I'm sure you all heard what my dear former congressman Akin got himself into. In case you haven't had the stomach to investigate the details (which is fully understandable) not only did he claim that women can simply "shut down" unwanted pregnancy without birth control, but he also accused rape victims of faking their assaults in order to expedite abortion care.
There's really so much wrong with this that I don't know where to begin. This is clearly the viewpoint of perhaps 30-40 percent(20 percent according to gallup, plus a further 37 that say choice should only be permitted in certain circumstances) of the country, with another third at least dispassionate and uninterested. With this in mind, I find it surprisingly heartening that the reaction has been so overwhelmingly negative. Even the CNN comments section is overwhelmingly anti-Akin. Who knows, maybe people still actually stand up for women's rights...
As I've not yet addressed this topic on this circular, I thought to enumerate my thoughts on the matter of abortion.
As a man, I have significantly greater reproductive freedom than a woman. Whatever the legal and economic consequences being responsible for an unplanned pregnancy on me, I would be spared the physical burdens. This inherent inequality justifies giving women the ultimate authority in this matter. A basic human right is the right to one's own body, and any and all effort to prevent women from exercising this right is simply unqualified evil. My platform on this issue is as follows: Abortion on demand, without exception or apology. Whatever rights a potential human being may have, they cannot compare to those of an actual human being. Therefore, no matter how uneasy I may be made by late term abortions, or by gender-specific abortions, I do not feel entitled to make such a decision for any woman, provided the decision is in fact her own. The aforementioned practices disturb me, but that doesn't justify establishing any cutoff after which women lose their human rights for the duration of their pregnancy. No restrictions on abortion at all.
This can be coupled with expanded sex education, greater access to birth control, and nationalized childcare services, to ameliorate the unequal burden of domestic labor on women in general and working women in particular. Alternately, paid parental leave. We are the only country in North America or Europe not to guarantee paid time off for family building, the most visible manifestation of our culture's indifference to domestic life- that which is labeled "feminine". Sadly, it is often this work, of nurturing, understanding, and caretaking, that imparts senses of social justice in many people who undertake it, including many mothers. But our society not only belittles the importance of this work, but insults those who do it, either by choice, or because they are expected to. I wonder if a society could ever be based on values of compassion and understanding rather than killing, hate, and fear. Surely, such a realm would be truly great. To me, this is what it means to be a cultural feminist- that merely guaranteeing fairness is not sufficient, rather our social value structure must be reexamined, and, if necessary, amended to make for a greater society.
Whew. That started as just a pro-choice argument but went much broader. This is probably why some professors don't like my essays. To hell with that, I like this, and I feel I've expressed my thoughts adequately.
In Solidarität
Genosse Graham
Lol Akin, and don't listen to the polls, they're almost never correct. I understand your point, but gender-specific abortion? really? in the 21st century? that is a barbaric practice, and *inherently anti-feminist*. Those who have such abortions almost always abort female fetuses for a variety of cultural and economic reasons, but always the bias favors male babies. Paid parental leave is a necessity, and like many European countries we should give 6 months, not the piddly 2 or 3 that many women here get. And, paid leave for Fathers is also not a bad plan, making domestic life something gender neutral, not feminine. You cannot, I am sad to say change this culture's inherent bias against things that are "soft", "extra" or "posh" but you can divorce the label of "feminine" from those things. Our society is already starting to do that. The media is now coming over to our side showing female characters who are strong but neither sexualized nor masculine, the various food-based movements are gaining popularity in the middle-class as people rediscover the pleasures of domesticity, and the internet is bringing the workplace into the home, and blurring the line between public and private life. War has become to costly, Hatred is turning out to be stupid and our greatest Fears are turning out to be unfounded. We may very well be on the brink of a New World Order, though it's too soon to tell for sure yet. Keep up the good hard work though, and I'll keep up mine, together we may yet succeed!
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Kamerad Sophie
So, how do we prevent gender-selective abortion? I agree it's barbaric, (and frequently undertaken at the insistence of men, which defeats the whole purpose of the right to choose), but how do we prohibit that without providing anti-choicers a means to restrict all women's access to abortion? The only thing I can suggest is an indirect and imperfect solution of expanded (and publicly maintained) women's shelter and assistance programs, and proper enforcement of domestic violence laws, coupled with new awareness campaigns, trying to reach a point where there can be less pressure on women to decide one way or the other. Do you agree that women acting of their own volition are less likely to abort based on sex? I would hope so, yet the patriarchal structure of so many cultures leaves quite a mark. So what do we do? What is a political solution (not necessarily passable, just a political solution) to this problem? (I should get a certain long-haired friend of ours to comment here, he and I arrived at some great and fair public health measures the other night, although that may have been due to the satisfaction of strawberry cake...)
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