believe it or not, there is an element of personal responsibility at play here. The whole feminist philosophy is disgusting. They tell women to sleep around like men do. When women then get unintentionally pregnant (usually while unmarried), they tell the women to just kill the damn burden growing inside of you and throw it out like refuse. And NO, don’t you dare do any research about abortion, what your baby looks like, or the effect having an abortion can have on you. Just kill the damn thing and get back to your Womyn’s Studies classes because college is the MOST. IMPORTANT. THING. EVER! And no, you cannot do both, you must choose between being a pregnant, barefoot housewife in a kitchen or being a smart, single, feminist womyn with a degree in Gender Studies. If you have the baby you are contributing to the partiarchy! And you will be a victim! Do what we say! Don’t think for yourself!
It’s sickening, truly sickening.
All of this just goes to show how far feminism has fallen. Feminists were once made up of smart, strong women (who, incidentally, despised abortion and rightfully saw it as evil) who were fighting for real gender equality — the right to vote, to get an education.
Now, feminists crusade for abortion. It’s their number one cause. And they don’t even want women to be informed. They don’t want women seeing ultrasounds first because they know it’ll influence them to have the baby. They don’t want women learning that abortion can have devastating physical and emotional repercussions. They don’t want abortion to be “safe, legal, and rare”. Lori’s post showcased another example of a feminist accidentally exposing that trust, and it pissed Jessica Valenti off. Feminists don’t want women to be able to choose what’s best for them; they want women choosing abortion. I can only assume it’s because if women stop choosing abortion, then feminists will lose their last grip on relevance in today’s society. Getting the truth out about abortion and its possible effects, as the “Abortion Changes You” campaign does, terrifies and angers feminists.
It’s pathetic and disgusting, that someone would actually encourage abortion — the murder of the unborn — solely to help maintain their own grip on power and relevance in the world. Anything that harms the pro-abortion movement really is just harming modern feminism. And this ad is just another crack in the feminist “we help womyn” facade.
What Cassy’s talking about is the two kinds of feminism, as explained by feminist autor Christina Hoff-Sommers:
Sommers describes equity feminism as an ideology rooted in classical liberalism, and that aims for full civil and legal equality for women. Experimental psychologist Steven Pinker[2] expands on Sommers to write, “Equity feminism is a moral doctrine about equal treatment that makes no commitments regarding open empirical issues in psychology or biology.”
Sommers contends that “Most American women subscribe philosophically to the older ‘First Wave’ kind of feminism whose main goal is equity, especially in politics and education”.[1] However, Sommers also argues that equity feminism is a minority position in academia, formalized feminist theory, and the organized feminist movement as a whole, who tend to embrace gender feminism.
[...]
In contrast to equity feminism, Sommers coined the term “Gender feminism” to describe what she contends is a gynocentric and misandric branch of feminism. Gender feminists typically criticizes contemporary gender roles and aim to eliminate them altogether.[1] In current usage, “gender feminism” may also describe feminism which seeks to use legal means to give preference to women in such areas as domestic violence, child custody, sexual harassment, divorce proceedings, and pay equity. Psychologist Steven Pinker[2] described three defining pillars of gender feminism:
Gender feminism is an empirical doctrine committed to three claims about human nature. The first is that the differences between men and women have nothing to do with biology but are socially constructed in their entirety. The second is that humans possess a single social motive — power — and that social life can be understood only in terms of how it is exercised. The third is that human interactions arise not from the motives of people dealing with each other as individuals but from the motives of groups dealing with other groups — in this case, the male gender domination the female gender.
Sommers argues that gender feminism characterizes most of the body of modern feminist theory, and is the prevailing ideology in academia. She argues that while the feminists she designates as gender feminists advocate preferential treatment and portraying “all women as victims”, equity feminism provides a viable alternative form of feminism to those who object to elements of gender feminist ideology.
Simply put, gender feminists despise men and “gender roles” and don’t strive for “equality” but instead “dominance” over men while equity feminists are like the original feminists in this country who embrace(d) their femininity and at the same time strive(d) for true equality among men. Gender feminists, unsurprisingly, are amongst the most radical pro-abortionists you’ll find, whereas your equity feminist may or may not support abortion, but if they do, you can be sure that most of them don’t balk at the idea of women having to take the lead in being more responsible for the sexual choices that they make.
You get three guesses as to which side is the more “pro-woman” side. The first two guesses don’t count. 
Back to the “offensive” Abortion Changes You ad, if you happen to be a pro-lifer who is in NYC today, make sure you check out the 2 p.m. pro-abortion “protest” planned against this ad. Jill Stanek has the who, what, when, and where details here.
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The pro-”choice” people are pro-abortion, because they need to have a certain number of abortions occurring to keep abortion available in the first place.
The vast, vast majority of gynecologists simply do not perform abortions: it is a messy, nasty, upsetting and almost always unnecessary procedure that injures the soul of the abortionist. What we have in this country are a relatively few abortion clinics in which abortion is performed almost assembly-line fashion, and, because of that, abortion is also cheap, just a few hundred dollars.
But without a significant number of abortions being performed, many of these clinics would lose money and go out of business, or have to raise their prices so much that abortions would be out of the financial reach of many women. The economics are simple: without a lot of abortions being performed, the availability of abortion decreases.
For our pro-”choice” friends, the notion that abortion is somehow the last resort for desperate women is false, because they need a lot of those desperate women to keep the industry — if not the children — alive.
Beyond the financial aspects, the pro-”choice” supporters need to have a large number of women choosing abortion to keep abortion socially acceptable. Right now, abortion is frowned upon, and few women who have abortions want to advertise the fact, but if abortion became much less common, then the sense of shame which would attend the far smaller number of women having abortions — were they still financially available — would further reduce the number of abortions, until we got to the point where any woman who had one and who was discovered to have had one would be completely shunned by respectable society.
In a strange and sad way, our good friend Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon constantly rails that it’s us evil reich-wing conservatives who oppose artificial contraception, yet with artificial contraception not being 100% effective, whether through failure of use or failure in use, her position on abortion requires that contraception fail with some frequency.
Not sure where the 9 out of 10 figure comes from. Are you suggesting that 1 in 10 unwanted pregnancies is the result of a rape? Because unless consent is one of those things one can withdraw retroactively, that number strikes me as implausibly high. Then again, maybe the figure is about right if you count not only forcible rape but also fraud, e.g., cases where he quietly ditched the condom without telling her, or where she lied and told him she was on the pill but really wasn’t.
Regardless of what the appropriate number is, and limiting ourselves to the cases where neither party coerced or defrauded the other, I’m puzzled as to why you think the woman generally has added responsibility. Sure, she’s the one who decided to allow the man to have sex with her, but wasn’t he the one who decided to have sex with her? Or are we men just incurable horndogs – Tiger Woods minus opportunity, if you will – that we simply cannot be held responsible for having sex with every woman who will allow it?
X, the 9 times out of 10 was a figure of speech, nothing more. Rape (along with incest, and health reasons) accounts for a very small percentage of the reasons women give for having an abortion.
I also included this in what I wrote:
“and while men do share some of the blame for not being responsible”
Both parties are responsible for the end result (if there is indeed one – an unborn baby), but I maintain that it’s the woman who has be more so before the sex act because she knows better than anyone else the result could potentially impact her body. Not saying that men aren’t aware of how it could impact the woman’s body, but that women should be doubly and triply aware. In the heat of the moment, that might slip the man’s mind but it should always be front and center for the responsible woman. That might not be “fair” but that’s the reality of it. It has nothing to do with me believing that men are “horndogs” (I don’t). Not sure where you got that I believed that.
I’ve written about this issue for years and long term readers will recall how I have decried the wrongness of men repeatedly being dissed and dismissed by radical feminists as “woman haters,” “sex fiends,” etc.
When a woman accidentally gets pregnant I frown on both sides for not being responsible in protecting themselves and via extension each other, but being a woman I frown on the woman a little more because in my mind I’m thinking “she should have known better.” I don’t really believe this is a double standard. I suspect responsible men probably frown upon the man a little more than they do the woman, for the same reason. Maybe it’s a gender thing. But either way, both parties are responsible for the result. Unfortunately, radical liberal women see accidental pregnancy as all “the man’s fault.” Why? Because it fits right in with their “men are evil” dogma and because they don’t want to admit that women can be irresponsible too and that oftentimes that irresponsibility is the direct or indirect result of the “free love” movement of yesteryear which has morphed over the years to the more and more casual attitude today that so many – especially the younger crowd – have towards sex today
ST, I did not mean to imply that you actually thought all men were horndogs. That was more of a tongue in cheek response on my part, after having briefly wracked my own brain trying to come up with some theory to justify holding one sex more responsible than the other for an act in which both had engaged voluntarily, and with equal knowledge of the risks. Once upon a time I might have frowned more on the man, a la “how could he do that to her?” but nowadays I think of it more in terms of two to tango.
As a white male I understand I am not allowed to have an opinion on this. The reason given for that exclusion is that the female is the one who disproportionately is burdened with the responsibility of the child. So the man who supports and encourages the practice of abortion is seen as pro female.
If I were a man with out scruples I would say a one time payment for an abortion is cheap compared to a lifetime of child support payments. Yet that unscrupulous male is pro female?
A comment, and a question.
Comment: it seems to be that we’re focusing on the wrong thing. The problem isn’t abortion, the problem is an unwanted pregnancy. It’s the demand, not he supply, that’s the issue.
Question: in the mind of the more religious types, if there such a thing as an unwanted pregnancy? To listen to some people, every pregnancy is the miraculous touch of God and the gift of a new life. (This position is probably exaggerated for the average believer, but I have no doubt is held by more than a few).
I ask, because my point from “comment” relies on the idea that there _is_ such as a thing as an “unwanted” pregnancy.
This is my first visit.
I think the real question is what values are we teaching kids and promoting in the general society. Women are being fed this ideal that they are expressing their liberation through unbiased sexual exploits. They are being taught they can run around and have as much sex as possible, just like men. Rather than questioning the out of control sexual habits of the average male today, we have instead told women to join in on the “fun”. Nobody is talking about the responsibilities associated with sex, and the real consequences of reckless engagement in it.
I do not believe that we should dictate to people how to live or what to do with their bodies. I am actually pro-choice, but personally I wouldnt do it myself. I also would encourage any friend or family member who discussed it with me, to not go through with it.
Whenever a leftist says people should be informed and educated, he means solely and exclusively by fellow leftists.
Anything else is hate speech.
Oh, Emerging Phoenix, you say nobody should tell another what people should do with “their bodies.”
If you consider the fetus to be human (and as for myself, I cannot see how one could escape that conclusion – no pregnant human ever gave birth to a puppy or a chair) then it isn’t just “one body” in question. If the fetus is not human, then at what point does it become one? Science cannot tell us, there is no obvious benchmark beyond which humanity appears.
Passing the birth canal? Then those born by C-section are never human. A specific date? Premature infants are being saved earlier and earlier in pregnancy. Ability to survive unaided? I know some people who graduate from college who can’t do that.
The critical question in the abortion debate is the identity of the fetus. That’s why pro-abortion people refuse to discuss it, and instead demonize the other side of the argument. They jump right beyond the basic bedrock argument because there is so far no definitive answer to that one, and thus they are left with advocating killing a human being. Most abortion supporters consider themselves good people (just as they consider their opponents stupid and evil) and therefore cannot face the possibility that innocent lives are being lost because of them. So they magically make that possibility disappear.