Fuck You, Pro-Lifers, I Have Lost Respect for You...

[FreeJosie]

I said "I'm not sure." I do think she should have either kept her legs closed or used birth control. She tried to break up a family, she tried to get pregnant by deceiving, she ended the pregnancy when she did get pregnant, and she broke her mother's heart. Now I hear through the grapevine that she is going out with another married man and her mother doesn't know about it. This young woman needs to be held accountable for her actions because she is taking down innocent people, including children, in her path.

What about the married men? They're opening their legs and breaking up families too. It's not all down to the woman.

[theologygeek]

What about the married men? They're opening their legs and breaking up families too. It's not all down to the woman.

I never said it was all on the woman. I may be big on woman's rights, but I also consider myself a pretty impartial person, and won't stick up for a woman just because she is a woman. Yes, it takes two to have an affair and both are crummy people for doing so. But it is wrong for any woman, affair or not, to lie and say she is on the pill when she isn't.

[formergothardite]

I think the man is more responsible for taking down innocent people since he is the one cheating on his wife. Anyway, bringing a baby into this situation is really not going to help hold her accountable, it will just add a baby to a fucked up situation. Getting the abortion was probably the most responsible thing she did in the situation.

[sparkles]

I never said it was all on the woman. I may be big on woman's rights, but I also consider myself a pretty impartial person, and won't stick up for a woman just because she is a woman. Yes, it takes two to have an affair and both are crummy people for doing so. But it is wrong for any woman, affair or not, to lie and say she is on the pill when she isn't.

And that's why the responsibility for birth control should rest with both parties, not just the woman. Given that the man in this situation was cheating on his wife and obviously did not want a "gotcha" pregnancy as a result of his affair, wearing a condom should have been tops on his list, regardless of what his partner told him.

[LadyBlue]

There are no shades of gray when it comes to abortion. You either care about why women get abortion and determine if they're a slut based on why they got them or you don't care if they get abortions; aka pro-life and pro-choice. I don't care if I'm being rude, at least I'm not associating myself with a group of people that have included the likes of David Dewhurst and Rick Perry, people who are in positions of power who want to close down womens' health clinics based on their pro-life stances. Don't you see the difference?

There are always shades of grey, always. You can disagree with them, but they exist. The fact you refuse to see that tells me you are either very young; difficulty with anything other than black and white thinking is a hallmark of teenagers, or you were raised in an environment where your mental/emotional growth was stunted and you haven't had time to grow out of it.

Just off the top of my head some of the "shades of grey" in abortion are that you (generic you in all cases following) think life begins at conception so you wouldn't have one yourself, but you understand others think differently/have different values and you stay out of it and vote based on issues that are more important to you, or you (or a family member) have an abortion, but you vote/rally for abortion to be banned because every one but you has a "bad" reason for an abortion or you believe that abortion should be legal to a certain stage of gestation and then have major limitations, etc. I'm sure if I could be bothered to give it a few more minutes, I could come up with more.

[OkToBeTakei]

Anxious girl. Your views of what I believe in want to make me not believe in it if that is how you wish to portray me.

I would rather do my explaining of the nuances of life and culture. Of circumstance and happenstance. Of morality and immorality. Of individuality and generality. Pick your incidence and somebody will tell you a story of humanity why people do not fit in to convenient boxes.

Where your naivety shows itself is your absolute assertion that abortion is illegal, it is not where I live and I find your use of the word 'slut' actually something I would not consider ever.

I am quite happy to listen and view the other views here but when the main view is one you actually agree with but the way it is expressed makes you wish the person would just go away, you should know you are doing it wrong.

[Anonthemouse]

There are no shades of gray when it comes to abortion. You either care about why women get abortion and determine if they're a slut based on why they got them or you don't care if they get abortions; aka pro-life and pro-choice. I don't care if I'm being rude, at least I'm not associating myself with a group of people that have included the likes of David Dewhurst and Rick Perry, people who are in positions of power who want to close down womens' health clinics based on their pro-life stances. Don't you see the difference?

Hogwash

Just off the top of my head some of the "shades of grey" in abortion are that you (generic you in all cases following) think life begins at conception so you wouldn't have one yourself, but you understand others think differently/have different values and you stay out of it and vote based on issues that are more important to you,

Thank you. I disagree with abortion as I do believe that life begins with conception. But would not take away someone else's choice to do so. I know this may be hard for you to comprehend - perhaps a reason that you are so anxious.... but I can disagree with something, not vote against it or judge those who disagree. I suspect I have wasted my time even chiming in here but....

[JesusFightClub]

I think the man is more responsible for taking down innocent people since he is the one cheating on his wife. Anyway, bringing a baby into this situation is really not going to help hold her accountable, it will just add a baby to a fucked up situation. Getting the abortion was probably the most responsible thing she did in the situation.

Exactly. I also don't get why she has to be "held accountable" and punished when the real guilty party here is the one with the willy.

Note to adulterers:

If you enter into a private sexual relationship while you have a partner who is expecting you to be monogamous and does not know that you are in this relationship, you did a bad thing. It wasn't a slut who enticed you and forced you to be unfaithful, it was you who made the decision to be unfaithful. There will be consequences.

The person you slept with, if they are single, has one less tie than you and has done one less bad thing than you. Sure, they shouldn't have gone with someone with a partner. But unless you were raped or forced into it, you didn't have to fuck that person. You got your thing on, and now there may be problems. Tough titty, as we used to say.

[Minerva]

I'm not sure that women should always have the choice. A woman I know has a daughter who was having an affair with a married man. She was in her early twenties. She was hell bent on making him leave his wife. He thought she was on the pill. She wasn't. She thought that by getting pregnant, he would leave his wife. She got pregnant. He gave her money for an abortion, broke up with her, and made it clear that he was not going to leave his wife. The woman I know didn't want her daughter to get an abortion. She said she would raise the baby if her daughter didn't want to. The daughter got the abortion. The mother was beside herself with grief because she felt that her daughter killed her grandchild. When a baby is born, a man has to pay child support whether he wanted the baby or not. He is called scum if he is a deadbeat dad. He is told that he had no problem making the baby, and paying is the consequences of his actions. I am all for women's rights, but where does accountability come in? Why is the father told one thing and the mother is told something else? Because the mother is the one who has to go through pregnancy and labor? Shouldn't she have thought of that while she was trying to reel in a married man? Pro choice doesn't make sense to me. None of the labels do.

Let's see if I understand this correctly. You stated that women shouldn't always have the right to choose what to do with a pregnancy. You then cited the mistress of the cheating husband as an example of a situation where women shouldn't always have the right to choose what to do with their pregnancies. This implies that you think your friend's daughter should have been forced to one thing or another with her pregnancy. Which option should she have been forced to avail herself of? Abortion or birth?

Also, I agree with you that men should have the right to raise their child. This has nothing to do with whether they can mandate that someone else grow and birth their child. I think mothers should be forced to pay child support if they become the non-primary caregiver after a breakup and can afford it. This has nothing to do with whether they should be forced to carry a fetus to term. No one - man, woman, or person with a non-binary gender - can be stripped of their bodily autonomy. Does that mean that people with penises have less power over whether they become parents than people with uteri? Yes. Is that unfair? Yes. But history has shown that it's less unfair than a system that strips people of their bodily autonomy.

[Minerva]

The back-and-forth on this thread is pretty much why I don't use "pro-life" to designate any one side of the abortion debate. Pro-life is just a thing you call yourself. It has no literal meaning that can be applied to an ideology; life has to be destroyed for life to persist. I'm currently murdering plant cells with my stomach acid. Lots of people are pro-choice and pro-life. Lots of people are politically anti-abortion and pro-life. Lots of people are undecided and pro-life. For this reason, if you say "I hate that pro-lifers think X" you're going to hear a lot of "I know someone who identifies as pro-life and doesn't think that."

"Pro-choice" contains the same paradox when taken literally, but at least it can mean something specific when applied to abortion. "I'm pro-choice on abortion" means "I think people should decide on their own whether or not to abort." "I'm pro-life on abortion" could mean "I wouldn't have an abortion" or it could mean "no one can have an abortion."

Even among people who are politically anti-abortion, opinions differ. Some think pregnant people deserve to die if they try to abort their pregnancies, some think that's as much of a tragedy as the abortion itself. Some think condoms don't work because CONSPIRACY, some think condoms work but are bad, some think condoms are a good tool for preventing abortions. Some think it's ok to murder doctors in front of their kids, most think all murder is heinous. I'm not adamantly against generalizations, but saying you've lost all respect for a huge group because of the opinions of its fringe is irrational.

Could it be considered cowardly to be pro-choice but, when asked, describe yourself with a term that is ambiguous at best and, at worst, aligns you with people who want to ban abortion and shame those seeking it? Maybe. But maybe you're doing it out of self-preservation. Or to preserve your job or your family ties. Or maybe you don't know that pro-choice people carry their unintended pregnancies to term, too. Or maybe you want to reclaim "pro-life" from people who are anti-woman. Or maybe you want to use whatever terminology sounds best to you and to hell with politics. If I expect anti-abortion folks to suck it up and respect my pregnancy-related decisions, the least I can do is respect what other people choose to call themselves.