Bloggin' for choice

[magenta]

I am using my laptop, and don't want to try to get the icon. This is my post for today because it is so important to me.

I worked for Planned Parenthood of Minnesota for nearly four years, as the librarian for its small, specialized library. I especially remember the teenage girls who came from all over the state, because the Twin Cities and Duluth are the only places that have abortion clinics. Sometimes they, or the friends who brought them, would crash on the couch outside the library where I worked. They had gotten up at 6 am or 5 am or even 4 am to get to St Paul, because there was no where else they could go.

I think every woman of every age, starting at menarche and ending at menopause should have access to free birth control, free abortion AND free pre-natal care. And, frankly, men should stay out of this issue.

Comments

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

I certainly agree as to free choice and access to birth control, abortion and prenatal care.

I wouldn't expect men to stay out of the issue entirely, though. They do play a part in conception, and often in rearing children and have valid interests to represent. I just don't think it should be a controlling interest.

[starsimplode.livejournal.com]

I just took a "divorce class." It was equal men and women. They were throwing around stats about how in MN it's about even between men and women having parental rights over their kids. I don't know how accurate that dividion is but most of the women in the class had been burned! They either had ex husbands in prison or they were abusive.
Men won't stay out of it, specifically if women were to tell them too. At this point there are too many male politicians to keep them out anyway. I've noticed also most men aren't very passive. Oh, and easily disempoewered by womens otherness.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

We tend to hear a lot from the controlling jerks, and not as much from, or about the many decent guys out there.

Women are equipped to carry a child to birth and nurse it, but the genetic material involved (and often the emotional investment) belongs to both parents. It's not right to decide in favor of either one on the basis of gender alone. That's why the divorce courts are supposed to be looking at it in terms of the welfare of the child, and why it's so hard for some to see that the situation is different when you're talking about an unborn fetus that does not yet have an existence independent of the mother's.

[bchbum-98.livejournal.com]

I was absolutely, without a doubt, discriminated against in my divorce hearing due to my sex (male). "My judge" did not think a father was as capable of raising children as a mother, and nothing that anyone said in the courtroom was going to influence his decisions. It sucked.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

That sucks. I've known both males and females who are not equipped to be good parents, and both males and females who are capable and responsible and nurturing. We need more judges to see that plumbing isn't the issue.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

In defense of my sex (because I rather fancy some of them) almost exactly the same percentage of men support the right to have an abortion as women. Except in cases where it is one of the so called 'partial birth abortion' or the pregnancy is more than six months along. Then significantly more men than women support a woman's right to the procedure.

So while it is usually male politicians putting rules on women they're doing so at the behest of both men and women. My source ABC News (http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/abortion_poll030122.html).

Just checking.....

[markiv1111.livejournal.com]

So if men should really stay out of this issue, would you be offended if I, as a man, were to say "I agree with you 100%"? (Serious question.)

Nate B.

Re: Just checking.....

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

You agree even about men staying out of it entirely? Would you feel differently if you got someone pregnant?

[3stitches.livejournal.com]

I'd say this was a good start. I was watching a pod on Current last night about the last abortion clinic in Mississippi that got me thinking. Anyone who protests abortion clinics or lobbies legislators to vote to ban abortions (and the legislators who vote for a ban) should be required to enter into a binding legal child support agreement with at least one woman they have forced to become an unwilling mother. You want to ban abortions? Fine, they you can pay for 100% of the support for the kids born as a result.

Yes, skylarker, and we can discuss this....

[markiv1111.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'm not sure I do agree with it 100%, and you have some valid points. But what I was driving at, with magentamn, is checking out the possibility that even if I *did* agree with it 100%, would she be, or would she not be, so rigid that my stating an agreement on the topic would be offensive? Note that magentamn is someone I know only a little, though we do have one important close friend in common; my point here was just in trying to get a better handle on the thought processes of someone I would really like to know better. Most other stuff on this topic, skylarker, would be on the order of "let's discuss this via personal e-mail," as even with friends, and friends of friends, I would not be totally comfortable discussing this in a forum that was too public.

Nate B.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Men are not the problem. Almost exactly the same percentage of men and women agree and disagree with abortion right down to particular circumstances. This is a change from the early 1990s when (very slightly) more women than men opposed abortion, IIRC. I would guess the change is the slow passing away of an older generation of women. More men than women supporting abortion is still the case with certain circumstances, most significantly in so called 'partial birth abortions' where 28% of men support them and only 19% of women. 15% of men and only 8% of women support the right to have an abortion when the pregnancy is 6 months+.

My source is an ABC News poll (http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/abortion_poll030122.html) I found on the web for everything except the 1990s numbers, which are a memory from reading about the subject in HS.

Libertarian perspective?

[markiv1111.livejournal.com]

The other angle on this topic involves the inherent rightness and/or wrongness of taxation. What do we say to our militant libertarian friends (and I do have a couple) who say, "Yes, this would be a good thing to do -- but it's also morally wrong, because you'd have to do it with stolen money?"

Nate

Re: Libertarian perspective?

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

If I was being reasonable, "I do not agree that taxation is theft, but taking your position for a minute. Isn't it more important to oppose theft that goes to really bad purposes, like subsidies for business and agriculture, first rather than taking on things that create more of a public good?"

If I was going to be reasonable.

Re: Libertarian perspective?

[markiv1111.livejournal.com]

Please don't refer to that as "my position." It isn't. (I do suspect that you and I are both very, very capable of playing "devil's advocate" when the time to do so is right.)

Nate

Re: Libertarian perspective?

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Everything in the quotes should be read as what I would say to a Libertarian if I was being reasonable. If you were an actual Libertarian I probably would have succumbed to the impulse to mock Libertarian politics (yet again) because I enjoy torquing off Libertarians far more than I should.

[profmurphy.livejournal.com]

Right on, Sister.

I worked in Milwaukee for five years as a paid clinic escort/security for Planned Parenthood of WI. The City Attourney of Milwaukee is Catholic, and didn't want to prosecute "activists" who were protesting clinics, making physical threats to pateints and clinic employees, stalking PPW employees' children, and assaulting and sometimes battering us. Milwaukee was literally under siege for years, and PPW put us on the payroll so there was guranteed security on the street for people entering the clinic.

The Anti's were almost always men, and not the least bit interested in babies, the sanctity of life, or the family. They were paid under the table by their churches to show up everyday to threaten and harass people and to chase around who they believed were "loose women" trying to make them cry. Some of them brought their own children out to the clinic and made them stand outside the clinic and hand literature to people. They were awful. And very hypocritical. None of them offered to be of any real help to women or to children.

Complacency about this issue drives me nuts. Because of a state law squabble in WI, abortion was temporarily illegal for a few weeks back in 1999. We had to walk patients in through the throng of anti's just to tell them they they had to drive to Chicago to get their procedure done.

What guys don't get is while they're having abstract and philosophical discussions around rights and abortion and parenthood, womens' backs are up against the wall.It's a physical, embodied reality that men, while possibly sympathetic, will never understand.

[ihateswine.livejournal.com]

"The City Attourney of Milwaukee is Catholic, and didn't want to prosecute "activists" who were protesting clinics, making physical threats to pateints and clinic employees, stalking PPW employees' children, and assaulting and sometimes battering us."

The one and only time I've come up against abortion protesters, I threatened to grab the guy's sign and stick it us his ass. He tried to get in my face, and I told him that I was gonna go to my car and get my gun... I was bluffing but about ten of them left right away.

I think that abortions should be FREE, and furthermore, you should be able to claim the dead fetus as a deduction on your 1040

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

When I actively opposed the draft in the 1960s, I decided that I could not reasonably maintain that men had no right to support or oppose abortion rights.

[magentamn.livejournal.com]

I am glad to see men supporting womens rights of any sort.

Men have a right to their opinions, but on this issue, they should not have any *decision* making power. In my opinion, not even if they are the possible sire. THEY don't have to risk their lives and health to continue a pregnacy and give birth, nor do they nurse a baby. And many, in my experience, do not do half the work, even if they think they do.

And male politicians certainly should not be able to say yea or nay as to whether a women has access to birth control or abortion. I think it is one of the most important rights a woman has, because without it, any other right may become moot anytime.