I had an abortion and all I got was this lousy t-shirt

The BBQ Pit
141

(I’ve trimmed some of the text to the parts I’m addressing).

This is what I wanted to add. It seems nowadays, in our haste to stop people from feeling ashamed about things they shouldn’t feel ashamed about, we’ve somehow become convinced that wanting privacy is due to shame. That we’ve got something to hide. “Why won’t you let me search your house-if you’re innocent, you have nothing to be ashamed of!” Or, “Why won’t you tell me-are you ashamed? You shouldn’t be.”

I’ve seen people here, on this board, ridiculed because they didn’t like hearing about the intimate details of someone’s sex life, or because they were annoyed at someone flashing everyone (in the case of a man who deliberately wore a very revealing bathing suit showing his scrotum.) We’re accused of being “uptight” and “prudish”.

It has nothing to do with shame, but everything to do with privacy. Something that I may or may not want to keep to myself.

To me, things that are personal and important are private-because they are not something to be taken lightly. I don’t think much of people who go around constantly bragging about every little detail of their sex lives. See, I think that cheapens it. It makes it just another activity-and not something that should be between two people.

Now, context is everything. In threads about sex advice, or say, a thread helping people cope with certain things-then it’s appropriate. But it’s the bragging, the whole, “Look at me, look at me!” crap that goes on.

Before someone points this out to me, I will admit-I am VERY upfront about some things that people think SHOULD be kept private-say, my anxiety disorder. I WILL bring it up when it becomes relevant. But I don’t think I’d walk down the street with a shirt that says, “I have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder!” What would that prove? Nothing. I’ll bring up my meds in a discussion where I think it’s relative (Like, would this over the counter drug conflict with certain meds I"m on, blah blah blah blah, )

I might wear a shirt that says, instead, “Anxiety happens” or something stupid like that. (One that makes a point, rather than just asserting a random fact). Or like the shirt Siege mentioned her friend’s daughter wearing. It actually makes someone THINK. Instead, I like, “I’m Pro-Choice and I vote”, rather than “I had an abortion.” What does that prove? Nothing. But saying, “Hey, I AM pro-choice, and I AM involved with what’s going on, and I AM trying to make an impact.”

Confession can be a good thing-to try and help people, who need it. But to just randomly do so? I can’t see it.

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Whilst at the gym I had a thought. How long until these shirts become available at Hot Topic and a bunch of preteen girls buy them because they think it will piss someone off?

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Oh, I knew there’d be someone to say that. You’d rather those kids I used in my examples die when they’re 4 or 5, then? You’d rather they grow up beaten, abused, many of them to turn around and beat and abuse their kids?

Your take and my take on abuse and neglect of small children are completely different. Lots of women know they’re not mentally (or financially) capable or raising children, yet they do it anyway.

And I never said that all children raised in this type of environment are going to have a crappy life once they grow up. Many and are able to put it behind them. Many aren’t. And way too many (yes, the four I cited are too many) die before they have a chance to grow up.

Abortion or adoption. Choice.

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Wow. What an excellent explanation.

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In a word, never.

Hot Topic wouldn’t want to take the flak from its investors. They already refuse to sell shirts with “devil” or “satan” on them because they don’t wish to explicitly promote Satanism and invoke the ire of Christian groups.

Despite Hot Topics spoooooky “dark” image, they are still a corporation and still very much concerned about the bottom line. They tread lightly with the merchandise they choose to sell so as not to give anyone a good reason to picket them. You won’t be seeing the abortion shirts sold there any time soon.

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Two final, personal stories to clarify my point:

When I was 14, my 15 year old best friend got pregnant and decided to keep and raise the child. Although she wasn’t financially capable or raising it herself, she was mentally capable, and had a great support group of family to help her.

When her son was 3 years old, my friend married a wonderful military man. That kid has traveled the world, never wanted for anything, and is today a happy, healthy 18 year old.

Do I think she should have chosen abortion? Absolutely not.
When I was 18 (and hanging out with the wrong crowd) I had a friend who had an 8 year old boy. This kid had been molested by his step-grandfather when he was five. The solution? Move step-grandad into a travel trailer next to the house. Kid could only visit step-grandad in his travel trailer for a few hours at a time to play video games, and he had to ask first. :rolleyes:

I set up a cuss box to buy the kid his own Nintendo - the many visitors to the house had to put quarters and dimes in it when they said curse words. That’s all he wanted for Christmas (gee, I wonder why?) and his mother had told him that her welfare check wasn’t going to be able to stretch far enough to buy him something that expensive.

I was over there frequently and figured there was about $30 in the box when his mother broke into it to buy some pot. :rolleyes:

He’s now 20 years old and serving time in prison for rape. Do I think his mother should have chosen abortion? Do the women he raped wish his mother had chosen abortion? What do you think?

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Before anyone questions my math, the second kid is 22, not 20.

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I think that his mother could have just have easily chosen adoption.

One of my friends was adopted. He’s a strange one, but he’s turned out very well, I think. Another friend was raised in an orphanage and grew up to proudly serve our country proudly in WWII and was a good and faithful friend until he passed away a few years ago. Sure, both these guys could have been aborted, but since I rather like both of them, I am glad that they were adopted instead.

I’m just sayin’.

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I have a couple of t-shirts I only wear in specific contexts. One is a Christian Style Hawaii t-shirt which I only wear to church functions because I know how I feel about people who wave their Christianity in my face, and I prefer not to do the same to others. The other is a Hell’s Mensan t-shirt which I wear only to Mensa events and the odd SCA event (and how I wound up wearing it to Evensong is a long story! :o). I like both shirts and I enjoy wearing them in the right contexts. As I said earlier, I could see buying such a shirt and only wearing it in certain contexts, probably pro-choice rallies. I would also probably either change on site or wear something over it while I was travelling for the same reason I don’t travel to SCA events in full medieval garb.

As for how offensive it is, it wasn’t that long ago that the t-shirt I mentioned earlier, the one which read, “Let’s get one thing straight: I’m not.” would have been regarded as just as crude and offensive as one which read “I like sucking my boyfriend’s cock” or “I like eating my girlfriend’s pussy.” It hasn’t been that long since a friend of mine was accused of flaunting his homosexuality because he kept a photo of his male partner on his desk, much like a heterosexual might keep a copy of his wife on his desk.

As someone who is firmly, passionately pro-choice, I do feel like we’re demonized by the anti-abortionists. Just look at some of the things Abbie Carmichael has posted or some of the sentiments on the website Lynn Bodoni linked to. For that matter, as someone who has clinical depression and tries to help others who suffer from it, the sentiments Muad Dib expressed were, in my arrogant opinion, extremely cruel. I would love to see a day when there are no more abortions. I’d love to see a day when adoption is the norm, rather than abortion. I’m also aware that reality intervenes.

If I get pregnant, I’m in trouble. You see, my job offers only unpaid maternity leave. From what little I’ve know, I’d need at least a month off to give birth and recover from it, and that’s assuming everything goes well which, at my age, isn’t a given. I do not have enough money to go without pay for a month. Maybe that’s irresponsible of me, but when I took this job, it was the best I could find before my unemployment ran out. I wish it was a better and higher paying one myself, but if I held out for such a job, given the state of the tech field at the time, I might well have wound up like some folks who’ve waited 2 and 3 years to find a new job. I wouldn’t do that to my creditors or my landlord. There’s also a rather high likelihood that any child I bore would be handicapped. Handicapped kids, I’m afraid, aren’t at the top of the list of kids people want to adopt. Throw in a couple of other factors, and I consider having an abortion a more responsible act than carrying a child to term. Of course, I consider the most responsible act to be taking steps to make sure I don’t wind up pregnant in the first place, but even abstinence isn’t foolproof if a woman is unfortunate enough to be raped. If that makes me an evil, baby-murdering demon as some of the pro-life movement would make me out to be, so be it. I’ve been called worse.

I’m a human being. I’m both a devout Christian and a Hell’s Mensan. I’ve literally gone from singing beautiful, 8 part counterpoint in Latin to give glory to God to running around with a fencing sword trying to kill people. The luck of the genetic draw gave me a brain, but it also gave me a body which is capable of giving and receiving intense sexual pleasure and I enjoy doing so in the right context. I’m not good with kids, whether it’s due to some old scars, a basic lack of maternal instinct, or both. On the other hand, I seem to have done all right with the odd teenager or two (OK, the very odd!), and you should see me dealing with the animals at the shelter I volunteer at. If I found out I were pregnant tomorrow, I would have an abortion, even though I consider it wrong. I might regret not taking adequate precautions to avoid becoming pregnant, but, I doubt I’d regret the act which led to me becoming pregnant and you’d better believe I’d have discussed such matters with the gentleman responsible for part of the situation before having sex with him. On the other hand, I’ve danced with a fellow who’s offered to do more than dance with me, demonstrated his interest, and I’ve been acutely aware that I’d have a very good time. He was tempting, and I can’t blame others for yielding to such a temptation. I refuse to accept the characterization that any woman who’s had or considered having an abortion is an immoral, skanky, slut, and I’d wear that t-shirt to try to get someone to see past that characterization, just as I’ve asked people on this board who’ve said abortion should be illegal when the life of a woman is at stake if I should die, too, then.

As I’ve said before, I’d love to see a day when no woman ever has an abortion, just as I’d love to see a day when no couple ever needs to have a divorce. Until that halcyon day, I will continue to fight to keep it safe and legal. If wearing a t-shirt will help, I’ll do it. In the meantime, I believe an old friend who started bunking with me after his wife left him is waking up.

Respectfully,
CJ

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By the way, I’m still waiting for an explanation of why this t-shirt is considered so much more offensive than the hundreds of pretty sexually explicit t-shirts you see out there. I’m thinking of the ones with crude jokes and illustrations about penis size, breast size, and generally having sex with everything in sight. The reason I assume this is none of those shirts have been Pitted. If you want a specific example, how about one a male friend of mine wore recently with the words “Bad Bush” under a picture of the president and “Good Bush” with an arrow pointing to the crotch of a woman wearing only the tiniest of panties (she was shown only from mid-thigh to belly button). For that matter, I’d rate the old chestnut “I’m with stupid ->” more offensive simply because it’s directly insulting. Can it be that abortion is more offensive than sex? If so, what does that say of our priorities?

CJ

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We’d be here all day if we all Pitted every single solitary offensive t-shirt and bumper sticker that we saw. We’d also be here all day if we pitted the other (in my opinion) embarrassing displays of “TMI” (like Jerry Springer, for starters). But since this thread was started, people have responded and given their opinions.

I certainly wouldn’t refrain from expressing my distaste for all those other tacky t-shirts, if the subject was brought up in the Pit. Perhaps I wouldn’t start a thread complaining about them, but then again, I didn’t start this one either.

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Thanks :slight_smile: I get most of my English vocabulary from the stuff I read, and there aren’t that many strollers in SF or fantasy novels (uterine replicators, OTOH - now that’s a technology which would have a big impact on the abortion debate).

I have no problems understanding why some people find the “I had an abortion” T-shirt offensive, but I still can’t see the tacky or TMI aspects of it. I guess that’s one I’ll simply have to chalk down to cultural differences.

I don’t see anything wrong with wearing this shirt on other occasions than pro-choice rallies, either. I see political statements on clothes, buttons, cars etc. like a cheap, individualised form of political advertising. I may not be able (or want) to spend a lot of time on campaigning for all the issues I support, but I’ll pay my membership dues in half a dozen relevant organisations, and stick a “Vote NO!” button on my “I want to see my folder” T-shirt when I feel like it. It’s probably not very effective, but it doesn’t cost me anything, and might do some good. Every little bit helps, as the mouse said, pissing in the ocean.

(I haven’t used my “Vote NO” button since the last referendum about EU membership, but I expect to need it again sooner or later. And the victims of illegal surveillance did get to see their folders, mostly, so that T-shirt is more or less nostalgic, though it can serve as a useful reminder.)

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You do, huh? Knowing what you know of the situation, you’re able to make that judgement/determination?

An easily influenced, drug-addicted woman who’s family and friends talk her out of giving the child the life it deserves by giving it up could just have easily chosen adoption? Walk a mile in her shoes, come back and tell me that again.

What about the woman who’s boyfriend actually tried to take her to court to keep her from having an abortion, who swore up and down that he could raise the child (and would have raised it in the exact same environment as the child I discussed in example #2 above)? He would never have consented to adoption and that child would have had the same life cited above.

Would an abortion be acceptable to you in that instance? Oh, BTW, the woman I’m talking about now - that’s me. I chose the most responsible option and you’ll never convince me otherwise.

You can shove your judgements of other’s actions up your ass sideways.

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You know, I’m an adoptive mom - and as such am very appreciative of birthmothers.

But adoption isn’t something you “just choose” It has complications of its own for both the birthmother and the child, as well as the adoptive parents.

For the birthmother:

She has to go through a pregnancy. The pregnancy may be difficult and may have health consequences. It will almost certainly be very visible to the people she has in her life, and she will probably be forced to share with all but her most casual aquaintances some very personal details (I can’t raise my own child).

She will have to go through labor and delivery. For most woman a painful process, with a recovery time. Sometimes with health consequences.

Both these events may have economic consequences - she may have to leave a job for bedrest. She may not be entitled to fully paid maternity leave.

She will like have her heart ripped out when the baby goes to live with his parents.

She will have little closure. Open adoptions at least allow the possibility of a continued relationship - but even there all parties will need to work at maintaining what can be an awkward and painful relationship.

For the child:

They may spend a lifetime feeling rejected by their birthmother. They may feel confusion, a sense of not belonging in the family they ended up with. Adoptive kids in Sweden have a higher incidence of suicide.

For the adoptive parents:

They watch the pain their child may feel about the adoption, often feeling helpless. They may have to deal with issues that the child brings with them from an unhealthy ambivient pregnancy (fetal alcohol syndrome, for instance). They may risk a “disruptive” placement, where the birthmother changes her mind.

The unfortunate reality in having an unwanted pregancy is that there are no really good options. They all kind of suck in some fashion or another. Perhaps adoption is the least evil for some. Certainly parenting the child is least evil for many - it often works out just fine in the end. But I guess I’d take some convincing before I’d come down on abortion is always the most evil choice.

Another strange catch-22 in the “adoption option.” Currently there are a lot of parents who want to adopt. That plays to the advantage of the child - harder to place children - those with mild special needs and not white kids and older children - often find homes. Assuming that all babies aborted would be born and put up for adoption, it would take a year - maybe two - before we’d have too many babies for the numbers of adoptive parents. Then the adoptive parents can get pickier. And then the kids that aren’t white, had birthmothers who drank and smoked, or have other issues - well, we now have a problem. Since we are currently doing an inadequate job meeting the needs of the few children we have currently in these circumstances, it seems like we need to fix that problem before adding more kids to a broken system.

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And as long as I’m ranting about the broken system - it isn’t just the foster care system that is broken. Women who choose to parent often end up in poverty. Their kids don’t have basic health care. Our public school systems in some places are in lousy shape. We aren’t thrilled about paying for our welfare system.

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Dangerosa: Well said.

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And heartily seconded!!

It’s sad but true, but there are times when there simply is no good choice, only a question of which is least bad, and even the least bad looks horrible. I wish it were otherwise, and that’s one of the things I intend to take up with the Creator if I ever get the chance, but, until that time, I’d like to see abortion kept legal. That really is all I ask.

CJ

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(besides which, to be flippant, the belly button ring just never looks the same after giving birth).

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Many people forget that it’s not just motherhood that isn’t an option for some women - sometimes even pregnancy is not an option.

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If we look at pregnancies in general, though, our society apparently only resents women “sharing” that they’ve had abortions. We allow women to share the fact that they are pregnant. That’s the same level of “private” as an abortion, isn’t it? I mean, she’s pregnant, so we know she’s sexually active. She’s pregnant, so we can assume she’s had pelvic exams. There are lots of things that go along with being pregnant that we can know happened and all of them are pretty private. And when she has the baby, she can wear an “I’m a proud mom of a beautiful baby girl!” t-shirt even when the child isn’t with her, and none of us would say, “Wow, she’s sharing TMI!”

How about miscarriage? If someone had a t-shirt that said: “I had a miscarriage” and wore that t-shirt to bring awareness to the issue, would we call that tacky and TMI? I wouldn’t. I would have no idea what she was feeling, but I wouldn’t resent her for making her private issue public. I would be thinking that the shirt probably cost her a lot of pain to wear but that she probably has her reasons. Her pregnancy would be over and I can’t imagine anyone taking her to task for saying so.

How about a stillbirth? Same thing. We’d probably think her courageous. How about a child that died shortly after birth? Wow, what a brave woman for pushing through her own pain and bringing this private issue forward, in the hopes of doing good for her cause!

“Breast cancer survivor.” I’ve seen that on t-shirts. Breasts are pretty private, but the wearer is saying “Look at me. I’m just like someone you know and I had breast cancer. Pay attention!”

So, we don’t seem to think that everything involving a uterus is just too private to mention, or tacky to bring up. What makes abortion different?