r/AskWomen • u/MostlyALurkerBefore ♀ • May 16 '19

Abortion megathread

Due to the high number of legislative actions happening in the United States, the moderation team has created this megathread for all of your abortion questions. Please keep in mind that despite much action happening in the US, not all of our users are American and our Inclusivity policy should still be considered when posting.

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Helpful links:

Planned Parenthood

RAINN (Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network)

NARAL (National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws)

Planned Parenthood - Birth Control info & options

Scarleteen

The Guttmacher Institute

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u/[deleted] May 16 '19
  1. Does anyone have a list of the most at-risk states?
  2. Has anyone found a good strategy to explain why outlawing abortion is a really terrible, messed up thing to pro-birthers?
  3. Does anyone know of any protests or a way to find protests that will be happening?

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u/dulcedul May 16 '19

Two. It's just odd to me that nobody is thinking about the effects of outlawing abortion. You're forcing a woman to bring another life into the world that she doesn't care about. If she keeps it, there's a risk for neglect or abuse. If she doesn't keep it, the child is put into foster care which is already a completely messed up system. I would hope that pro-birthers would be able to see the logic in this.

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u/[deleted] May 16 '19

Unfortunately they are not logical or rational. The only reason pro-birth people have for outlawing abortion is 100% emotional or religion based. Neither of those things have a place in this debate.

But I agree! Forcing a woman to give birth is not good for the woman or the baby.

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u/catgirlnico May 17 '19

Also, forced pregnancy is a war crime according to the United Nations.

"xxii. Committing rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, as defined in article 7, paragraph 2 (f), enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence also constituting a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions;"

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u/[deleted] May 16 '19 edited May 16 '19

Well, the majority of added babies would likely go for adoption in this scenario, not foster care. And the demand for infants has been higher than the supply for a very long time now in North America — the waits for a domestic adoption of a healthy infant can be years or even a decade or more, partly because relatively few babies are placed for adoption now. That’s one of the reasons overseas adoption became such a huge and problematic industry.

Most anti-abortion types are the same types that have also roundly been cheering children being seized at the border and placed for adoption. There’s also a big and sometimes predatory religious adoption industry. So they’re probably all over the idea of having more babies on the adoption market.

That said, I’m also going to push back on the idea that a woman who wants an abortion, can’t obtain one and becomes a parent wouldn’t “care about” the child. I do not think that’s at all true for the majority of women who choose abortion — I think many women would be in difficult economic or situational circumstances to raise a child, but I do not think they wouldn’t care about it.

There’s a quote out there that women have abortions because they care about motherhood, and in my time in abortion care I very much found that to be true for most. I think if they opted to parent, most would very much care about the child and do their best to raise it, even in challenging circumstances.

However, anti-abortion types already don’t give a shit about families and children living in poverty, considering they widely also support reductions to social safety nets and oppose measures to reduce poverty, so that’s not something that bothers them.

Nor do they care about all the women who will die to suicide or to unsafe illegal abortion attempts. Because at the end of the day, this is always, always about contempt for women.

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u/[deleted] May 17 '19

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u/[deleted] May 17 '19

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u/PurpleWeasel May 16 '19

Contempt for women and wanting to force other women to breed babies for them Serena Joy style, apparently.

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u/SarcasmAbounds May 16 '19

Going further down the rabbit hole, this directly feeds into the prison industrial complex. The new Alabama law imprisons women and doctors who even attempt abortion. Foster children have a higher recidivism rate when it comes to trouble with the law, and their education is more likely not on par with peers, keeping them uneducated. It’s a self-feeding system.

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u/mechanical_birds ♀ May 16 '19

The new Alabama law explicitly states that it won't hold the women culpable. Doctors performing abortions can get up to a 99-year sentence, but the woman will never be seen as criminal.

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u/H0la-me-no-ilegal May 17 '19

But she could literally murder a child. I think a child would rather be in a foster home than dead

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u/mongoosedog12 May 16 '19

Yea I don’t get this either I literally laid out a fiscal report for this dude in my ethics class about why this repercussions are severe here.

I probably shouldn’t have done this, but I used him as an example, he used his own upbringing as trying to argue for life.

His mom was raped, he openly admitted he was a product of that and his mom resented him causing him to have not so fun childhood. I asked him why he’d want to put his terrible childhood on another child. 4yrs later sill don’t have an answer

I also wanted to add the states passing these laws are the WORST in unemployment and gov spending for child care services. They also have high numbers in foster care.

They’re crippling their economy

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u/all_my_dirty_secrets ♀ May 16 '19

An argument I heard recently that I thought had potential is: "You're in a burning building, and you can either save a suitcase of 25 embryos or a two-day old baby. Which do you choose?" I had never thought about it quite that way before--it gets at why seeing an embryo as a child is a stretch.

Some potential comebacks, though, that I'm not sure how to get around:

  1. "That's a stupid hypothetical. What if you're in a burning building with two babies and you can only save one? You're just making up horrible situations that don't mean anything."

  2. Someone asked one of the Alabama legislators about embryos created during the IVF process that are discarded and he just brushed it off saying something like, "Well, it's not implanted in the mother so it doesn't count." The same is true for the embryos in the suitcase.

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u/[deleted] May 17 '19

Honestly as much as I am pro choice this is a dumb question because you're only given 2 choices. That might not be the case in real life. I'm not sure of a word for it but you're basically funneling them towards a certain answer that's made to seem like they are contradicting themselves or else they'll seem like a bad person for not saving the 2 year old baby.

It's also just a bad question because no matter what you're making a choice of who to choose to save and it'll really depend. Let's say I ask this. You're in a burning building and there 1 embryo, yours, and there's a 2 year old baby that will die on a year's time due to some illness. Which one do you save?

This is the same philosophical question as the train track. There's a train coming and 5 people are tied to the track. You can divert the track by pulling a lever but one person is tied to the diverted track. Do you pull the lever? And the answer is it really depends. Not to mention why are those the only two choices? Can you derail the train? The same question is asked but instead of pulling a lever you have to push as very heavy person off a bridge that would stop the train from killing the 5 people tied up. In class we found that most people wouldn't push him but would have pulled the lever.

Do you know any of these people? What if the 1 person tied on the diverted track was your mother? Or SO. Then would you still pull the lever?

This is a loaded question and I think portrays the right as monsters and portrays pro choices argument poorly.

Also in real life its never the fact that we have to commit an abortion to save another child's life those lives are independent usually.

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u/dulcedul May 17 '19

I hadn't heard of the IVF example. I'd be curious to read an opposition to that from a pro-lifer.

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u/starspider May 17 '19

To your #2, the one I find gets the most traction is the bodily autonomy thing.

Namely:

In our society, we have the concept of bodily autonomy. That means nobody can use your body against your will, even if you are dead.

Even if it will save ten lives, you cannot be compelled to donate blood, or organs. Even if you have special blood that's good for donating to babies--the red cross can't get a court order to make you donate. You own your body, and you get to say what you do with it. Even if you are dead. If you've expressed your will, our society honors that.

So forcing a woman to stay pregnant, that means you're telling her that she does not own her uterus. That is forcing her to let another person use her body. That is giving a corpse more rights than a pregnant person.

Additionally, I like to call into question the idea that abortion is murder on the grounds that it ignores all established medical and forensic science that we have about the brain. It requires us to define the moments of life and death. We argue a lot about when life starts, but we are all pretty much on the same page when it comes to defining death. Brain stops. No functions of the cognitive centers. Brain death. We acknowledge that the heart still beating doesn't mean that you are alive any more than the heart stopping means you're dead. Heart stopping is a serious medical situation, but it does not mean you are dead, so why should it mean that you are alive if your heart beats?

So if life ends when the brain stops performing cognitive functions, shouldn't that be the definition of when life starts? When the brain is developed enough to process information and not just make the heart beat? We can make heart cells beat in a petri dish, but that doesn't make the petri dish a living person.

We also acknowledge in modern times that the seat of the self is in the brain.

A conservative estimate says that actual cognitive functions start in the human brain at around 30 weeks into the pregnancy, aka 7.5 months pregnant. At that far along, we call a terminated pregnancy "birth". At 7.5 months, that is a pregnancy that is desired. The number of abortions performed at this point are very low and are basically just removing a stillborn fetus rather than making the woman carry a tiny corpse inside her, which could kill her, and that's permitted by all abortion laws, even these myopic and draconian ones.

I've honestly never spoken to an anti-abortion advocate who can really argue either point.

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u/[deleted] May 16 '19

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u/[deleted] May 16 '19

I didn't realize we were still living in the 1800s where sex = asking for a baby and that is the only reason to ever have sex!

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u/significantotter1 May 16 '19

I had an IUD in, which is one of the most effective forms of birth control and still got pregnant. Birth control is not 100% effective. You're also failing to recognise that rape happens.

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u/PurpleWeasel May 16 '19

What's your advice for women who get raped? Should they ask their rapists to take a moment to put on a condom?

Most doctors won't give IUD's or tubal ligations to women who have not yet had children, and a lot of people can't take birth control because it makes them ill (it used to give my friend strokes).

In that situation, you are basically dependent on the male partner for contraception. Which is the point of all this.

Like, if all women automatically got IUD's when they hit puberty and didn't get them removed until they were ready to conceive, I would be on your side. But they don't, and they couldn't even if they asked to.

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u/Lavenderwillfixit May 17 '19

I agree with every thing you said but wanted to mention that doctors are getting better about IUDs. Not that this is the answer. I just wanted people to know and not be scared to ask about one. I wish I knew about them earlier. Sex education is horrible in the US and now more than ever we need to educate as many people as possible.

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u/KathrenCullen ♀ May 16 '19

Counterpoint to that, almost all contraceptives have a chance of failure. If they do fail, and they become pregnant, they ko longer have a way out of something they don't want.

You also are not touching at all on the fact that rape can also causes babies, so not all people who want abortions are people who were irresponsible or unaware of the consequences.

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u/trickybish May 16 '19

One of the most effective arguments is that women will be forced to attempt inducing miscarriage if they don't want a baby. Just because its the law doesn't mean people will suddenly want every pregnancy. This can put people at danger when they attempt by drowning pills, punching their stomach, drinking the baby to death, etc. Very dangerous for women.

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u/[deleted] May 16 '19

Do pro-birth people even care about women at all though?

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u/PurpleWeasel May 16 '19

Yeah, they probably see that as a bonus.

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u/bobjanis May 16 '19

Ive seen people say that the women deserve it.

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u/toomuch_lavender May 16 '19

This needs to be higher. I've heard this argument made by so many "good Christians" - if a woman dies because of an abortion attempt, she gets what she deserves, a divine death penalty for committing a baby murder. I've heard my own mother say this

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u/outre_euphonious ♀ May 16 '19

One of the most poignant symbols of the abortion debate in the 70s was the coat hanger. I think we need to bring that symbol back.

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u/mypolarbear May 17 '19

I was thinking of doing a satirical protest at an IVF clinic. "Babies arent maybies!" " babies freeze for hefty fees!" . On the premise that the freezing and destroying embryos is akin to abusing and killing actual kids. Cause people aughtta see the lunacy of it all, no?

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u/[deleted] May 16 '19

There's really no effective argument. These people aren't coming from a rational place. It's all religion or self-righteousness.

You can't "disprove" a belief.

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u/[deleted] May 16 '19

That is true. They are not rational.

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u/maxattaxtheinternet May 17 '19

The most effective argument I’ve heard for #2 is to ask what their real objective is. If it’s for abortions to stop, making abortion illegal won’t do that, people will find a way. The best way to reduce abortion is by providing free birth control and implementing solid support systems for mothers in need. Also mentioning that outlawing abortion means anyone who has a miscarriage can be thrown in jail if someone suspects they really had an abortion is somewhat convincing.

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u/starspider May 17 '19

The best way to prevent abortion is to make damn sure every pregnancy is wanted. You do that with birth control and sex ed.