I don’t think hosting a fundraiser to pay for your kidney transplant is ok.
I think that SOMEONE ELSE hosting a fundraiser to pay for your kidney transplant is OK. But when you do it, you probably shouldn’t make it kidney themed - unless your friends have a certain sense of humor and you don’t mind strangers thinking you are tacky.
Also there is a continuum of tacky with fundraisers. Shaking down your friends so you can go on vacation - incredibly tacky. Shaking down your friends so you can have a life saving medical procedure or because a kid is dying of cancer and his parents are going bankrupt - less quick to judge.
The fact that the community at large has an interest in babies has nothing to do whether you, personally, like or dislike them. Moreover, one cannot “keep babies to oneself”. That’s what our society happens to be made of.
The fact that some things are coinsidered private, and others public, has nothing to do with shame and suffering. We keep all sorts of stuff private. I’m not ashamed of the fact that I shit and have sex - I’m indifferent to the former and rather proud of the latter - but I don’t go around celebrating either in public and I’d find it rather tacky if others did.
As for why this is different from a cancer fundraiser or the like - again, your immediate society (friends and family) have a big interest in one being alive. it is highly in their interests that one not die of cancer. It is not so much in their interests that one have an abortion - that’s an individual, private choice, having to do with individual happiness; the analogy would be with holding a fundraiser to get a fancy boob job, which would be imo equally tacky and inappropriate.
I don’t see the big deal. I concur that it’s just an operation. The only reason to think there’s anything wrong with it is if you think there’s something wrong with abortion, and if you think abortion is “murder,” then you’re going to think that with or without a party.
She needs money for an operation. Having a party is a marginally better way to hit up friends for money than just asking for checks, and as far as I can tell, nobody is being forced to go. It’s unusual. It’s more personal and publicly TMI than a lot of people would want to be, but I don’t see how it hurts anybody.
An abortion is NOT equivalent to a boob job. That’s been said twice in here, and it is, IMO an incredibly assholish analogy.
And actually, as part of the “community at large”, I’m here to tell you I don’t really care about anyone’s babies, abortions, or cancer treatments. As for my “immediate society”, yes, I have an interest in my friends being alive. I *also *have an interest in their happiness. If they asked me for help with anything ELSE that would increase their happiness, I would help to the best of my ability. So why not this?
Oh wait, because it’s BAD and they should be ASHAMED and SUFFER.
I’d compare it more to having anal warts removed. It’s not frivolous or cosmetic. It’s necessary. It’s just more personal and advertises more intimate details than most people would be comfortable with.
As for the interests of friends and family, the family could well incur a financial burden for an unwanted baby, and they all have an interest in helping someone they care about avoid having her life ruined.
The party’s tacky, I admit, but I’m more troubled by what I’m reading in this thread than by the original story. (This is the piece on AlterNet about the party - http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/141140/my_first_abortion_party/?page=1 - I didn’t read the Jezebel article which was apparently a commentary on that story.)
This attitude bothers me a great deal, particularly from people professing to be liberal and pro-choice. It boils down to “I’m okay with abortions as long as the women who have them are properly ashamed of their circumstance.” I don’t like this judgmental attitude. [I’m not critiquing only **supergoose** here, just to make that clear.] If I had this reaction, I’d be asking myself, “How do I think a woman should react after deciding to have an abortion? And why does her reaction matter to me?” The rationales I’m seeing here, like ‘you shouldn’t celebrate having a medical procedure,’ strike me as extremely flimsy.
We know this woman needed money for an abortion, but we don’t really know how she felt about the decision to have one, whether she threw a party because she’s geniunely not upset or if this was how she chose to deal with more complex emotions. I don’t think anybody has the right to demand that a woman grieve over having an abortion. That’s essentially what some posters are doing here, and frankly, it’s controlling. Probably grief or regret is the reaction most women have, to varying degrees. But I’m sure others are able to put the choice behind them with a smaller amount of regret, and I don’t think they should be reproached for it. A pregnancy is a potential life, yes. But “Maggie” was never planning to have a child at 22, and I can see where perhaps she wouldn’t see it that way - she didn’t plan on a child, didn’t expect one, and didn’t have the level of indecision or attachment to the future child that might be experienced by other women who have an abortion.
There are a number of situations in which it is legal to end the life of a human being–war, capital punishment, and self-defense come to mind. There would be nothing tasteful about celebrating any of those deaths, either.
A cop in a confrontation with an armed criminal has a choice, and may legitimately choose to shoot and kill that criminal to save his own life and that of others. But celebration of that choice in the form of a party would not be in good taste.
Similarly, while we might celebrate war victories, it is in poor taste to celebrate the deaths of enemy troops. Likewise, I would find it in poor taste to throw a celebratory party on the occasion of a criminal’s execution.
She didn’t say that. She said it was assholish to compare getting an abortion to getting a boob job. The two procedres really are not analogous. Terminating a pregnancy is not just some kind of frivolous, unnecessary, cosmetic surgery.
Yeah, I think you’ve pretty much touched on why I hate this idea so much. If I needed an abortion, I’d never broadcast it. I’m not ashamed, but it’s not something that I’d want the world to know. Same with chemo or plastic surgery. Family and close friends, sure, but all and sundry?
And the charging money for a party–yes. Just absolutely tacky.
Yes, though this analogy equates a potential baby with an object of disgust like an anal wart, something most people would not be confortable with.
Fair enough, but it isn’t an interest to the same degree as preventing you from dying of cancer, and they might well have mixed feelings about the desireability of you not having a kid (though obviously none of their choice). They might have mixed feelings about you having a kid of course, but that’s a decision that you of necessity make public and they are expected, at least in public, to support it.
It’s not. It’s assholish to compare an abortion to a boob job. It’s not a cosmetic procedure.
And I’m not sure exactly why it’s TMI to implicitly acknowledge, without gory details, that one has had sexual intercourse. Most people do. It’s about as TMI as saying “I’m off to the ladies’ room.”
Depends on how you define “it”. If you’re talking about abortion in general, that’s far too complex to judge. But if you’re talking about a “comfort abortion”…you know, where the whole reason is not wanting to be a parent…then yeah, it is BAD and they should be ASHAMED. I don’t know about ‘suffer’, though. That might be stretching it.
If it’s a necessary medical procedure, then I see no problem with raising money for it. A dangerous fetus, a cancer treatment, a kidney transplant- all fine. If it’s unnecessary- a convenient abortion, a vacation, a boob job- then it ranges from tacky to inappropriate.
This story is about as disgusting as a Klan rally. A bunch of ignorant bitches slapping each other on the back for their particular style of hate and supporting each other’s despicable choices.
I do not think it is. I think that fundraising for an abortion is equivalent to fundraising for a boob job. That doesn’t mean that the procedures are the same.
It is not cosmetic it is true but similar in that it is done to “increase happiness”.
The party, as described, tricked up a display to resemble a womb. If you announced you were off to the ladies room and then illustrated by pulling a plastic replica poo out of your purse, would that be TMI?
For some of us, “not wanting to be a parent” is a more than adquate reason to have an abortion. Your disapproval has been noted, and will be given the consideration it merits.
I think it’s another example of bringing stuff that at one point was super private into the public sphere. I wouldn’t do it, not out of shame or whatnot, but I’m not the super confessional, lay all my problems out for the world type. I think it’s one thing to tell people you’ve had an abortion (something I’d only be comfortable with a very few people and in a certain setting) and another thing to make a whole party dedicated to said abortion. It’s just way too…out there. I kind of miss when there were things people just kept to themselves.
It definitely is, and I’ve said sometimes that we’re in an age of compulsive sharing - not only do people not keep things private, sometimes you get the impression they don’t know how. I don’t think that’s a good impulse. But the flip side of that is, of course, that in the past I think people didn’t just choose to keep things private, they felt that had to. Which is an unpleasant feeling. There was a time you couldn’t talk about cancer either.
