I pit women who "backslide" long enough to have an abortion, then repent

The BBQ Pit
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And there are more of them than you might think.

I went to a ‘mom-n-pop’ restaurant tonight and there was a church group meeting going on in a private dining room within earshot. The guest speaker was expounding on how 25 years ago, shortly after Roe v. Wade, she was unwed and pregnant due to her sinful lifestyle and became pregnant, and because it was legal and easy to do so she had an abortion. Through mawkish tears: “Not a day… has gone by… in those 25 years… that I haven’t… thought… what… my… ba…by…wo…u…ld…have…looked…like…and when people ask… how many… children do you have… I always want… to say… four… because there’s the three I have… and the fourth I should have had!” She went onto say how if she had it to do over again she would have either given the child up for adoption or else found a way to raise it herself, because “nothing’s worth… the wondering…”.

I won’t say I wasn’t sympathetic, but I will say that the fact they outnumbered me about 30:1 and the fact the biscuits are excellent there are the two things that kept me from hurling jars of pepper sauce, the biscuits, and a stream of invective beginning with “but my dear…” and ending with “…if it had grown up to be a crack smoking poodle raping menace you miserable mawking cunt! Miss, can I have some more biscuits please? And another pepper sauce— no, not the plastic bottle, the big glass home made one.”

There was a woman on religious programming when I was switching channels earlier this week- different woman, but same basic story. Two years ago there was a “been to cryin’ for unborn children who might have made me complete [but more likely would have ended up suffocating in the back seat when I stopped to get a rad 'too]” editorial in the U of AL student paper- again, same story. (At the end of that one there was a climb on of “how brave and wonderful you are” comments, to which I added [under a pseudonym since faculty was asked not to make inflammatory comments]

Of course I was called callous and cynical (maybe not in those words), but if so I stand guilty. These women just fucking disgust me.

Now don’t get me wrong: I 100% completely and totally understand and don’t judge people who have strong ethical disagreements with abortion. To me abortion is a moral and ethical gray area. I do not believe that a first trimester fetus is the parasitic clump of cells that fanatics on one side would decree and I don’t believe that it’s a baby as others would decree but rather I see it as a Shrodinger’s Cat type thing (i.e. something in a box that is and isn’t a living thing, or a mixture of vital duality and pussy, either one works). Any woman who has ever suffered a miscarriage during a wanted pregnancy can assure you that it’s not the same as regular nausea and any woman who’s ever given birth to a stillborn child can assure you that it’s not the same as disposing of a zygote in a petrie dish, there’s a big fucking gray area that proceedeth from all white to all black somewhere in there.

However, whether or not abortion should be legal is about as black and white an area as I have in my ethics- YES! NO OTHER ANSWER IS CORRECT! IT SHOULD BE LEGAL! Ultimately, if you don’t want to have an abortion then don’t fucking have an abortion- seems pretty damned simple. I have contempt for the people, especially the upper middle class women who constitute such a large percentage, who picket abortion clinics intimidating would be clients- and while anecdotal I have it on exceptionally good authority (a former abortionist who was later murdered- unfortunate name of Dr. Gunn incidentally) that he had seen more than one of the women who picketed a clinic he was affiliated with in one city show up for services in another city, always the victim of a hyperfertile black rapist it would seem (why it mattered that said hyperfertile rapist was black I’m not sure, but apparently that kid’s soul is the exception).

I even have sympathy for women who abort and later have depression over having done so, I really do. I can understand that- they have killed what would have, if left alone, probably developed into a healthy baby. Totally understandable that it bothers them, though personally I don’t think they should “beat themselves up over it” forever because they were probably right: they couldn’t have handled having a baby at the time. But women like the one in the restaurant tonight, the girl in Tuscaloosa, and the one on the Fundie show I have no sympathy and the utmost contempt for-

“Oh yeah, when it was me, I sucked that thing out like it was a lima bean caught in my ass hairs, but you know what? If I had it to do over again I’d have given birth, because it’s far better to bring an unwanted child into the world than to have ended a potential life while it had no brain waves, personality, or ability to feel pain… good biscuits these”* with the subtext “but you shouldn’t”. I want to say to all of these women “Then fine— if you feel that way, then go up to that single mother contemplating the procedure now and tell her 'I will give you $100 per week from my paycheck and I will babysit twice a week or else pay for a babysitter twice per week for your child”, because that’s a hell of a lot cheaper and a hell of a lot less time than it would cost you if you’d actually had the kid you say you regret not having and it will help her out tremendously, maybe even help her decide to do what you think is right. If you’re not willing to do that, then shut the fuck up, and if you can’t afford to do that, then shut the fuck up again, because if you can’t afford to do that then you couldn’t have afforded to have that kid and you’d be miserable and the kid would be miserable. As it is the kid is nothing at all- it never developed sentience, it is a potential that was terminated."

I’m not particularly eloquent or clear, but I just can’t stand the hypocrisy of these women, and I hate just as much the amount of sympathy people give them. Suppose that instead of having an abortion she had had the kid, but then smothered him at birth and disposed of the body- would you people still applaud her and wipe tears away and tell her she’s brave? Hell No, you’d call the cops and call for her blood, and right you should, because regardless of what you say YOU DON’T THINK THAT EMBRYO WAS THE SAME AS A BABY ANY MORE THAN SHE DID AT THE TIME!

Anyway, the point is that I had some really good biscuits tonight. They weren’t the fluffy kind but sort of flat and real buttery, very much the old fashioned kind that the really old women from my childhood cut with the mouth of a glass and let rise just a little. Oh, and abortion hypocrites are bitches and bastards in some order.

*A particularly galling thing from the Anti Abortion camp (I like that term much more than Pro Life) is the emotional manipulation and flat-out lies that some pass on. One group near where I live that also has offices in Atlanta and other major cities “counsels” women considering the procedure, claiming to not resort to any pressure. Among other things they tell the women that first trimester fetuses can feel pain (I don’t believe any respected scientist agrees with this) and that fetuses have fully formed brains before the end of the first month (a child born in the FIFTH MONTH of pregnancy [by which time even I think abortion should be illegal except in special circumstances] doesn’t have a fully formed brain if I’m not mistaken). At the same ‘counseling centers’ they give the pregnant girl a gift on the way out: a pair of booties. Absolutely true.

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PS- I should add- I’ve talked to many women who’ve told me about their abortions or their experiences discussing it with others professionally over the years (the subject just came up, and of course knowing an inordinate number of women who’ve worked in women’s counseling also helps- needless to say nothing confidential is revealed re: name or what not). One thing I find interesting is that while most women who had abortions did so because they were unmarried and or did not feel they could afford to have a kid, it’s surprising how many are outside of this bracket.

One of the demographics you don’t think about is the older woman, yet I’ve heard from several exceptionally reliable sources that they’re a bigger minority than you’d think. These are women over 35, sometimes over 45, who are usually married and have kids [sometimes grandkids] and suddenly find a surprise pregnancy. According to one I spoke with, “I never told my husband, because I know that he would have been jumping up and down with ‘Yea! Another baby!’, because he’s not the one who’d be waking up to give it a boob or bottle while battling hot flashes, and he’s not the one who’d be staying up nights to make cupcakes or a school play outfit when the kid’s 10 and you’re 54, and I just can’t imagine going through teenagers again in my 60s.”

According to a good friend of mine who was a counselor for Dr. Gunn, the women over 40 and already had kids were usually the ones who needed the least counseling and who were least likely to be turned away for emotional reasons. They were the most resolute that “yes, I know the risks, I’ve gone over the ethical and emotional ramifications, I am positive I want this, let’s do it.”

She also said that a surprising number of married women never tell their husbands.

The ones who disgusted her the most were the “frequent flier” club members who came in for their first abortion at 17 and their fourth at 20 and to whom abortion really was just an annoying kind of birth control you had to do once in a while. OTOH, she said these were indeed the best argument for abortion legality- can you imagine them having kids?

The youngest person that ever had an abortion at Dr. Gunn’s clinic was 11 years old and retarded. The oldest was [were- it was more than one woman] over 50. Dr. Gunn would not perform abortions on obese women (there are higher risks of serious complications from perforation when there’s a lot of weight pressing down, he said). He also would not perform an abortion on any woman who was crying or seemed at all distressed. One of the tragedies of his death was that he was the best at what he did- only one serious complication in all of his years of practice- but of course he was evil according to the people like the woman tonight and no doubt could be seen to have died by the sword.

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Oh, goodie, another abortion thread, YEAHHHHH. :smiley:

So tell me Sampiro, just what sort of biscuits were they? Butter-shortbread, or just a normal biscuit with flavouring? Any choc-chips or ginger perhaps?

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It would be hypocrisy to start out anti-abortion, get pregnant, change your mind and get an abortion, and then switch back to being anti-abortion, but I’m not seeign the hypocrisy in her becoming anti-abortion after having a negative experience with it herself.

FTR I am pro choice, but would rather people opt to have the baby and give it up for adoption etc

Just because I used to smoke, does this mean I cannot advise my daughter not to smoke? Can I not try to teach her from my mistakes?

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FTR, I’ve never had an abortion–nor do I have any kids–but I can’t rush to judgment on this one quite as eagerly as you are, Sampiro. You have no idea what the woman in your OP–the crying dramatic one–has been through; she may really feel that that her abortion was the biggest mistake she has ever made, and she may actually go thru life regretting it every damn day.

She’s free to share that experience with other people. It doesn’t make her a hypocrite automatically to say “I fucked up and I don’t want you to fuck up the way I did.” If anything she has more to say than a woman who has never had an abortion, because she made, in her mind, the “ultimate mistake.”

I am pro-choice, and I think a lot of pro-life people are hypocritical in that they do nothing at all to support the women who do go through with unwanted pregnancies. They just feel very smugly that they have the right to impose their beliefs on people whose lives they have zero knowledge of. That’s bullshit.

But for a woman to stand up and say that she had an abortion and regretted it? Who are you to tell her how she should feel about that, and what she should say?

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I’m with the OP, for two reasons:

  1. A woman calmly saying: “Yes I had an abortion and I don’t regret it” is going to face a far colder reception then the tearful/regret lady in the OP, and
  2. The fundie abortion crowd surrounding and publicising the tearful regret lady in the OP isn’t supporting her, they are USING her for her own political agenda.
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Well, bless her heart.

Robin

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THey might be using her, but isn’t she also using them for her own political agenda? Both sides are gaining what they see as an advantage out of the situation.

If the woman telling the story is begging other women not to have an abortion, I’m okay with that (and I’m one of the fanatics who believes a first-trimester fetus has no persona to which we may ascribe rights and is therefore just a clump of cells). But if she’s telling her story in order to make abortion illegal–if she’s trying to deny other women the same difficult choice that she had herself–then she’s patronizing and she lacks empathy and respect for her past self that made the choice she made, and for other women who might make the same choice.

That said, I have to remember that someone making this case believes that a fetus has a set of distinct rights, rights that are violated by abortion. To them, their testimonial would be similar to the testimonial of a man who, living in a country in which no law prevented spousal rape, raped his wife, regretted his terrible act, and worked to pass laws against spousal rape. However much I may disagree with the key part of the analogy (spouses, unlike fetuses, have rights), I can’t consider the person making the case to be insincere.

Daniel

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I may get howled down for this, but, given that I have NEVER met a woman who has regretted having a termination (and just about every woman I have ever known personally has had at least one for varying reasons) I would suggest that those who do rant and rail and rue their decision have an ulterior motive for doing so…just as Sampiro has described.

It’s not about telling women what they can and can’t feel or say. It’s that the overwhelming majority of women who do procure an abortion do so regretting that they found themselves in a position where they felt no choice BUT to have one, but that having done so have not regretted that decision at all. Thus when you encounter folks like Sampiro did in the OP, it’s hard to take them and their wailings seriously.

FTR I have had two terminations and four kids. My first abortion was at 17 (no children before) and my second was at 32 (after my fourth kid). Both hard decisions to make, both nil regrets.

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“The only moral abortion is MY abortion” types. I don’t have a cite at the moment (I’ll look one up when I get home from work), but don’t quite a bit of women picket one day, go in to have an abortion the next, then are right back out on the picket line?

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IMHO, you have NO right to picket an abortion clinic unless you are not just willing to adopt these kids, but have adopted at least one of these kids. And foster another. I HATE anti-abortionists. Moralistic motherfuckers that bleat and moan and judge but most of them do nothing for the hundreds of thousands of unwanted kids out there now. Go to any neo-natal hospital in a large city and see how many addicted babies they have.

No, I have never had an abortion, and I personally never could. BUT, I do support any woman who chooses to have one. The stupid ones that use abortion for birth control? Well thank goodness they do, useless cunts are doing their potential offspring a favor.

Bye the way, my oldest brother is adopted, he is a native american, and he suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome. I am/was a foster parent.

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Those, sir, are fighting words.

You may be forgiven for your ignorance of the sacred nature of the southern biscuit, however, as you are evidently from foreign parts. And we are large in our acceptance of persons who have lacked, I say, opportunity and exposure to the gentle customs of the region whence to OP breaks his fast.

The Southern Biscuit is a form of bread which arose from and still requires the softness of Our Southern Wheat. It is made with low gluten flour, cold lard or Crisco shortening if you have not recently killed a pig, baking powder, buttermilk, and salt. Angel biscuits require yeast in addition, beaten biscuits require no baking powder nor any leavening but do require an army of assistants to beat the hell out of them for a half hour.

There is *nothing *in a southern biscuit but the above listed. They are eten with butter and honey or jam or with gravy. For a wedding, you may add cheese to the dough and make cheese straws – without these the happy pair my or may not be legally married.

The Abortion Question interests me not. But I cannot allow such a slur on The Biscuit to pass unremarked.

And good day, sir.

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Those, sir, are fighting words.

You may be forgiven for your ignorance of the sacred nature of the southern biscuit, however, as you are evidently from foreign parts. And we are large in our acceptance of persons who have lacked, I say, opportunity and exposure to the gentle customs of the region whence to OP breaks his fast.

The Southern Biscuit is a form of bread which arose from and still requires the softness of Our Southern Wheat. It is made with low gluten flour, cold lard or Crisco shortening if you have not recently killed a pig, baking powder, buttermilk, and salt. Angel biscuits require yeast in addition, beaten biscuits require no baking powder nor any leavening but do require an army of assistants to beat the hell out of them for a half hour.

There is *nothing *in a southern biscuit but the above listed. They are eaten with butter and honey or jam or with gravy. For a wedding, you may add cheese to the dough and make cheese straws – without these the happy pair my or may not be legally married.

The Abortion Question interests me not. But I cannot allow such a slur on The Biscuit to pass unremarked. Flavoring, choc-chips indeed. Ginger! Humph.

And good day, sir.

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Oh, dear, a hiccup.

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I always get a stutter when Defending the Faith. Sorry about the multi posting.

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Ma’am, they were not intended to be fighting words. I am sorry to the extreme that they were taken that way, and please pardon my lack of knowledge of your cultural and epicurean indulgences.

Biscuits in Australia are quite a different animal it seems to your ‘biscuits’. Ours are a generic coverall for all things cookies, hence my enquiry as to flavour and composition. Again, please excuse my iggerance and don’t take this as a slur in any way, shape, or flavour (you ought to try the ginger bikkies though, they are tres grouse!!)

BTW, I’m not a Sir, Ma’am. :smiley: :smiley:

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Of course, the other side of the coin is that it could be unreal altogether. A “repentant sinner” is a far more entertaining and moving speaker than someone who has never fallen. Televangelists do it all the time, as do others who are trying to convince you of Their Truth and are therefore free to use any means (including speakers who lie.)

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I’ve run into a couple of situations this week of religious persons becoming pregnant and saying they won’t get an abortion because it’s against their religion. Fornication and adultery are against their religion too but that didn’t stop them from fucking.

I guess abortion is the worse sin even though murder (what they call abortion) and sex outside of marriage are both on the big list of no-no’s. To me, it IS a worse “sin” (it’s a much bigger deal anyway) but I didn’t think religious people were supposed to decide what sins their god would be willing to let them slide a little on and what were the ones they were really supposed to not do.

I hope the biscuits were delicious.

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Any fervent activist group just looooves repentant converts from the other side, no matter how nauseating they might be.

I have to wonder, though if the initial love bombing wears out over time. You think the anti-abortion rights crowd might be getting a bit sick of Norma McCorvey (of Jane Roe fame)?

One correction:

It’s quite rare to hear any supporters of abortion rights speak as harshly about an embryo/fetus as that. It is standard language for the opposition to decree anything from a fertilized egg onwards as a “baby”.

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Sorry to continue the digression, but I believe, kambuckta, that Southern US biscuits bear a close resemblance to what we Australians (and the Brits) call scones (or perhaps individual portion-size dampers, for the savoury ones).