Hey Dumbass: Everyone is "Anti-Abortion"
I knew instantly I had to keep this a secret, because if it got out I believed my reputation and life would be ruined. The thought that this mass of cells could eventually turn into a human life never even entered my mind. I was in pure survival mode: what did I have to do to survive this situation, as unscathed as I could? I made the mistake of telling my boyfriend, whom I had just started dating a few months prior. I, of course, asked him to not tell anyone and his response was to tell every single brother in his fraternity, which then, I was told, resulted in claps on his back, jokes about his victorious sperm and a congratulatory beer chug. Mind you, this was not a “Congratulations, you’re going to be a father!” kinda thing. This was a testosterone-filled, knuckle-dragging HOO-RAH that his macho sperm got one past the goalie. His life, completely unchanged, continued with no interruptions whatsoever.
My life on the other hand, as you can imagine, changed significantly.
Everyone is anti-abortion. To my knowledge, I have never met a woman that skipped and jumped her way to an abortion clinic, overjoyed with the notion that she was about to have an abortion.
Let’s be clear about this: NO ONE wants an abortion. NO ONE is “pro”-abortion.
“Hey Melissa! Wanna hang out this weekend?”
“Oh my gosh, I’d love to but I’m going to have BUCKETS of unprotected sex this weekend, hoping and praying I’ll get pregnant so I can have an abortion!! Wish me luck!”
You are either pro-choice or anti-choice. Period. Quit mixing that shit up. Anti-choicers love mixing those terms because it puts all the blame in one place and onto one gender. If you can dehumanize a woman from being an actual human being and turn her into a monster that’s only goal is the complete deconstruction of all that you hold dear in this life, well then…now you’re in business!
If you want to change abortion statistics, start valuing motherhood. I am so sick to death of anti-choicers focusing all their valiant efforts into shaming and blaming women, rather than actually doing something that will genuinely aid their mission.
Think I’m wrong? Let’s break this down. Statistically, most women that have abortions are young, unmarried and poor or low-income. So this is the woman we will keep in mind while reading through this.
When a woman becomes pregnant unintentionally, she has 3 choices: have an abortion, go full term and give the child up for adoption, or keep and raise the child. In our current society:
If this young woman chooses to have an abortion, she is a murderer, slut and a whore.
If this young woman chooses to go full term and give the child up for adoption she is just a slut and a whore. However, she has the added benefit of hiding her sin post-delivery, pretending it never happened.
If this young woman chooses to keep and raise her child then she will be known as a slut and a whore for the rest of her life, sustaining the life of the child as proof for the error in her sinful ways.
When is the last time you heard of a young, unmarried, low-income woman becoming pregnant with the result of her community reacting with care, love, reverence and actual joy for her pregnancy? Exactly.
Now think about the last time you heard of or knew a young, unmarried, low-income woman becoming pregnant. Please, please, please prove me wrong when I say that I bet the reaction was shame and blame. She’s damaged goods. She soiled. She’s to be avoided. She's dirty, tarnished and shameful. She was the topic of conversation at dinner and the after-school special at bedtime. I am begging you to prove me wrong here.
What I find most interesting is that the very population of anti-choice crusaders, bravely vomiting their holier-than-thou, self-righteous bullshit, are the very population that is causing the continuance of that which they so vehemently abhor. That’s right; YOU are the cause of your own issue. YOU are the stoker of those flames. YOU are the gasoline on the fire.
You are so overly obsessed with the mass of cells in that woman’s womb, you have nothing left to give to the actual life standing before you. You are so entrenched in your moral codes that, instead of working in your families and communities to raise a culture of respect and worthiness for motherhood, you spend your time shaming and blaming the only gender that has the ability to bring forth the very life that you claim to respect so much.
Why are men excused from the responsibility and statistics of abortion? I am so confused as to why the gender that literally has to be half responsible for the very thing the other gender is being blamed for is completely removed from any responsibility of the outcome?? Did you even notice that in all of my writing above there was no mention of men?? No? How predictable.
You know what I don’t see amongst the sidewalk terrorists spewing their hatred, misinformation, fury and self-righteous garbage? Men, running and screaming down the street chasing their wife/girlfriend: “I’M HERE! YOU’RE NOT ALONE! I WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU! I AM JUST AS RESPONSIBLE AS YOU ARE! STOP STOP STOP!!!!! When that woman is walking through your venomous tirade of shame, guilt and lies, where is your utter disdain, disappointment and contempt for the man that is half responsible for the outcome of their sexual encounter?
What is so interesting is that the male gender will readily and bravely go to war to die for their country. They will protect their families and communities with guns and fists if they have to. They will puff their chests out and assume the head of their household…but somehow they are utterly and horrifically terrified of women. Truly…this is all one can assume because it is the male gender that, instead of treating women equally, instead of being living examples of the belief that women are just as worthy as men, and instead of valuing womanhood as much as they value manhood, their only recourse is to control us, beat us down and pass laws to control and govern our bodies and our choices.
You may call this valiant and necessary. I call it cowardly, self-righteous and pathetic.
Quit patting yourself on your back for your Facebook post and actually do something. OK, this is a big one. Every time something comes up about abortion, posts just run a-muck with more vitriolic verbal vomit than one can take. Someone boldly stands tall while claiming their moral high ground and then you have about 200 comments that follow from people just gushing all over the poster with their congratulations and their blind devotion to a person that took their 10 minutes to type a message on a social media platform.
Insert slow clap, rising from chair, tear in eye, with obvious look of being completely overcome with emotion. You did it! You championed your cause, you stood your ground, you rose to the occasion and you stood strong and bravely moved your fingers across a keypad and then you pressed ‘enter’. Next up: a phone call from Oprah, then the medal of honor and, of course, the next presidency. It’s all just waiting for you.
I wonder…has any of them gone out into the lower-income neighborhoods and worked with at-risk teens to arm them with knowledge and support so that they don’t become the very statistic these Facebook crusaders are writing about?? Have they started youth groups in their churches (because these crusaders alllllllwaaaaaaaaayyyss belong to churches, of course) that teach young boys how to live their lives equally with women?
Have any of you ever done one fucking thing to stop on the front end what you work so hard to block on the back end?
Sorry…your Twitter tirade doesn’t count either. And neither does anything else you claim to do unless it directly involves effort to stop unintended pregnancies. Organizing bingo night at the youth summer camp doesn’t count either!
And before you sit in your chair with your arms crossed and your stomach all up in knots, screaming at your computer screen, “YOU’RE DOING THE SAME THING, BITCH!”, let me remind you I am not the one looking for change in this scenario. I like my full abortion rights where they are. YOU are the one getting your panties all up in a bunch over my rights to my choices for my body. Your cute little attempt at deflection is noted. Moving on…
I had an abortion 27 years ago and I have never, not once, regretted it. See, this is why I get to make allllllll the comments I made above. I am a living breathing body that went through everything you just read. And before you write your holier-than-thou comments on this post “My wife had an unintended pregnancy when she was 19. She bravely decided to have her baby and raise her baby”, let me say this: first, the very fact that you think having a baby in her situation was the “brave” thing to do proves my point 100%. See #2 above. Second, the point is SHE HAD A CHOICE. ‘Nuff said there.
Ok. Storytime! When I was 19 I became pregnant, unintentionally. My initial reaction was sheer terror and panic with the most amount of shame I had ever felt in my entire life. I knew instantly I had to keep this a secret, because if it got out I believed my reputation and life would be ruined. The thought that this mass of cells could eventually turn into a human life never even entered my mind. I was in pure survival mode: what did I have to do to survive this situation, as unscathed as I could? I made the mistake of telling my boyfriend, whom I had just started dating a few months prior. I, of course, asked him to not tell anyone and his response was to tell every single brother in his fraternity, which then, I was told, resulted in claps on his back, jokes about his victorious sperm and a congratulatory beer chug. Mind you, this was not a “Congratulations, you’re going to be a father!” kinda thing. This was a testosterone-filled, knuckle-dragging HOO-RAH that his macho sperm got one past the goalie. His life, completely unchanged, continued with no interruptions whatsoever.
My life on the other hand, as you can imagine, changed significantly. I was unaware that everyone on campus now knew my name and my “condition”. I quickly figured it out though, not missing one stare, the whispers behind my back and the snickers in my face. I even had friends that had graduated calling me to see if it was true: are you pregnant??? And into hiding I went.
You see, I found out I was pregnant at 4 weeks and I couldn’t have an abortion until I was 6 weeks so I had 2 weeks to sit and wait. I did just that, in my dorm room, never leaving, not attending class and would not have even ate a morsel of food if one friend did not consistently bring food to me. I fell into a deep depression and I was never so scared in my entire life. The people I thought were my friends quietly disappeared and only one brave girl dismissed the idea of her reputation being equally damaged by taking care of me.
He said he would help pay for the abortion. He didn’t. I called his mother because I had no idea what to do. I had no money and no way to get out of this and she said to me, “Boys will be boys. I can’t help you.” and hung up.
I eventually had no choice but to tell my family and let yet another entirely new level of shame wash over me. In the end it was my family that came through for me, as it should be I suppose.
I made the trip. I walked through the line of fire with people calling me a murderer, a slut, a whore, a waste of life, a babykiller, a sinner going to hell…and on and on it went. Truth be told, this 100% solidified my decision to have an abortion. With my head held so high, I slowly walked the path to a decision that was my choice, and I could not have been more convinced of my right to do so than in that moment. The room held many scared sets of eyes, waiting their turn. In my robe, on the table, the nurse holding my hand in her gloved hand. I was terrified. Afterward I was sick. Afterward I was in a daze. Afterward it was as if it never really happened. The stares began to decrease. The snickers moved onto some other new victim and the whispers seemingly disappears. Life went on.
I never ever ever considered going full term with that pregnancy because of the shame that would follow me for the rest of my life. Why is this important? See #2 above. I knew I would be marked for life. I would be “one of those girls”. Call me a coward, I could care less. You are a complete dumbass if you believe that the societal norms that live and breathe in our world are not a valid reason for most of the decisions we make. Why do you think he bought a corvette, she wears wigs to cover her bald head, he hides his divorce, she hides that bottle of vodka in her purse, he says he’s straight when he’s not, and she would never tell anyone about an abortion she had 27 years ago? Because…what would people think? My point is, the guilt I felt was for being the “stupid slut that had premarital sex and got knocked up”, NOT for having an abortion. I am not ashamed that I had an abortion. But the shame that would have followed me for life for being a young, unmarried and poor single parent was reason enough for me to seek an abortion. You want abortion for unintended pregnancies eradicated? Change the norms. Period.
What I went through in the 2 weeks of waiting in my dorm room was proof enough to me of what laid ahead for me, if I had chosen to go full term. The way I was treated, shunned, forgotten. I had become dirty, soiled, shameful and if you came near me, my pregnancy just might rub off on you and you might find yourself inadvertently pregnant too. I became the butt of jokes at parties and the lesson of what not to become in conversations at lunch. I was the “poor soul” at best. I was a whore at worst. Him? He forgot about me too, except when they joked about me while smoking weed and chugging beer.
And then it was over. My life went back to normal. I finished college and moved on. My abortion was the best decision I ever made FOR ME. I did not write my story above to justify my choice; I wrote it so that you could hear from someone that actually made the choice and why. I did this because I will not be shamed into silence about a protected right and choice I made for myself. You do not get to choose for me. You do not get to decide for me when it is acceptable to have an abortion and when it is not. You do not get an opinion.
I don’t tell you under what acceptable terms it is ok to get a vasectomy, a tubal ligation, a prescription for your little blue pills, how to manage a broken arm, what you can and cannot do when your child scrapes his knee and whether or not you are permitted to have a mastectomy, prescription glasses, braces, surgery or any other medical procedure you deem necessary for your mental or physical health.
And you don’t get to tell me.
How about this? How about you prove me wrong? How about you actually start paying attention to the front end of this issue rather than the back end and actually put your effort in the area that might just actually make a difference? C’mon…it would feel SO GOOD to prove me wrong, wouldn’t it?
Wait…I have a better idea. How about this: if your daughter becomes unintentionally pregnant at 19, or any age for that matter, or if you have a son whose girlfriend becomes pregnant, I pinkie swear not to force her to have an abortion, even though, statistically I would more likely than not save her from a life of poverty, lack of education, multiple unintended pregnancies, and the emotional free fall when the male that participated in the act resulting in pregnancy leaves her to deal with the issue on her own.
But only if: you pinkie swear not to force my daughter to go full term if she becomes unintentionally pregnant because you bought a book that tells you it is your responsibility to save her soul and the supposed soul an unborn child. Interestingly, this same book also tries to convince people that a virgin gave birth, a man rose from the dead after 3 days, and a burning bush spoke. I’m not judging here…just pointing out the facts, folks.
Still, to this day, if you ask me about my entire experience I will cry. What I need you to understand is that I do not cry for the mass of cells I had removed from my uterus; I cry because of everything that I experienced up until my abortion. I cry because for so many years after I felt I had to keep it a secret because of what people would think of me. I cry because it was all an assault on my very existence. I cry because of the way I was treated and for the buckets of misplaced shame and guilt that society dumped all over me.
The wonderful and lovely thing that came out of all of this is that I am now raising my daughter to know that sex is beautiful, natural and a part of what makes us human. I am raising her to know that her body is HER body and she is the ruler of her body and no one else. I am raising her to know how to protect herself and the consequences of not protecting herself. I am raising her to understand that if she is ever faced with an unintentional pregnancy she will never ever have to make that decision based in fear nor will she have to make that decision alone, and I did this by telling her my story in its entirety. I am raising her to know that I am here on this earth to teach and guide her, to support and love her, to arm her with knowledge and truth, but ultimately her choice is HER choice and whatever choices she makes in this life, we are on her team and by her side.
Most of all, we teach her not to judge others for their decisions because she will never truly understand what led any person to make any sort of decision. She was not there, she does not walk in their shoes and frankly, it is none of her damn business.
Lastly, when my 13 year old daughter, Ella, read my post she decided to write something for you too.
Hello, how are you? How was your day? Are you feeling okay? Hopefully.
I am only 13 years old, my inexperienced brain still cannot fully wrap its thoughts around the idea of a teenager, or young girl walking through the terrifying path of pregnancy. How would she feel? Can we please take a second to stop, and just think about her feelings? Let’s say there is a girl, she is only 16. Her boyfriend and her only had sex 3 times, the fourth time something happened. She started getting sick, her body didn’t feel right. She decided to take a pregnancy test, only to come to the horrific truth that she is pregnant. She tells her boyfriend first, holding back the thought of coming to her mother because she is afraid of what she’ll think of her after everything. His face turned white as his eyes began to become dark, and emotionless. “You’re on your own…” he says in a tone so sharp you could feel it stabbing your heart. He storms out of her house only to leave her there in tears alone, scared, and helpless. Her mother walks in to find her on the ground sobbing holding her stomach. Her mother helps her up and sits her on the couch, asking her what’s wrong. She tries to lie, but let’s face it, any mother can tell when their daughter is lying. She asks again what is wrong. She starts to sob harder, not even being able to speak a word, she shakily gives her mother the positive test. All she could hear was a gasp, then sigh. “Oh honey…” she says, embracing her daughter in her arms. “It’ll be okay.” the mother says, as they both cry together. They talked about abortions, opening up, and what they could do for her health. A few days later, the mother took her to the OBGYN for a look in her uterus, and what they can do for an abortion. To their surprise when they got there, the doctor was a middle-aged white man. He calmly and cheerfully guided the mother and daughter to his room. When he asked what seemed to be the cause of the visit, the mother explained how her daughter would like to have an abortion. He asks for all her information, her age, her height, her physical and mental health, everything. After a couple hours passed by, he apologized and said “No miss, I am sorry but we can not do this.” The daughter yelled at him in anger and fear asking why. What is getting in the way? He said “...you know the new rules…”
Why are middle-aged white men making rules for women’s bodies? I am aware of how many people have heard this, but this message must be projected louder. It is a woman’s body, and it is HER choice and no others. If a woman is raped, she should not have to bear a baby. If a young teenage girl gets pregnant, she should have the right make her choice. If you don’t already know this, let me let you in on some biology. In a woman’s body after she discovers she is pregnant she now has 6 weeks to get the embryo inside of her uterus aborted. That’s it. That’s all it is, a small embryo inside of her, it isn’t killing ANYTHING. Some people think having an abortion is a ticket to hell itself, have you ever thought god has gotten with the century? He’s no longer in 234 BC? Has anyone ever stopped to think that possibly god is...angry? Perhaps god is angry that the children he created are doing things like this to each other? If this is all about god, what would god even think? But the moral of the story, as Rachel said on Friends “No uterus, no opinion.”
Damn this mother is proud.