The various Women’s Marches to protest the Trump inauguration were a welcome tonic for those of us who have felt dread and depression since election day. One of the discordant notes, though minor in the glorious scheme of things, was the objection of the so called “Anti-Abortion Feminists“ that they were excluded from a Feminist march. It seemed actually that these “Anti-Abortion Feminists“ had a whole PR campaign to protest their exclusion from the Women’s Marches. There were spokespeople interviewed on the Cable Networks and pieces like this one in Huffpost: Anti-Abortion Group Bumped From Women’s March Stakes Out A Place Anyway. In the five decades that have passed since the Roe v. Wade decision, these Anti-Abortionists have become a force by dint of their deceitful sobriquet “Right To Life“. By combining this lying meme, with the patina of religious orthodoxy, this duplicitous movement has forced the mainstream media to tread lightly when discussing it. Thus yesterday, in the midst of the coverage for this glorious march of protests, some time was given to the exclusion of the so called “Anti-Abortion Feminists“. This served as a negative counter-point to the inclusive glory of these marches, at least in the minds of the pliable corporate media.
As I wrote previously in my 10/22/15 post I Believe in Abortion:
I’m am so damned tired of the nonsense spread by religious extremists in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade that I’ve decided that I need to directly come out supporting abortions, rather than weaseling around the subject by just arguing that I’m pro choice. Ever since the landmark decision Roe vs. Wade was decided in 1973, power hungry Republicans have teamed with religious extremists, to use abortion as an issue to win elections, raise money, attack the fight for female equality and to advance ideas of human sexuality that literally s come from the “Dark Ages” of human history. Paraphrasing Shakespeare, it is a sad tale told by idiots in the name of a morality bred from ancient social norms and male fear of the power of females. This piece was breeding in my consciousness for years as I’ve watched the retrenchment of modern thought in the United States. This is occurring due to stupid fanaticism, bred by those who would use the anti-abortion movement as a springboard towards power, or a salve for their own fear of living.
In that post I discussed in depth the roots of “anti-abortionism“ and showed why it is steeped in duplicity and cynicism. The short version is this:
- If preventing abortion was really the object of this movement, why is there a one to one correlation among proponents, with efforts to limit birth control and sex education, which would prevent abortions more effectively?
- If the movement was really “Right to Life“ why do its elected proponents consistently vote against any programs that would aid infants after birth?
- How come this movement consistently elects people who claim we need less government, when at the same time anti-abortionism brings government intrusively into the lives of female citizens?
- By allowing abortions no one is ever being forced to have an abortion against their religious beliefs, therefore the real aim of the “Anti-Abortion“ movement is to get government to enforce their religious beliefs upon others.
- If all people are entitled to the religious beliefs of their choice, why do these anti-abortionists believe their religious beliefs should not only take precedence, but be imposed upon all women?
To my mind Feminism is a cause that fights for the rights of all females to equally share in the full rights of citizenship and societal respect. We have seen Feminism bowdlerized by religious fundamentalist women who claim to be Feminists, although they are actually oppressed by the confines of their particular faith. Many in the “Anti-Abortion“ movement are religious fundamentalists whose canon of beliefs places females below males in their pecking order. That alone is inimical to Feminism.
As long as these “Anti-Abortion Feminists“ believe that their religious preference overrules the rights of females to control their pregnancy, they are not acting as Feminists, despite their tortured logic. The leadership of these wonderful marches were right to bar “Anti-Abortion Feminists“ from march sponsorship positions. Their presence on any steering committee would have been inappropriate and inimical to the purpose of these marvelous marches. “Anti-Abortion Feminism“ is indeed a noxious and silly oxymoron
ElephantTail 
January 22, 2017 at 12:05 pm
I am of the opinion that the government should stay out of people’s personal life. When you start legislating morality you are on a slippery slope.
Just read about Kristen Stewart issue with Trump. Apparently she was having an affair with the director of Snow White and trump advices her boyfriend at the time to bail on her because of the affair, he eventually did. I think he compares her to a dog.
In as much, isn’t trump known for his affairs? Wasn’t he doing Marla Maples while still married to Ivana? Wasn’t he in a relationship with Melinia when he was married to Marla?
I guess, do as I say, not as I do, is Trumps motto. He should know what a dog is!
Well enough of the fake news for now….. only kidding.
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January 22, 2017 at 2:14 pm
Exactly. Nothing screams “feminist” like an old white guy mansplaining to women what they have to do to pass his personal litmus test for being a “real feminist.”
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January 22, 2017 at 3:13 pm
Russell: When you start legislating morality you are on a slippery slope.
On the contrary, 100% of legislation is about legislating morality!
Take the simple ones: I can’t murder strangers. Why is that? What exactly makes it wrong for me to murder a complete stranger, somebody I have never met before, and would likely never meet again? Isn’t that just the most commonly felt morality, that other people’s lives are inherently valuable? There is no scientific argument for that; and in fact humanity survived a very long period, tens of thousands of years, in which there were no laws against murdering strangers, and no punishment for it (other than by friends and family of the stranger murdered, but that was not a “law,” it was just a consequence).
How about laws against theft, or fraud? Isn’t that just morality, codified? It is a moral position to claim somebody owns a piece of property, and it is wrong to deprive them of it by theft or fraud.
How about rape, or pedophilia? Those are just moral choices, too.
All laws ultimately spring from our collective sense of morality, 100% of them; in which we decide before there is any law that some action (or failure to act) is morally wrong and worthy of punishment, coercion, incarceration, or even death. And then we choose to codify in some way what that action is, and what the punishment for it should be.
Tush even a speed limit or a road is a moral law, as are DWI laws: we think it is wrong for some reckless people to endanger the lives of other people on a shared road, so we threaten to punish them for doing that, but we have to be clear, so we codify what we mean by “reckless:” a maximum speed on the road that balances safety and convenience, or a maximum blood alcohol reading. It still springs from our moral sense that endangering others is “wrong” no matter how willing the perpetrator may be to risk their own life. The DWI law is not a law against the use of alcohol, it is a law to prevent the endangerment of others.
The question with abortion is not whether the law is “legislating morality,” ALL LAWS DO THAT. Including Roe v. Wade, they decided the balance of morality favors the woman, not the developing clump of cells (ranging up to a live fetus) that she was carrying. They decided the most moral thing to do was to let the woman do as she wished as long as the fetus was still in her body.
In fact, 100% of the pro-choice arguments are MORAL arguments about a woman’s “right to choose” because it is “her body”. But that means they aren’t really arguments at all, they rest on the moral assumption that she owns her body and the moral assumption that she can do whatever she wants with it.
But equally, she cannot use her body to murder a stranger, can she? She cannot use her body to shoplift, can she? Why not? Because it is morally wrong to murder, and morally wrong to steal.
So if somebody ELSE believes, for whatever reason, that the fetus she is carrying is a PERSON, then they are entirely correct to conclude that for the most part, the woman IS allowed to do what she will with her body, but she should not be allowed to use her body to murder another person!
We do NOT have one side trying to legislate morality, we have BOTH sides trying to legislate morality! They just have different moral precepts. We are not on a slippery slope legislating morality, if that were true it would mean zero laws at all!
You might want to revise that, and say it is a mistake to legislate religion: But most religions contain a commonality of law (things that are in virtually all religions) that are also in legislation, not really because some God said so, but because humans everywhere have tended to agree for a few thousand years that murder, theft, fraud and many forms of lying or deception are wrong. Humans have tended to agree that morally, we have some “rights” regardless of religion.
The laws supported by the majority of American citizens are in fact “morality” laws. We have other laws, often not supported by most people, that are contrary to our morality: Like the Congress exempting itself from insider trading laws.
The flaw in the anti-abortionist argument is being ignorant of science and their emotional stance that a clump of cells without a functioning brain is in fact a human being. That makes no scientific sense, it is no more a human being than a brain tumor is a human being, and such a tumor actually has neurons in it. The problem is in their “codification” of their stance, which involves an element of supernaturalism in the form of a “soul” that inhabits a fertilized egg.
The flaw in the pro-abortion argument is being ignorant of science and their emotional stance that a fetus, even one WITH a normally functioning brain, is NOT in fact a human being. This also makes no scientific sense, and their codification also involves an element of supernaturalism in the form of a “magic moment” upon exposure to air in which a fetus instantaneously becomes a human being, an infant with a right to life.
The flaw in general is codifying when a fetus becomes a human, without resorting to supernaturalism, and therefore entitled to the other emotionally determined “rights” of humans and citizens of all ages. Personally, I regard that moment as a functioning brain cycle (aka a certain kind of brain wave, which we can detect even during sleep); which generally occurs between the fifth and sixth month of pregnancy. My own morality, as an atheist, says that once a fetal brain is functioning, it is a person with rights. Before that minute, it is not. Just as a person can be alive one minute, and dead the next: A fetus can be a non-person one minute, and a person the next.
The problem is not in legislating morality, the problem is in codification: making a rational determination as to when the law against murder should apply to a fetus.
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January 22, 2017 at 5:58 pm
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January 22, 2017 at 6:02 pm
He will go after her. Yesterday was a beautiful day and the crowds were in the millions. Even small towns had decent sized rallies and people realized that they were not alone,
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January 23, 2017 at 11:04 am
“Anti-Abortion feminists” is NOT an oxymoron; and saying it is one, is irrational.
A person can believe that females and males should have equal rights in every respect, but that neither gender should be allowed to murder an infant! If a female, for whatever reason, truly believes that a fetus at any stage is an infant, a person deserving of a right to life, then her belief in equal rights does not imply that abortion is a right.
My personal belief is that a fetus is not a person for at least the first four months, and terminating its development is not morally different than removing a tumor or diseased organ. My personal belief is also that not all life is automatically “precious”, I believe a life of deformity, lack of comprehension, lifelong dependency and misery is not worth living; and no parent should birth a child into a life of such suffering.
But I can temporarily put my beliefs to one side, and at least comprehend the true belief of many (even if IMO misguided and irrational) that conception should be the starting point of personhood. A feminist that does not believe in murder is not an oxymoron.
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January 23, 2017 at 2:40 pm
-A feminist that does not believe in murder is not an oxymoron-
MM,
Except that it is not murder by my definition, nor by yours. The belief that it is murder is based upon religious belief.and also if you read thorugh many of my linked posts a specious religious reading of the issue in order to promote a political agenda and an agenda that places females below males. Besides your sentence quoted above does not reflect what I have written. .
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January 23, 2017 at 3:18 pm
I believe it does reflect what you wrote; your assumption is that “feminism” must always implicitly include approval for abortion rights; that is an unavoidable inference from your claim that an anti-abortion feminist is an oxymoron. Or do you now subscribe to only your own definitions of common words, like Ayn Rand?
ALL laws are based on beliefs, religious or not. I am as Atheist as they come, it is not a religious belief of mine that tells me murder and theft are wrong. Nor is it a religious belief that tells me a healthy 8 month old fetus is a “person”. It is a scientific viewpoint based upon my scientific knowledge of brain development, and my reasoned conclusion that there is no salient difference between an 9-month old fetus in the womb, and a 9-month old fetus delivered “to the air” by C-section 15 minutes later. Because I am a rational thinker, I see no reason to deny that body a right to life at 1:30 and grant them that right at 1:45.
And because I am a rational scientific person, I long ago did my research on this topic, and came to the conclusion (as most law has) that personhood depends upon brain function, which depends upon developing several inter-related brain structures, and those are present and functioning by the end of the fifth month, and not by the end of the 3rd. The onset of evidence that those structures are complete and working is brain waves produced by functioning neurons. That is something we can measure, and for me the presence of those brain waves is the litmus test for personhood. Before they start, the brain is a collection of parts, after they start, the brain is learning and approximately as “conscious” as a person in a deep sleep (such people are still protected by law).
Therefore, I am opposed to the abortion of a healthy fetus at 8 months, or to be safe any later than 4 months, and in general to the “abort for any reason at any stage” rationale, and I DO CONSIDER IT MURDER if there are no other severe extenuating circumstances, like the objectively real endangerment of the life of the mother (beyond the normal risks of childbirth). If you believe no woman would EVER abort a healthy fetus out of spite for the father or her own sociopathic selfishness, fine: You should therefore have no problem making that the law, because in your belief system it is a law that would never be tested.
It does not make a difference to me if other people have specious reasoning about the issue, my reasons are rational and my conclusion is that, after the first four or five months, Rights must be balanced and consequences weighed, because at that point the lives of two persons depend on the mother’s body. IMO It is no different than demanding she does not leave an infant unattended in a car and does not put brandy in their bottle to get them to sleep. After 4 or 5 months of pregnancy, IMO she is legally responsible for another human being and cannot simply end their life out of personal convenience; it is not a pet cat.
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January 25, 2017 at 3:20 am
It was glorious! My pink pussy hat was knitted by a woman from Wisconsin.
When I returned home it was to see the Terminal Tower top lit up in pink lights.
No one in my group expected the crowd to be so large but it was not at all unpleasant to be packed in like sardines … well, going to the bathroom was a bit of a challenge but I have experience in these matters so came prepared.
All in all, a most successful endeavor!
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January 25, 2017 at 1:54 pm
Welcome back, Blouise!
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January 25, 2017 at 3:48 pm
gbk
😉
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November 5, 2017 at 4:41 am
This means YOU, personally, really should weight your words SERIOUSLY u a j, and I strongly advice you to delete this written defamation w e d u of both characters and a huge group of people who do not take slander and character assassination like this easily s h k r q. I do not know which organization you have got to back you up, but if you do not care about lawsuits in the multi-million dollar range, fine, just keep on what you are doing g l c i e. If you DO care about spending x-amounts of money to try and defend this CLEARLY written libel, then take my DELETE-advice. Your “Post” is now officially taken both copies and screen-shots of and digitally stored for later use and evidence. This is just a warning. We are antifa, we do not forget. alexis.bourquard@outlook.fr
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