Because most people are already sorting themselves into pro choice and pro life camps for marriage and dating, at least. And probably even for hooking up, since people tend to self-segregate in a lot of the social setting where you might meet someone.
I mean, I already had a “if my autonomy doesn’t matter to you more than the life of a 2 month fetus, you aren’t my type” rule before this came up. And even if abortion is legal, it would be pretty awkward to abort the fetus of some guy who was horrified that you were murdering his baby.
Honestly, my daughter-in-law had a medically necessary abortion recently. (It was ectopic, and if she hadn’t killed it first, it would have killed her well before it was viable. Abortion was the only moral or reasonable option.) Even though I am pro-choice, and even though she really didn’t have a choice in this situation, I was sad that she was killing my grandchild. I can’t imagine how horrible it would be if I’d been the father, and prolife, and the pregnancy had been viable.
So I don’t see this as revealing a lot, or as having much impact. (except to reduce PiV sex for women who aren’t in a position to have a baby, as I mentioned above.)
It might be good political theater, though. I’m not good at judging that sort of thing.
There was a time when I could have believed that the above underlined was the prime motivation for the vast majority of the pro-life movement. Unfortunately, given that the pro-life movement in the last forty years has failed to even attempt to reform the foster-childcare system or to ensure safe, affordable birth control, I’m left with the obvious conclusion that this is, or has become, the minority mind-set. The feelings of the vast majority of the pro-lifers demonstrably originate from the notion that women should not be allowed bodily autonomy
Jeana Tomasino Keough, before she was a OG Real Housewife, was the Playboy Playmate of the Month for the November 1980 issue, appeared in a few movies, and was featured in a few ZZ Top videos. I’m sure the team members and Mr. Met were credible potential MAD threats.
Except that they don’t say that.
This board is really hot on demonizing the opposition by making them look like cartoon villain. Maybe the choir you’re preaching to enjoy these ludicrous caricatures, but if you intend to convince anybody of anything, or even simply to understand the nature of the issues, such statements are stupid, counter-productive, and make you look like a brainwashed idiot.
It’s not about women deciding who they want to fuck and who they don’t want to fuck. It’s about telling women to stop having sex with people they normally want to fuck as a protest for something they can do nothing about, and most probably are equally unhappy about (since a woman feeling strongly about abortion rights is unlikely to have a pro-life partner).
Replace sex with anything else : pick up after yourself strike, sharing activities strike, going out together strike, talking with you strike, listening to your stupid workplace issues strike, showing affection strike, etc… Would you still feel the same? Why would you feel differently about a “sex strike”?
My partner thinking that sabotaging our relationship is a good way to protest against an outside event would be either monumentally stupid or showing that she doesn’t give a shit about me and our relationship. And that apparently she thinks that sex is a tool and a commodity.
Thinking that this makes any sense rely at the very least on the idea that only men enjoy having sex with their partners, since if you assume otherwise, she’s punishing herself for what other citizens have done. Would it occur to you, say, destroy your own property in protest against some law or another? To stop eating your prefered dish in protest? If not why on earth would denying yourself and your partner sex make any sense? This idea rely on antediluvian assumptions about men, women and sex.
Except that they really, really do say that. I didn’t just make up those phrases out of thin air. They’re a more concise version of things that have been said, but not, by and large, a hyperbolic one.
Consider the prime example of this: Rush Limbaugh on Sandra Fluke. Fluke was a 30-year-old Georgetown law student who spoke before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee regarding new rules that would allow companies to exclude birth control pills from their company-provided health insurance. Fluke put forward the case that Georgetown (in her case) should not be allowed to exclude BCPs for religious reasons as 1) BCPs also served to treat a variety of diseases, and 2) the exclusion would prove a significant financial hardship to poorer students. She gave an example of a friend who did not require the pills for birth control but did require them to treat her polycystic ovary syndrome. Because the insurance company denied the claims, the friend was unable to afford the medicine she needed and eventually lost an ovary.
In response, Limbaugh spent three days calling Fluke a “slut”, a “whore” and worse on his syndicated radio show. THREE DAYS. Here are some excerpts:
Here’s some more gems from the Wikipedia article:
At the same time Bill O’Reilly was on television making the pithy claim that (I’m paraphrasing from memory here) “the only pills she needs is an aspirin…held between her knees”. And they weren’t the only ones making such comments by far.
Remember: all that Fluke did was discuss in front of Congress why birth control pills should be included in health insurance coverage like other commonly-prescribed medications. And this is how several prominent right-wingers reacted.
So when I made the statement I did above, it wasn’t because I was “demonizing the opposition by making them look like cartoon villain[s]”; it was because I was remember things they actually said. I’m sorry if you feel the truth makes me look like a “brainless idiot”.
I do not doubt that some would say exactly that, and some would think it secretely. But you didn’t write : “Rush Limbaugh response was this once”. You wrote the following :
After all, whenever women raise the topics of contraception and abortion as key elements in women’s health and family planning, **the conservative response has tended to be **
Which means that every time women discuss contraception or abortion, the majority of conservatives call them sluts. Is it what conservative papers print? What you conservative neighbor says? I see the same idea expressed here : conservatives don’t actually give a shit about unborn babies, that’s just a pretext to put women down while, presumably, they laugh maniacally, for instance. People only voted for Trump because they hate women and black people, not because, say, he promised them jobs and to “make America great again”. And so on…
My guess is there was significant overlap between the “abortion is bad” and “abstinence is good” camps even before this. Outside of marriage anyway. Married couples tend to match politically on major issues, so I’d imagine the only men being “punished” by this are not conservatives. Not sure what she’s trying to accomplish here.
Just a nit pick: It’s not uncommon for people to stop eating a food they like in protest of a policy they dislike. I stopped eating veal and cut back on pork because I don’t like the way those meat animals are raised, for instance. And I’m considering dropping Nutella from the shopping list due to how the workers who pick hazelnuts are treated. (I love Nutella) If there’s enough political momentum to boycott Nutella that the company might notice, I expect I will join the boycott.
I agree that it makes no sense to cut off the partner who agrees with you. (And I’m happy to eat pork raised on pasture.) So this particular boycott seems badly aimed, for a number of reasons. But in general, there’s nothing crazy about denying yourself something you like for political reasons.
Boycotts have worked in several cases, by the way. Despite the generally favorable press Chick-fil-A got when it was boycotted, the company has mostly moved it’s charity to less political causes. Similarly, Barilla pasta apologized for their statements that were deemed anti-gay. And the US veal market has moved from individually caging the animals to letting them mingle in small pens. I am happy to buy from both Chick-fil-a and Barilla. Both remain conservative companies, but neither crosses the threshold (for me) into “doing stuff that actively troubles me.” I’m reconsidering veal, too.
The real frustrating part of the abortion debate is it doesnt allow much for middle ground. I consider myself pro choice but I also feel their should be regulations on abortion clinics (ex. training, sanitation, safety) and I dont think girls under age 18 should be able to get one without parents being informed. I also want there to be more emphasis on preventing unplanned pregnancies such as better birth control free to those who want it.
“No abortions ever, doctor to be charged with a felony” is hardly a “middle ground” position, for sure.
I’ve polled various groups of people, and most actual people are somewhere in the middle. They favor abortion rights early in pregnancy, and fetal protection as the fetus nears term, for instance.
I think all people of good faith favor more emphasis on preventing unplanned pregnancy and easy access to birth control.
How many examples would you like? Is your argument “As long as I can find one example of a conservative who didn’t demean women in the contexts of abortion or contraception, the whole characterization must be wrong?” I mean, I could bring up the Kavanaugh hearing and the relentless abuse and slut-shaming of Dr. Ford. I could mention the long, long list of horrible things Republican state legislatures have forced women to do, and not only those seeking abortion or contraception - for example, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and a host of other Republican lawmakers who passed a law forcing single mothers putting up their children for adoption to literally publish their entire sexual history in the newspaper, even in the case of rape and incest.
So how many horror stories would you like me to list? Or will you just handwave them away again?
Pretty close, actually, although “pro-life” and “conservative” don’t map to each other exactly and “laughing maniacally” is optional. However, if you look at what many pro-life voters actually do versus what they say, there is a dramatic disconnect:
If they actually cared about reducing abortion, they would get down on their knees and thank the God they pay lip-service to for Planned Parenthood, an organization that prevents vastly more unwanted pregnancies than it terminates and also provides health services to women - including pregnant women - to help them have healthy pregnancies and babies. But they don’t.
If they cared about women and children they wouldn’t support “pregnancy crisis centers”, a booming industry devoted to tricking pregnant women considering abortion into thinking they’re receiving objective advice and then lying to them and emotionally bullying them until they hit the six month mark, and then abandoning them (a strategy they openly admit to in their industry meetings). But they do.
If they cared about women and children, they wouldn’t repeatedly vote for politicians devoted to cutting not just benefits for poorer women and children but also funding for schooling and affordable healthcare, acts which result in active suffering, lifelong poverty and death. But they do.
In fact, if you look at everything they do and what they ask their chosen politicians to do, suggesting that their main priority is to make people they don’t agree with suffer while they get to feel smug and self-righteous is not an unreasonable interpretation at all.
Of course there’s no absolute uniformity of views amongst any group. There are plenty of pro-life people who are kind and reasonable and understand that the draconian approach is cruel and unproductive. But I am not nutpicking here; there is more than enough evidence to support my assertions. If you don’t like the conclusions, don’t blame me for pointing out what people are actually doing.
Well, there is an important difference between “restricting” abortion and “reducing” abortion. I think that people of good faith generally recognize that the latter is the more important goal.
They call them sluts, or offer no objection to the ones calling them sluts and vote the people who support the ones calling them sluts into office. It’s not a ‘caricature’ to accurately point out what conservatism stands for today by referencing laws passed and statements made and cheered on by conservatives.
Conservatives clearly don’t actually give a shit about these babies, as demonstrated by their policies. Conservatives actively oppose education, healthcare, food, and all other assistance for such babies once they’re out of the womb. They also clearly don’t even want to reduce the number of abortions, as they actively oppose policies that demonstratably reduce the incidence of abortion like sex education and readily available birth control. They’re more likely to shout ‘whore’ at a scared 15-year old rape victim than to laugh maniacally, but both are pretty gross.
What exactly does ‘Make America great Again’ mean? It seems to look to, say, the 1950s as a golden era we should aspire to. But it actively opposes the tax policy of the 1950s (high taxes on the ultra-wealthy), the infrastructure spending of the 1950s, the education spending of the 1950s, and overall just about all of what one could call positive things from the 1950s. But it does actively work for discrimination against minorities (note the bills explicitly allowing healthcare providers to deny service to people they don’t like), disenfranchisement of minorities, denying women autonomy, and the like. Conservatives like to whine about being ‘caricatured’, but I haven’t heard a good explanation of what ‘make america great’ again is that isn’t either explicitly contradicted by major policy decisions or just boils down to ‘I want to go back to when the colored, queers, and women knew their place’.
This makes as much since as if people really cared about gun control they would support the NRA, or if vegans really cared about chickens they would support KFC.
Planned Parenthood is the largest provider of abortions in the country. It is no mystery why people who are anti-abortion don’t like the largest abortion provider in the country.
It is also not surprising that people who are anti-abortion support organizations that try to convince pregnant women not to abort their babies.
This is question begging. It is not obvious that cutting benefits for poor women results in active suffering, lifelong poverty, and death. After welfare reform in the 90s more women got jobs and less women were in poverty than before. Funding for schooling has gone up nearly constantly and it is not the case that schools are doing better with more money.
A more reasonable position is that anti-abortion people dislike abortion providers and support alternatives to abortion. If it makes you feel better to characterize people who feel differently than you as cartoon villains instead of people with a sincere belief in the value of a pre born babies life, maybe your arguments need to be stronger to deal with the actual beliefs and not the cartoon strawman.
Apparently unbeknownst to you, safe affordable birth control is now available at every drug store, Walmart, Target, and convenience store in the country.
Just last year the Republicans in congress passed a law reforming the nation’s foster care system.