Abortion

I had a pleasant conversation with a friend today. One of many topics that came up was abortion. Here's one of the things about the whole abortion debate that I think gets lost and I think it's a very important to remember the history of the judicial history of women's reproduction freedom.

1965 - Griswold v. Connecticut - The first time the Court declares that there is a right to privacy in the bedroom. The idea is that a married couple should be able to decide whether or not they want to use contraceptives.
1972 - Eisenstadt v. Baird - The court extends the right to use contraception to nonmarried women.
1973 - Roe v. Wade - Court extends the right of birth control and the zone of privacy to include abortion.

In a span of 8 years, we went from a society where the criminalization of birth control was considered constitutional to a society where women suddenly had a great deal of control over their bodies.

Around the same time, it also became illegal to discriminate on the basis sex when the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed. In 1972 the law banning sex discrimination in education was passed.

The world was rapidly changing. And many people were unhappy with it. There has been a fight raging against women's full participation in society from before the laws ever passed.

Discretely there are fights in the courts that continually try to narrow the definition of sexual harassment. Insurance companies will regularly pay for Viagra, but will refuse to cover birth control.

The biggest fight, which attempts to shade itself as something other than an attempt to control women's bodies, is the fight around abortion. Don't get me wrong, I do believe that some people really struggle with questions about where life begins. Here's the thing, studies show that the people who attempt to eliminate abortion also don't believe in provide support to children once they're born. They don't support early support programs, they don't support free lunch programs, they don't support affordable child care, or increasing paid family leave.

Don't get me wrong, even if the government fully funded all of the expenses of having children, it would not mean that abortion should be outlawed, I'm merely pointing out the hypocrisy of the anti-abortion movement and why it should never be allowed to be called the "pro-life" movement.

The anti-abortion movement, by attempting to frame it in some sort of distorted picture of protecting fetuses gets to harass women, doctors, and other health care providers under some sort of moral superiority. They rarely get called out on the sexist nature of their movement because too much of society has bought into this idea that it is about some sort of amorphous beginning of life point. The anti-abortion movement even threatens and follows through on its threats to kill actual human beings involved in providing health care to women. The vast majority of the anti-abortion proponents also object to teaching sex-ed in schools, preferring abstinence only education.

Full disclosure, I have no problem with abortion. I don't know and I don't really care at what point life begins. There are far too many children unwanted children abandoned in foster care. A system that fails miserably at serving the children in its care. I also don't think women's bodies should ever be incubators. It is far too high a demand to place on the body. Sex is not a crime and women should not be punished for lopsided consequences.

I would also like to point out that if anti-abortion activists were really interested in eliminating unwanted pregnancy, males would be expected to get snipped. It's a relatively easy procedure that is reversible. If every male had to go in and affirmatively state that he was attempting and ready to have children prior to having the getting his sperm released again, there would be a whole lot fewer accidental pregnancies in the world. Sadly I think this would also greatly increase the number of stds.

You will never find this proposal existing, despite the number of times in our history that women have been sterilized because of sexism. Men want their sperm to be able to impregnate women, even if they don't actually want to impregnate a woman. I've never understood it. I don't think I can understand it, but whenever this idea is floated around in the presence of males, they are greatly opposed to it. Only thing that can explain it to me is sex stereotyping.