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pastwatcherI'd heard the phrase "war on women" used recently and thought it was hyperbole; looking at the article below, I'm actually scared. Trigger warning: repeated mention of forced childbirth, and failing to deal with medical emergencies. No seriously, looking at it made me shudder.
The GOP house is waging war on women and poor people.
A friend of a friend related to most of the people in a remote village in China (and I've already forgotten which province), spent a summer there doing thesis research about the One Child policy. Some things she told me:
1) Women were accustomed to having mandatory ultrasounds every 3 months. They described appointments made alphabetically, that you could /maybe/ move but could not skip, and they were in-and-out ultrasounds. Even "approved", i.e. first, pregnancies would be noted; others would probably be aborted.
2) There were forced-abortion campaigns in China in several provinces a couple of times, most recently in 1991. My *sister* was born in 1991, and I'm proud to say my mother believes becoming a mother should only be the woman's choice.
3) Nevertheless people would have more children, having to bribe and use connections to get away with it. That's probably why the measures were so extreme.
I know it's not rational to feel sick when I think about the laws forcing ultrasounds on women who want abortions, but it reminds me of nothing so much as that. It doesn't make sense to be triggered, either, in that no-one's ever tried to force me to have a baby or not to, but I've imagined it, sometimes wonder if it will happen to me, and it's horrifying.
Compare that to the Romanian dictator who would force women to get pregnant, imposing some high "fertility tax" nonsense and also checkups. The resulting larger population, when in their twenties, were the ones to tear him down. I heard this from Ana; I suppose I don't go looking for stories like this, nor have I come across them in most discussions.
I don't even /know/ which would be worse, being forced to abort or forced to birth--both are highly physically and emotionally traumatic. But controlling the country's population by using its women like chattel--very sickening.
The GOP house is waging war on women and poor people.
A friend of a friend related to most of the people in a remote village in China (and I've already forgotten which province), spent a summer there doing thesis research about the One Child policy. Some things she told me:
1) Women were accustomed to having mandatory ultrasounds every 3 months. They described appointments made alphabetically, that you could /maybe/ move but could not skip, and they were in-and-out ultrasounds. Even "approved", i.e. first, pregnancies would be noted; others would probably be aborted.
2) There were forced-abortion campaigns in China in several provinces a couple of times, most recently in 1991. My *sister* was born in 1991, and I'm proud to say my mother believes becoming a mother should only be the woman's choice.
3) Nevertheless people would have more children, having to bribe and use connections to get away with it. That's probably why the measures were so extreme.
I know it's not rational to feel sick when I think about the laws forcing ultrasounds on women who want abortions, but it reminds me of nothing so much as that. It doesn't make sense to be triggered, either, in that no-one's ever tried to force me to have a baby or not to, but I've imagined it, sometimes wonder if it will happen to me, and it's horrifying.
Compare that to the Romanian dictator who would force women to get pregnant, imposing some high "fertility tax" nonsense and also checkups. The resulting larger population, when in their twenties, were the ones to tear him down. I heard this from Ana; I suppose I don't go looking for stories like this, nor have I come across them in most discussions.
I don't even /know/ which would be worse, being forced to abort or forced to birth--both are highly physically and emotionally traumatic. But controlling the country's population by using its women like chattel--very sickening.
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Date: 2011-02-27 10:11 pm (UTC)One of my main points was that each side could stand to remember--and consistently acknowledge in their rhetoric--that the other side has at least a powerful motive and, if you ask me, a powerful argument (I mean, if you're not a materialist you have no reason at all for thinking that life or personhood or whatever begins only once the fetus has reached a certain stage of development).
So quickly branding anti-abortion measures a "war on women" is problematic to me, since it seems like a sane pro-life stance (which perhaps many aren't?) is only incidentally anti-women's rights. Though I guess it's hard to say to what extent one can focus on the underpinnings of a political argument rather than its effects, I feel that it is quite possible to be militantly pro-life in good conscience, fully recognizing that what it entails is, as you say, monstrous. The basic ethical issue is hard enough that too many liberals seem to me to take pro-choice for granted.