To use the "fact" that women have "choice" to prove what essentially amounts to an argument that hinges on the "choice" argument for its validity, is the (liberal) equivalent of using the Bible to prove that the Bible is true. Because "choice" is not consensus or accepted fact. It is highly controversial - and in fact the pro-choice faction has been steadily losing support.
If you do not accept that Roe vs. Wade granted that women have the legal and moral justification to "choose" all the things that the "choice" argument claims - well then the argument is just infuriating. (I wrote a post about this here).
I had posted that I would not be posting comments on any other blogs because of the fake poster(s) linking my web site as if it was theirs. I want to keep it very clear which posts and comments I am willing to take responsibility for - and anything else, that isn't me.
However I couldn't resist commenting elsewhere (so far I have not had any issues with Blogger accounts), and I post it also here. Welcome to the pro-choice debate.
Incidentally I don't know that Anglachel will post this comment at her blog - she appears to get a lot of comments, and she selects representative samples to post.
Here's the comment (if I did this right it should be identical to what I submitted):
Equality for women is not going to progress until we recognize that men and children have rights, too. A child is not just one person's choice.
I have the right to control over my own body, but I don't see how I have the right to knowingly and deliberately deprive my future child of its ability to know and love its father. The evidence is clear: kids without fathers suffer for the loss.
Nor do I have the right to simply decide on my child's behalf that s/he does not want or need the identity information that comes with knowing one's true parents. The evidence isn't so clear here, but it will be: kids need access to all the information about who they are and where they really came from. A missing parent is a gaping hole in a child's identity formation process.
Nor do I have the right to deprive my child's father of his rights to control and choice over his line of descent, which is a thing he has reason to value.
Women have won their right to treat children as their own little personal luxury goods, which they can choose to "have" when and where they want, but the price they have paid is that they have legitimized selfish attitudes that have alienated men from the process of childbirth and childrearing.
What is needed now is for men to be held responsible for the children they create - but that can't happen as long as women insist on treating a child as a personal decision, rather than a family decision. It is women, not men, who have been denying that men are stakeholders in the childbearing process.
There is no legitimacy in women claiming to have the right to make all these choices - but, whatever they decide, men must support them. And who cares if the men feel helpless or taken advantage of, or if they don't particularly want 18 years of child support? THEY should have thought of that before they unzipped their pants!
I first heard a man complain of this double standard over two decades ago and I still haven't thought up a satisfactory answer - the truth is, feminism seeks to minimize or deny that men are participants in the childrearing process - whether or not the female wants them to be - and that's just wrong.
And men are retaliating by blocking child support enforcement, subsidized day care, etc.
It is easy to say that men should put the kids' needs first even when the woman doesn't ("pay your child support even if I don't let you visit them!") but reality isn't likely to start working that way.
I would not like to be a man deprived of the right to prevent an abortion, nor would I like to have my child given away for adoption without my consent. And it ought to go without saying that I would not like to be the man who is informed that I will be paying child support for 18+ years, whether I like it or not.
Ironically this whole debate will be moot as soon as abortion is outlawed. The day men no longer have the option of just pressuring their girl to abort the fetus, you can bet that safe, reliable, reversible sterilization will become available, and then both women and men will have the ability to control whether or not they get pregnant in the first place.
I am not saying I am in favor of simply outlawing abortion (and chaining barefoot women to the kitchen sink). But it's time for us to renegotiate the rights and responsibilities of parenthood. It's past time..
3 comments:
"I would not like to be a man deprived of the right to prevent an abortion," but neither would I like to be a woman deprived of the right to have an abortion. Doctors who remember the old days have been among the staunchest legal-abortion advocates, and plenty of women were left on their own then, too. To me, legal abortion is a public health issue. Women who want abortions will get them, safely or unsafely.
This doesn't address your discussion, but can't be left out of it.
I don't want to see women lose control over their bodies. However, I don't think that's the real issue because I am sure that we have the technology to take a fetus out live and frozen and "save it for later".
The real issue is control and decision-making and responsibility. Whose baby is it? How is control and responsibility shared? Who is entitled to input as to decision-making? How are conflicts going to be resolved?
People use the default assumption that if women give up total control over decision-making, we will go back to the days when men had all the power and women had none. That we either don't change a thing, or we go back to 1962. But a genuine workable solution is not going to be an either-or. What is needed is a solution that shares power and decisionmaking between the sexes in a way that both men and women can live with.
We need to get this issue resolved, because the woman's movement is totally stalled until it is resolved. Equality movements rely on moral authority for their forward momentum. We lost our moral authority.
We have let every other issue sink while we cling to this one. And we're losing it anyway.
oh and it should go without saying (but I'll say it anyway) that when I say 'a solution that shares power and decisionmaking in a way that both men and women can live with..."
back alley abortions are not a solution that women can live with. Therefore -- not stable as a solution. (The minute the patriarchs win back that much power = the minute a new backlash starts, in the other direction.)
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