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jamesqSo you want to ban abortion outright, but that pesky Roe v. Wade thing keeps coming up? What do you do? Well, you could simply make it more and more difficult to get an abortion. After all, you're not actually banning it, you're simply putting up every conceivable (heh) roadblock to it. If the monetary requirements (you don't think the mandatory ultrasound is going to be paid for by taxpayers do you?) don't clobber you, then the barrage of presentations "to keep you informed" might catch you in a moment of weakness. Finally, if navigating all the roadblocks take too long you'll hit your 22 (varies by state) week time limit.
And let's not forget the lengthy, allegedly anonymous, forms you have to fill out. I say "allegedly" because, despite not having your name, they're sufficiently detailed to allow a good data-miner to figure out who you are. How many 6'4", 42-year old, males with red hair own a house in my postal code? I haven't named names, but I bet you could attach a name to that information without much effort. Same for women filling out this information. Then it gets put up on a publicly accessible database, ostensibly for research purposes. The next day a brigade of anti-abortionists just happen to show up on your doorstep.
I'd compare it to a sibling putting his finger as close to your face as they can while chanting "I'm not touching you. I'm not touching you." Except that's funny and this situation isn't.
If these are successful, I predict that even more roadblocks will be put up. Multiple presentations, multiple invasive medical procedures, more detailed forms, all to "keep the mother informed". Time limits will be clawed back (Oops, sorry, but the fetus has nerve tissue now, we can't let you abort this late). The goal being to make it to expensive in terms of time and money to ever successfully get in under the wire.
When abortion is still technically legal, but effectively impossible, they'll declare victory. Seriously, I fully expect some politician to happily stand in front of a crowd and say that "We've made abortion so difficult to get in this state that no one successfully got one last year. Yay!"
Women who try to take things into their own hands will be charged with homicide. This could include self-induced abortions, using a back-alley abortionist, or simply traveling to a less-restrictive area. People who try to assist them will also be charged.
Predictions:
Pro-choice forces will come up with some way of giving women information remotely. decentralized web-sites with information on how to do your own abortion safely. Anti-abortion forces will try to infiltrate these sites, set up "look-alike" sites, etc. Legislatures will try to make the web-sites illegal.
You'll need to give personal information when buying home pregnancy kits.
Laws that outlaw helping people procure an abortion will become more draconian. Walk a woman past the clinic's protesters? That's a fine. Take her to another state? That's jail time. Hell, simply encouraging someone to get an abortion will become illegal.
It makes me glad I'm Canadian. Things aren't perfect here, but they are better. Calgary has an abortion clinic and it's generally free of protesters (due to court injunctions they have to stay well away from it - typically hundreds of feet). Of course, the fact that the building is built to withstand small explosives is testament to the fact that we're not yet as enlightened as I'd like.
Anyway, the whole thing is another attempt to punish women for all kinds of things: Chief among them having sex. Also violating traditional gender roles - married homemakers should want babies, and unmarried women shouldn't require abortions because they're not having sex. There are no other categories.
It all boils down to men making the decisions because women can't be trusted to make the right decisions themselves. It's patronizing, mean-spirited and increases the amount of suffering in the world.
And let's not forget the lengthy, allegedly anonymous, forms you have to fill out. I say "allegedly" because, despite not having your name, they're sufficiently detailed to allow a good data-miner to figure out who you are. How many 6'4", 42-year old, males with red hair own a house in my postal code? I haven't named names, but I bet you could attach a name to that information without much effort. Same for women filling out this information. Then it gets put up on a publicly accessible database, ostensibly for research purposes. The next day a brigade of anti-abortionists just happen to show up on your doorstep.
I'd compare it to a sibling putting his finger as close to your face as they can while chanting "I'm not touching you. I'm not touching you." Except that's funny and this situation isn't.
If these are successful, I predict that even more roadblocks will be put up. Multiple presentations, multiple invasive medical procedures, more detailed forms, all to "keep the mother informed". Time limits will be clawed back (Oops, sorry, but the fetus has nerve tissue now, we can't let you abort this late). The goal being to make it to expensive in terms of time and money to ever successfully get in under the wire.
When abortion is still technically legal, but effectively impossible, they'll declare victory. Seriously, I fully expect some politician to happily stand in front of a crowd and say that "We've made abortion so difficult to get in this state that no one successfully got one last year. Yay!"
Women who try to take things into their own hands will be charged with homicide. This could include self-induced abortions, using a back-alley abortionist, or simply traveling to a less-restrictive area. People who try to assist them will also be charged.
Predictions:
Pro-choice forces will come up with some way of giving women information remotely. decentralized web-sites with information on how to do your own abortion safely. Anti-abortion forces will try to infiltrate these sites, set up "look-alike" sites, etc. Legislatures will try to make the web-sites illegal.
You'll need to give personal information when buying home pregnancy kits.
Laws that outlaw helping people procure an abortion will become more draconian. Walk a woman past the clinic's protesters? That's a fine. Take her to another state? That's jail time. Hell, simply encouraging someone to get an abortion will become illegal.
It makes me glad I'm Canadian. Things aren't perfect here, but they are better. Calgary has an abortion clinic and it's generally free of protesters (due to court injunctions they have to stay well away from it - typically hundreds of feet). Of course, the fact that the building is built to withstand small explosives is testament to the fact that we're not yet as enlightened as I'd like.
Anyway, the whole thing is another attempt to punish women for all kinds of things: Chief among them having sex. Also violating traditional gender roles - married homemakers should want babies, and unmarried women shouldn't require abortions because they're not having sex. There are no other categories.
It all boils down to men making the decisions because women can't be trusted to make the right decisions themselves. It's patronizing, mean-spirited and increases the amount of suffering in the world.
Regarding Foreign Funding of Maternal Health
Date: 2010-04-30 10:01 pm (UTC)I think the government's decision is gutless pandering to social reactionaries, and it especially bugs me that they're trying to dress it up as being inclusive. "Yeah, abortion is a divisive issue, so we're going to knuckle under to one side of the debate. Hey, we're not actively opposing abortion, so that means we're being even handed right?" That's like building houses for white people and claiming you're not racist because you're not actively bulldozing the houses the black people manage to make without you.
Re: Regarding Foreign Funding of Maternal Health
Date: 2010-04-30 10:51 pm (UTC)I just think it's horrible that because an agency acting in the third world looks after all aspects of women's health, and happens to also do abortions that they have gotten their funding cut - because Canada refuses to fund any agencies that do abortions.
Ummm so what about all the other work that this group was doing?
CBC was interviewing a maternal health group in ethiopia that just had it's funding cut off. The group was mainly handing our contriceptives, and only providing abortions to women who had "pressing health reasons for one" (because safe abortions were expensive)... their list or pressing health reasons: fistula issues (medical), rape, ruptured uterus (medical), and having had more then 10 childern (hmmm I count that as a medical necessity).
One of my issues with wild_wanderer's reasoning is that it looks at the 3rd world problems from a 1st world context. The women that are getting abortions in the 3rd world are not the same demographic as those in the 1st world. Typically they are older (20-40), have families, and are in war zones. We are not talking about women who are aborting because they don't want their lifestyle disrupted, or are teens that made a mistake. These are women who do not have the right to say no to the husband they are legally married to, who can barely afford food let alone contraceptives, who will either die in pregnancy, or in desperation will take abortive plants if not given another option. These women take great risks to obtain an abortion - much like what was occuring in Canada in the 1900's, when abortion was illegal.
Also why don't the politicians think the Canadian population won't recognize the hyprocrisy for such a stance it beyond my comprehension.