I’d like to think that if the complainant was going into a clinic, the cop would take it seriously, given known cases of more extreme violence in that context.
A little light reading for you. So, yeah, physically touching people to stop them from entering a clinic is not only assault, it’s a violation of federal law.
And, for the record, protesters at Planned Parenthood clinics are some of the most judgmental people I’ve ever encountered. When I was pregnant with the sprog, I had to walk past the PP clinic in Houston. It only took one encounter before I started going a block out of the way to avoid contact with them. Their right to have an opinion ends with my right to make my own decisions about reproduction.
No threat to you. They’re definitely a threat to scared, confused, and uneducated teen girls or women who don’t know what to do. They’re a threat to the mental health of women who are sorrowfully undergoing an abortion due to non-viable pregnancies like cases of anencephaly (wiki link but warning, disturbing pictures further down the page) or whose fetus has died inside of them, while protesters scream and cry at them to not “kill” their baby.
IIRC, a full-term pregnancy will lower your risk of breast cancer (something to do with the way the cells in the breast change as a woman’s preparing to lactate). However, an aborted pregnancy does not confer the same benefits. So, if you really, really twist that around, you could end up with “abortions give you cancer,” because a woman who’s aborted a pregnancy would have a slightly higher chance of getting breast cancer than if she’d carried the pregnancy to term.
IME, a lot of “pro-choice” people are about as pro-choice as “pro-life” people are pro-life. I.e., they don’t care about working to ensure that a woman genuinely has a choice to make (access to health care, maternity leave, ability to not have her career and/or education unduly fucked with, viability of our adoption system), just keeping abortion legal. Similarly, the other side often doesn’t support similar initiatives, nor do they care about things like the death penalty–they just want to make abortion illegal.
Yeah, I was wondering if there was any kind of complaint that could be filed to remove those assholes’ ability to picket that area. Because god damn, it’s not like they don’t fucking spell that shit out for you.
Pity you wound up changing your route. An 8-month-pregnant woman walking by, or better into, a Planned Parenthood clinic might cause one or more protesters to have a stroke.
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I fail to see the contradiction. The person best able (or at least most likely to be best able) to evaluate personal access to health care, maternity leave, career/education impact and adoption options is the pregnant woman herself. She could be dirt-poor and decide she can keep her baby, or stinking rich and decide she can’t. Abortion being legal ensures the choice, by whatever criteria she chooses, will be hers.
The way I see it, you can hate abortion with every fiber of your being and wish that women who have them go to a hell that would make Fred Phelps say “Whoa dude, lighten up”, but as long as you’re not trying to actually prevent women from having them, you’re pro-choice.
Working to keep abortion legal makes you pro-abortion. Working to make sure that a woman who wants to have an abortion can get one, a woman who wants to carry the pregnancy to term but give the baby up for adoption can do so, a woman who doesn’t want to get pregnant has access to birth control and understands how to use it, and a woman who wants to carry the pregnancy to term and keep the baby can also do so makes you pro-choice.
Working to make abortion illegal makes you anti-abortion. Working to make sure that woman actually have a valid option to carry the pregnancy to term and give the baby up for adoption and keep it, as well as defending the lives of others by working for access to health care and against corporal punishment, makes you pro-life.
See the distinction? IMO, a choice is only a choice when all the options are truly extant, and someone can’t claim to be working for a cause (e.g., life) when they only recognize one tiny application of it.
Agreed. Or, at least pro-abortion. So to speak.
I know. I just didn’t feel like dealing with those assholes at the time.
Such as the murders that pro-life people have committed (and isn’t that a lovely irony. I’d prefer it if they’d call themselves what they really are - they’re not pro-life, they’re anti-abortion.) Yeah, I’d hope that any cop a woman reported this assault to would understand the context.
Exactly! Just like anyone who thinks that racist speech should be protected by the First Amendment is pro-racism.
Sometimes I wonder which I love more, abortions or racism? It’s so hard to choose!
But there are few challenges to the legality of giving up a child for adoption or having a baby and keeping it. Working to keep abortion legal means you’re protecting one part of that choice. It doesn’t mean that you’re neglecting the other aspects you mentioned. I think you’ll find must advocates for abortion rights also advocate sexual education and widely available birth control, as well as other reproductive health issues. Certainly Planned Parenthood does this.
For fuck’s sake, read what I wrote instead of getting your panties in a wad. Would you prefer it if we phrased it as pro-abortion-legality and anti-abortion-legality? Because I’d be fine with that; it’s just clunky.
My point is simply that “pro-choice” isn’t an accurate description of all people who are in favor of keeping abortion legal, just as “pro-life” isn’t an accurate description of all people who want it to be illegal again.
And another one who’s getting all up in a huff and responding without thinking it through. I’m not saying that pro-choice is never a valid desciption, just that it isn’t always. Planned Parenthood is a great example of an organization that I’d say is pro-choice, because they genuinely work to make sure that a woman has the resources she needs to actually be making a decision, versus being forced one way or the other due to circumstances beyond her control.
So, you can have someone who works to keep abortion legal who is truly pro-choice, but you can also have someone who’s just pro-abortion-legality.
You don’t have to choose - embrace eugenics!!
Mmmm, eugenics. So warm and cozy on a snowy April night.
Why choose? support abortion rights as part of maternal health aid for third-worlders, and you can have both at once! 
I’d amend that paragraph a bit.
The first part would be more defensible if it read “Working to make sure that women have the option of carrying the pregnancy to term, or to terminate it if necessary to avoid physical harm and suffering, with information on all options including adoption readily available”
“Working for access to health care” is fine, but making it necessary to be against corporal punishment? I mean, really. I’m not for spanking kiddies, but I just don’t see that as a pro-life issue. I think you may have meant capital punishment (not that that issue fits neatly into a pro- or anti-life package either).
That’s quite a distinction from the “pro-abortion” term you used earlier.
Ah yes, the old “what about rape victims” trope. I was wondering how long it’d be until that line came out. You and your ilk just love to pretend that every pregnant woman is a rape victim that got pregnant due to no fault of her own and that the sex and pregnancy is just absolutely traumatizing.
Except that actual, pregnant-from-rape women in the US number in the hundreds. The OP wasn’t a pregnant rape victim and probably neither was the “young woman”. So you might as well say “Well what if the protesters were DRAGONS! Huh?! They’d be dangerous then!”
What are you on about? Are you talking about Mookie? I feel a hijack coming, so I’m just going to let that one go. Feel free to Pit me for it.
Again with the “Let’s imagine a scenario where I’m right and then pretend that’s what happened” tactic. You’re defining “threat” as “convince not to have an abortion” and then you’re diagnosing this stranger’s fetus as having anencephaly so that they look evil. But more likely than not, these were people trying to convince a healthy “young woman” to not have an abortion of a healthy baby.
It’s like you expect these people to just give up the fight and go home because, hey, she might have been raped or the baby might already be dead.
Is there anyone who is “pro-abortion” as you describe, Shot From Guns? I suppose there might be organizations who don’t explicitly do all the other things you mention that a pro choice organization should do but that may be because they don’t have the time/funds. Also, individuals may devote their careers/lives towards fighting for legal abortion/reproductive rights and just not have the time/ability to do the other stuff while still supporting it. Plus, saying that those people are pro abortion does make them sound as though they support women getting abortions rather than carrying out a pregnancy. They’re still pro-choice if they think that a woman should have the ability to make whatever choice she feels is best for her.