Abortion Parties

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If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
How do you know that I'm a "pro choice advocate"? You assume, I guess. Not a spokesman for the state of MA either-ask the gov on that one.

I think we all know what can be done to reduce the number of abortions. Education and access to birth control. Adoption. Financial support. Things like that that we're all aware of.

And I think you know that these "abortion parties" are not the new baby showers. Do you honestly think most women who make that decision are rejoicing about abortions? Come on. I hardly think it is representative of most of the people in the "pro choice movement". Like I said before, something to hang your hat on. Just to make it crystal clear, I find the idea of an "abortion party" repugnant. But I also find it repugnant to use a Glamour Magazine article about it to paint all women (and men) who make that decision with such a brush. This is about the parties, not the abortions. But you're making a straight line link between the two, it seems.
 
If my daughter would ever attend one of these, I will know that I have utterly failed as a father.[/QUOTE]

I don't know if you have kids and how old they might me, but I'm afraid you're in for a rude awakening when you realize that they are going to become adults with their own thoughts and values, which may differ greatly from your own. Are you going to let them know that you feel like a failure because they think differently than you do? I really hope not.
 
How do you know that I'm a "pro choice advocate"? You assume, I guess.
Last I remember, you were.

Not a spokesman for the state of MA either-ask the gov on that one.

I think we all know what can be done to reduce the number of abortions. Education and access to birth control. Adoption. Financial support. Things like that that we're all aware of.
I think these are certainly more acceptable than "nothing."

A number of these things have been tried, and haven't made the difference that we would like to have seen.

And I think you know that these "abortion parties" are not the new baby showers. Do you honestly think most women who make that decision are rejoicing about abortions?
Some do it reluctantly, some just don't care.

I find the idea of an "abortion party" repugnant. But I also find it repugnant to use a Glamour Magazine article about it to paint all women (and men) who make that decision with such a brush. This is about the parties, not the abortions. But you're making a straight line link between the two, it seems.
There's reluctant aborters and apathetic aborters. I understand that. Let's not "paint me with a brush."

That's because I think we should celebrate life, not... something to the contrary.
 
I would imagine that it's agonizing (and hardly just apathetic and reluctant) for many people. Can't you grasp that possibility? How do you arrive at the conclusion that anyone "just doesn't care"? Where do you get such a window into anyone's reality?

I have my own views but I also know for damn sure that other people don't live my life, are faced with situations that I'm not faced with. That life does not always follow some neatly planned path (hardly ever does), and that decisions that are agonizing and life altering sometimes result. And that my beliefs are not the beliefs of others. I try to see people in that situation from that viewpoint.
 
I would imagine that it's agonizing (and hardly just apathetic and reluctant) for many people. Can't you grasp that possibility? How do you arrive at the conclusion that anyone "just doesn't care"? Where do you get such a window into anyone's reality?
The more agonizing it is, the more likely they are to regret it.

I have my own views but I also know for damn sure that other people don't live my life, are faced with situations that I'm not faced with. That life does not always follow some neatly planned path (hardly ever does), and that decisions that are agonizing and life altering sometimes result. And that my beliefs are not the beliefs of others. I try to see people in that situation from that viewpoint.
Same here, but that doesn't always justify Idea X or Idea Y.
 
The dismissiveness of some who describe the earlier stages of pregnancy as nothing more than a blob of cells.

Well I allow for the possibility that once a pregnancy exists and all that surrounds that..that it becomes much more difficult to do that and that dismissive words just don't enter as easily into an equation. Maybe I'm just naive. Don't think so, but of course it's possible. In some cases, hardly the majority.

Life is infinitely more complicated and messy than the words and slogans that we can attribute to people on a message board.
 
it just seems like it's too heavy a question for a woman to decide. :shrug:

let the men call the shots, their judgment isn't clouded so easily and they aren't as prone to fickle changes of mood or agonizing over things that they might one day regret.
 
it just seems like it's too heavy a question for a woman to decide. :shrug:

let the men call the shots, their judgment isn't clouded so easily and they aren't as prone to fickle changes of mood or agonizing over things that they might one day regret.

Here here. I think I speak for all females when I say we are simply unable to make informed decisions regarding our lives. It's ever so hard to think clearly with all the hormones and periods and emotions. Obviously, we need strangers (preferably a good Christian man) to tell us what to do.
 
it just seems like it's too heavy a question for a woman to decide. :shrug:

let the men call the shots, their judgment isn't clouded so easily and they aren't as prone to fickle changes of mood or agonizing over things that they might one day regret.
Uh-oh, lookout!

Gender politics!

(Just messin' with ya :D)
 
an interesting post by a guest blogger on Andrew Sullivan yesterday, thought i'd post it here to see what the reactions might be:



The Abortion Debate: What's the Role of Men?

by Conor Friedersdorf

Last week Alternet published a controversial essay wherein the narrator attended a party thrown to raise money for a friend's abortion. Numerous conservative bloggers wrote obligatory posts. The piece took heat from the left too. Tracy Clark-Flory posted a worthwhile example. "I hadn't heard of an abortion party until today. That's despite growing up in the liberal sanctuary of the San Francisco Bay Area and attending a passionately feminist women's college," she wrote. "I've seen women unabashedly announce "I had an abortion" to friends and strangers alike, out loud and on T-shirts and bumper stickers, but an abortion party is an entirely new concept to me."

In a followup comment, Mary Elizabeth Williams astutely writes that "the story reads like it was calculated to provoke the most apoplectic reactions of the right. The wimmins are celebrating baby killing, and men aren't welcome!" It's that last bit about men not being welcome that I'd like to focus on. The piece's numerous flaws notwithstanding, it affords an opportunity to discuss an issue that all the critical responses I've seen have mostly ignored.

Here is the relevant passage:
I saw Maggie’s boyfriend, sitting near the kitchen, wearing rainbow suspenders and looking uncomfortably alone. As it turns out, he had been the object of a lot of vitriol from Maggie’s friends -- women who thought that he should not have had anything to do with the abortion. Both he and Maggie had been saddened about this reaction because they had made the decision together. When we talked, his sentences spilled out in quick little jumbles, like scattered puzzle pieces. His eyes stayed focused on a point behind me. He looked as if he’d like to be somewhere else.

Maggie, too, looked less than excited. A few days beforehand, one of her friends had asked her to have the abortion in Ohio. When Maggie insisted on bringing her boyfriend along, the friend told her not to bother coming. Maggie was being shown a great deal of respect, certainly. But she told me she couldn’t help but feel as though her pregnancy had been "hijacked" by women who felt like her inclusion of a man in the decision was weak or wrong. This was a surprise to me, but I didn’t exactly know how to weigh in.

Abortion is, after all, a very tricky topic -- a minefield of opinions where the slightest misstep can elicit unexpected reactions from friends, family, co-workers and strangers. Though I would classify myself an ardent pro-choicer, I also recognize that I am a man, and therefore somewhat of a problematic player in the debate. It’s never been made clear to me what sort of involvement I’m entitled to on the issue, and I don’t feel particularly confident making judgment calls about women -- whatever their political leanings.

Let's call this the Tupac Shakur approach to the abortion question:

I wonder why we take from our women
Why we rape our women, do we hate our women?
I think it's time to kill for our women
Time to heal our women, be real to our women
And if we don't we'll have a race of babies
That will hate the ladies, that make the babies
And since a man can't make one
He has no right to tell a woman when and where to create one

So will the real men get up
I know you're fed up ladies, but keep your head up

Without taking any position on abortion itself, I want to interrogate the appropriate role of males, and suggest that progressives especially face some thorny questions. As I understand it, the most common position on the left is that how a woman deals with an unwanted pregnancy is a choice to be made by her alone. At the same time, the progressives I know subscribe to a partnership ideal in relationships, wherein major life decisions between couples are made via a process of mutually supportive dialogue, stripped of archaic gender norms whenever possible. It is easy enough to imagine how this plays out in a film that reflects the cultural sensibilities of secular liberals. The woman gets pregnant: "I'm late," she tells her boyfriend. The man, if he wants to keep the sympathy of the audience, says, "What are we going to do?" The "we" signals his mutual responsibility for the circumstance and investment in the process -- and the question mark signifies that he'll pretty much support whatever she decides.

And perhaps that is how things ought to go! But holding it up as an ideal in a flawed world has complicated consequences. A culture that tells men they shouldn't have any part in decisions about abortion, as portrayed at the "abortion party," inevitably discourages them from responding to a pregnant girlfriend by asking, "What should we do?" And the notion that at most men should signal mutual investment in the process, and graciously support whatever the woman decides, may sound wonderful to a lot of people, but is it really realistic? A societal norm that elevates the woman's choice above all else can certainly safeguard widespread access to abortions. But I suspect that the same norm inevitably leads some men to ask -- wrongly in my view, but understandably -- if you think that abortion is ethically unproblematic, and whether to have one or not is your choice, why should I have to pay child support for 18 years if you decide against having one?"

I've neither revealed my own views on abortion here, nor made an overall judgment about the social norms we ought to be inculcating. The narrow assertion I want to make is that the social norms we are inculcating are working to safeguard reproductive choices for women, and to undermine men's investment in pregnancies and child-rearing. Given that progressives and feminists are especially invested in pushing back against the notion and reality that rearing children is the province of women, I'd be curious to hear whether they agree with my diagnosis, and how they think these questions ought to be navigated. Is there an inherent tension between the social norms that advance your agenda on reproductive rights, and the ones that better bring about the world you'd like to see more generally?
 
I also subscribe to the partnership ideal although the final decision rests with her, based in no small part I imagine, on his (un)willingness to particiapte fully as a father or just financially.

Wimmins! Love that word.
 
18 years, 18 years
She got one of yo' kids, got you for 18 years
I know somebody payin' child support for one of his kids
His baby momma's car crib is bigger than his
You will see him on TV, any given Sunday
Win the Superbowl and drive off in a Hyundai
She was supposed to buy ya shorty Tyco with ya money
She went to the doctor got lipo with ya money
She walkin' around lookin' like Michael with ya money
Shoulda' got that insured, GEICO for ya moneeey(your money)
If you ain't no punk holla' we want pre-nup
WE WANT PRE-NUP!, yeah
It's something that you need to have
'Cause when she leave yo' ass she gon' leave with half
18 years, 18 years
And on her 18th birthday, he found out it wasn't his?
 
Well no, you may just have to pay child support.

The only way around that is a window of opportunity during early pregnancy where a man has an opportunity to legally relinquish parental rights.

You can then expect abortion rates to go up.
 
Well no, you may just have to pay child support.

The only way around that is a window of opportunity during early pregnancy, a man has an opportunity to legally relinquish parental rights.

You can then expect abortion rates to go up.



doesn't sound like much of a partnership to me.
 
Mary Elizabeth Williams astutely writes that "the story reads like it was calculated to provoke the most apoplectic reactions of the right. The wimmins are celebrating baby killing, and men aren't welcome!"

Abortion is morally evil, morally wrong.

No liberal argument comes even close to addressing that simple truth, and responses such as the above - and Irvine511's comment in a similar vein earlier - shows that many liberals are deep down quite guilty about their views on it, or the views that left wing media propagandise them with. The very fact that they have to engage in hyperbolic rhetoric show that in their heart of hearts, they know the truth.
 
It doesn't matter what I personally think about abortion. The government should not get to decide what I can and cannot do with my body.
 
The very fact that they have to engage in hyperbolic rhetoric show that in their heart of hearts, they know the truth.
Because far be it from cautious, understated you to ever engage in hyperbole as a rhetorical device.
Be careful where you stick it. :yes:
Or better yet, always use contraception yourself; conception is biologically 50/50.
 
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