Um no. I’m also going on record as saying I’m sick and goddamn tired of the shame surrounding abortion. I have zero problem with any woman getting one. And I think this whole paradigm the democrats have adopted to placate the other side – abortion that is “safe, legal, and RARE,” is ludicrous. Abortion never has been and never will be rare. That is a fact. Whether it’s legal or illegal. And if it’s illegal, women will die.

Abortion on demand, and without apology.

I’m not even going to go into how fucked it is that you preference the life of something unborn over that of a fully developed woman, with friends and family and you know, a LIFE, because you obviously just don’t get it. But I think it’s extremely precious of you that you apparently assume it will be easy for doctors to be able to distinguish between a situation in which a pregnant woman might only be maimed for instance, or be rendered infertile, and decide hey fuck it, it’s only her health! The baby lives! As opposed to a situation where she might die and therefore is allowed to have an abortion because essentially, you say so. I gotta say, if you were my doctor, I’d tell you to go fuck, and give me a goddamn abortion instead of arbitrarily deciding whether or not I MIGHT die if not given the option.

How the hell did I miss this? Yes, this makes me angry. How dare you presume to give doctors the choice about whether or not to protect a woman’s health vs. her life. A pregnancy gone wrong is both a tragedy and a dangerous situation for women, and they need to have ALL OPTIONS OPEN TO THEM to protect not only their life, but their health. That’s what the SC jurisprudence has CONSISTENTLY held, and what laws against late-term abortion flatly contravene. The end.

The reason that I still believe this to be my business is that I believe that a fetus should be treated as a human life and I feel compelled to protect it. I believe that laws permitting abortion are essentially unjust and so I believe that I must take action within the democratic process to change them.

There are a couple of problems here. One of which is simple “Golden Rule” stuff. If you were pregnant, would you want someone running around declaiming to everyone he knows that your fetus has “rights” that trump yours and that your OB/GYN is a “baby killer”? Well, no. Of course not.

The bigger problem, though, is that your extreme beliefs don’t leave any room for compromise on this issue. If a fetus is a “human life,” as you claim, then Roe v. Wade is a despicable compromise, as is Planned Parenthood v. Casey. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but it’s fairly clear that you are as zealous a forced-birther as there can be in this country. What you believe boils down to the following: Once a woman is pregnant, she must carry her fetus to term. And the state should have the authority to compel this outcome.

This is all fairly innocuous as far as it goes. Where we as a society have really gotten into trouble, however, is in allowing people who hold your fringe views to take a seat at the table when health care, law enforcement, and a range of other policies that touch on abortion are formulated. Imagine that I fervently and honestly believed an alien spacecraft landed at Roswell, NM in 1948. Should I have a hand in crafting policies regarding the U.S. Air Force or NASA?

I want to be clear that while I have no respect for your beliefs about the humanity of a fetus, I have immense respect for your right to hold them, assuming this is what you truly believe.

If you are a self-reflective type, though, I’d ask that you think about the implications for women of what you believe about fetuses. Isn’t the forced birth movement just a cover for intimidating and controlling women and forcing them to return to the back of the bus? Even if you’re not willing to go that far yet, can’t you see how someone who fancies herself at least modestly in charge of her own life would view your beliefs this way?

Thanks for your comments and your honesty.

You will never ever see men anywhere defending their right to do anything. You will never see men explain why they did something in their own self-interest. Unless the man is in the defendant’s seat in court. This is because men instinctively know that the more you explain yourself, the more you tacitly hand over control of the outcome to the listener. Men are nowhere near as invested as women are to be seen as nice, good people.

If women want to keep their abortion rights, then trying to convince conservative men is a useless tactic. The correct tactic is to ignore them and then fight the battles where it really matters: in the courts and in the marketplace of PR. The first can be done with competent and tough lawyers. the second is much, much harder and frankly the outlook is quite gloomy. While most young women parrot the talk, barely any will walk the walk. As long as you see young women willingly participate in activities that go contrary to their self-interest: staying on in abusive relationships because nice girls don’t say no, being afraid to have sex because nice girls don’t say yes, having children even if they don’t really want them because nice girls love children, pro-choice advocates will face an uphill battle.

The sad fact is that many, many women are quite okay with being forced to give birth.

So don’t worry conservatives: you guys have mostly won. All this stuff on here is a bunch of rhetoric. The real test will come after Obama’s presidency. By then all these young girls who’re into purity rings and virginity pledges will be all grown up and ready to crank out some babies because that’s what nice girls do. Of course after the kids are born is when many women get buyer’s regret. At that time, please make arrangements to pay for all those millions of kids’ future therapy bills as they realize that Mommy fundamentally didn’t want them.

I don’t like this convo. I’m opting out now.

Most ALL of the time, its because a man isn’t what he could be or should be.

A fedora? Bogart? Splendid.

Last night I was talking about how cool I would look in Bogart’s clothes. Please, for the love of God, just let me look cool in Bogart’s clothes. God, that’s Casablanca clothes. Not Treasure of the Sierra Madre clothes. Thank you, God.

If women could be more honest without repercussion and tell their stories.

Men don’t have to be.

Its that kind of world.

The fact that there are so few doctors who perform voluntary late-term abortions does NOT lend weight to the fact that it is morally repugnant. It is a type of surgery that a physician must be highly trained for, it is complicated logistically, and hey, guess what? IT CAN GET YOU KILLED in this crazy fucking country we live in. You’re a cop, aren’t you? You do tough, dirty work that nobody else wants to do, right? Why are you being so willfully obtuse?

Dr. Tiller was not morally repugnant. He was a hero and now he is a martyr. Please educate yourself further on this issue–and then have a little rachmones for the women who have to live through this.

In case you don’t know it, “rachmones” is a Yiddish word that is very close to “compassion,” but it is more than that. It comes from the Hebrew word “rechem,” which means “womb.” It is the type of empathy that a woman would have for her unborn child–a deep love and need to protect something that is inside her, that is a part of her very being. Are you ready to concretely understand what horrid circumstances it might take for a woman to betray that? Can you even imagine, in all your dreaming and philosophy, having to make this decision? Until you can say yes, I don’t want to hear another word.