Earl Bockenfeld's Radio Weblog

The reference above to "whims" is so depressing. It takes a man, who has never experienced ANYTHING that women experience in connection with their fertility, to use a loaded word like that.

Before Roe, thousands of women died every year from illegal abortions. They knew the risks, yet subjected themselves to the most horrific experiences you can imagine. Why? Because for some women, the fact of pregnancy makes them desperate to end it, for all sorts of tragic and terrible reasons.

If abortion becomes illegal again, it will not be unavailable. There are always going to be desperate women, and illegal abortionists, and deaths in the back alleys from infection, perforated uteruses, and loss of blood. Those who want to outlaw abortion are conceding that these deaths are an acceptable consequence, which underscores Digby's point about punishment.

Men cannot fully comprehend how emotionally powerful and physically overwhelming pregnancy is. Your health can be profoundly affected, both during and after, especially if the mother is very young or over 30. For nine months it takes over your life, your hormones are roaring, your body swells until you can't see your feet, which are also swollen. The hoped-for end to it all is that you are finally able to push that grapefruit-sized head through an opening that is definitely smaller, and a live, healthy baby is eventually handed to you by the people who have been listening to you scream and grunt for hours, while someone sews you up. All that is followed by decades of doing your best to help that baby grow up into a decent human being.

Pregnancy can be exhilarating and joyful, terrifying and depressing, all of the above, but even if you desperately want to be pregnant, it is a an unbelievably difficult physical and emotional experience. And for women who work, who are trying to get a job, who are caring for other children or elderly parents, no one gives you extra energy to meet all these demands in addition to the physical ones, like morning sickness, gestational diabetes, insomnia, and feeling like you can't get a breath or your balance. And you haven't really lived until you've waddled into a job interview in a dress the size of a circus tent.

The decision to end a pregnancy is also an overwhelming one, and the experience itself is painful and traumatic, even in the first trimester. Because abortion is so stigmatized, most women do not want to come forward to explain why they did it. This gives the anti-choice camp more leeway to fling phrases like "abortion on demand" and "on a whim," as if women are flighty creatures incapable of making such a profound decision.

The decision whether to undertake the life-changing experience of bearing a child should be personal, between women and their doctors, and whoever else women themselves choose to involve.

I believe that every child has the right to be wanted, loved and cared for.

I am not pro-abortion, but I am pro-choice. I think that Bill Clinton's formulation of "safe, legal and rare" is where we should focus. I think that those who oppose abortion should be able to agree that sex education and contraception are important tools to prevent it.
Unfortunately, many of the same people who claim to be pro-life, are the ones who oppose information and contraception. We have all seen those male pharmacists on TV who just can't distribute birth control pills because it bothers their conscience, or what passes for it.

We are also eliminating basic health care for poor women all over the world, in order to make sure that our religious beliefs are not violated somewhere in Africa by a poor woman receiving contraception at the expense of the United Nations. It's immoral and despicable.

Once the honky dudes control access to abortion, the Sanctity of Motherhood, already one of the most pervasive patriarchal lies, will once again assume its place as the centerpiece of female existence.

Of course, not every woman will be allowed to revel in the sanctity of motherhood. Controlling reproduction is not limited to restricting abortion. It's only a short hop from telling a victim of incest, as they may now do in South Dakota, "Tough shit, you sick little Lolita" to the flipside: court-ordered sterilization of undesirables: junkies, loonies, cripples, women with genetic abnormalities, "welfare mothers" who just can't say no.

It's already happening. If you're a lesbian trying to get turkey-basted in a fertility clinic, good fucking luck.

This shit comes directly from godbaggery. The religious right have successfully transplanted the moral authority of their deity to an unthinking police state incapable of moral insight.