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*Puts On Her Feminist Hat*
Jul. 16th, 2008 05:55 pmHas everyone seen this article yet? To sum up briefly: the Bush Administration is pushing to require that recipients of aid for federal health programs agree not to refuse to hire people who (nurses etc) who object to abortion. Understandable, sort of, if morally questionable.
HOWEVER. They explicitly define abortion as anything that terminates the life of a fetus at ANY POINT after conception. This definition is broad enough that many contraceptives would be considered abortion - and thus, health providers are not allowed to refuse to hire people who refuse to distribute contraceptives to women.
Excuse me, but FUCK THIS SHIT. I - well, this sends me into fits of flailing, incoherent, apoplectic rage. What the fucking hell is wrong with these people? I will NEVER understand the sub-group of people opposed to both contraceptives and abortion - people will have sex regardless of whether you disapprove of it or not! If you don't want them to have abortions, you have to allow people the opportunity to protect themselves from getting pregnant! This is very simple math! And this? Is going to make it that much harder for low-income women and women in difficult situations to get contraceptives, that much harder for rape victims to get the morning after pill, and the end result of that is more pregnancies in women who can't afford or don't want to have a baby.
Not to mention the degree to which this makes me uncomfortable on the "men are dictating what /I/ do with /my/ body" level, because it really does. When you consider how many pregnancies end in natural miscarriage without the woman ever knowing she's pregnant, a legal definition of pregnancy that begins at conception basically means that every sexually active woman of child-bearing age can be considered pregnant - there's no way of proving she isn't! And this kind of thinking is appalling - it reduces women to incubators, implies that we're only valued our reproductive capacity. Excuse me if that fucking pisses me off. Really, I just object wholesale to the idea that women need men to tell them what to do with their bodies to make sure they don't screw things up. My body! Mine! I've been saying since I was twelve that men can make decisions about abortion when THEY can have a fetus growing inside them for 9 months, fucking with their hormones, feeding off their nutrients, and kicking them in the kidneys, before they have to go through the 2 -3 days of labor necessary for a baby the size of a watermelon to pass through a hole the size of a grapefruit.
So to summarize: I hate people, and I am desperately counting down the days til it's January and Bush is fucking out of there.
HOWEVER. They explicitly define abortion as anything that terminates the life of a fetus at ANY POINT after conception. This definition is broad enough that many contraceptives would be considered abortion - and thus, health providers are not allowed to refuse to hire people who refuse to distribute contraceptives to women.
Excuse me, but FUCK THIS SHIT. I - well, this sends me into fits of flailing, incoherent, apoplectic rage. What the fucking hell is wrong with these people? I will NEVER understand the sub-group of people opposed to both contraceptives and abortion - people will have sex regardless of whether you disapprove of it or not! If you don't want them to have abortions, you have to allow people the opportunity to protect themselves from getting pregnant! This is very simple math! And this? Is going to make it that much harder for low-income women and women in difficult situations to get contraceptives, that much harder for rape victims to get the morning after pill, and the end result of that is more pregnancies in women who can't afford or don't want to have a baby.
Not to mention the degree to which this makes me uncomfortable on the "men are dictating what /I/ do with /my/ body" level, because it really does. When you consider how many pregnancies end in natural miscarriage without the woman ever knowing she's pregnant, a legal definition of pregnancy that begins at conception basically means that every sexually active woman of child-bearing age can be considered pregnant - there's no way of proving she isn't! And this kind of thinking is appalling - it reduces women to incubators, implies that we're only valued our reproductive capacity. Excuse me if that fucking pisses me off. Really, I just object wholesale to the idea that women need men to tell them what to do with their bodies to make sure they don't screw things up. My body! Mine! I've been saying since I was twelve that men can make decisions about abortion when THEY can have a fetus growing inside them for 9 months, fucking with their hormones, feeding off their nutrients, and kicking them in the kidneys, before they have to go through the 2 -3 days of labor necessary for a baby the size of a watermelon to pass through a hole the size of a grapefruit.
So to summarize: I hate people, and I am desperately counting down the days til it's January and Bush is fucking out of there.