With all of the furor going on about abortion law these days, I fully expect a group of women to form an alliance called “Tie Your Tubes At Ten” or something to that effect. Maybe if we had a generation of American females who just decided to forget about having children altogether, that would give the society some breathing room to start addressing the issue of conception and abortion intelligently.
Vernon Jones says that when he’s elected Governor of Georgia, he’ll go Texas one better. He will get rid of all the ambiguity of abortion law and make it simple: life begins at the moment of conception.
Vernon Jones vows that if he becomes governor of Georgia, he will "outright ban abortions": "Ban it outright. Life starts at conception." pic.twitter.com/nH5H2ZbDUM
— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) September 23, 2021
He doesn’t say anything about incest or rape, but I think we’re following his drift. An outright ban is an outright ban.
Let me share a true story about becoming pregnant by rape. I was chatting with a friend of mine last year and the dialogue went to ancestry. My friend doesn’t know what nationality her grandfather was, or even his name. Her grandfather raped her grandmother at a party when the grandmother was 16 years old. She came home from the party with her clothes torn and it was quite a scene. It only got worse some weeks later when she realized that she was pregnant.
This was 1942. My friend doesn’t know if there was a law on the books in California allowing for a rape victim to have an abortion. She just knows that it was a pregnancy out of wedlock and treated as such, meaning as a huge shame, even though there was no question about whether it was rape or not. Blaming the victim was the mentality of the day. The 16-year-old never bonded with her daughter and my friend tells me stories of how her mother, then a baby, was simply left in a room alone and her grandmother would go do other things, leave the house even, without even thinking about the child or that responsibility.
The 16-year-old’s parents decided to have her committed when she was 19. She stayed in a mental institution the rest of her life, which I find incredible, but I am told that was the case. The parents made this decision because their daughter couldn’t relate to her own child and mother her and so they felt that was mental illness. Apparently the mental health community of that time agreed and the teenaged girl was committed. The grandparents then cared for the baby for a time, but because they were getting up in years they decided to put her in foster care and that’s how my friend’s mother grew up, going in and out of foster homes.
If we are to listen to Greg Abbott and now Vernon Jones, this was a desirable outcome under these circumstances and somehow a proper moral choice. Just in this brief description you see a young woman’s life ruined because she got raped and impregnated. And then the baby that came from that union, my friend’s mother, had to go through the ordeal of growing up in foster homes and with her grandparents, never having had a normal life at all, “normal” in this instance being defined as living with one’s parents, and conceived within the bounds of marriage, part of a family unit.
But forget all this trauma and pain, Abbott and Jones and their party would have you believe that this is the way to go, rather than having a 16-year-old rape victim get an abortion and go on with the rest of her life. In this instance, the rape, which resulted in an impregnation, defined this young woman’s entire life. It ruined her life.
This is a sick and crazy society that would allow something like this to happen. As stated, this took place in 1942 and things have gotten a bit saner with respect to women and their rights in general, but to put a woman through this kind of an ordeal then seems brutal and to do it in the 21st century is unconscionable.
The more I think about it, Tie Your Tubes At Ten is starting to sound like a good idea.
He won’t get elected, then. Even R women don’t want that.
The effect this has on women voters, overall will be interesting.
I did not deserve the death penalty for the crime of the man who raped my mother. Punish rapists, not babies. Let me ask you: Would you support a law which would authorize a rape victim to pay someone to kill her rapist? Or just her innocent child…
Death Penalty eh? But sentencing a woman to bear a child she never wanted imposes a sentence of it’s own on so many of them! I guess most of them don’t matter. Even if for some that child they were forced to bear to term, even if they give it up for adoption is a life sentence (of regular reminders of a horrific experience – and one I hope you’ve never endured) but YOU after all are the only thing that matters. Of course, pregnancy itself can be risky and particularly so for many women who, even in the richest country on earth (by far) don’t have access to quality pre-natal care. Complications, some of which are life altering (i.e. chronic high blood pressure, diabetes and gestational diabetes doesn’t always resolve with childbirth, complications in delivery that result in hysterectomy etc.) or even fatal to the mother, not to mention conditions that develop in the actual fetus that doom the future child to not just a less than normal life but will result in a painful and tortured one don’t matter either I guess. But let’s take a deeper dive into all this.
Reproduction, whether in the plant or animal Kingdoms is actually incredibly inefficient. Even in primates including human beings. In humans, twenty-five to thirty percent of fertilized eggs, what you consider a “full human life” that develop into a blastocyst that can move down the fallopian tubes (although not all do – some become ectopic pregnancies which of course will prove fatal to that “baby” and threaten if not end the life of the mother in every such case) pass right on out of women countless times every day without ever implanting in the uterine wall. Still more will implant, but within weeks become dislodged and again pass without a woman ever knowing she was even pregnant. Still more will result in a spontaneous miscarriage (abortion) because that clump of cells that was moving from embryo to fetus stage will have grown large enough to leave what appears as a clot in the small amount of bleeding a woman sees. Then we have all the miscarriages that happen later in pregnancy where women know they are pregnant and in fact anyone can see she is. And then stillborns (in the late 50s both me and my mother were given up for dead due and even after she survived I was supposed to be stillborn!) or children that die during childbirth or shortly afterwards. When you add it all up forty percent at least, or even close to half of all fertilized eggs wind up never being born as the babies you and others revere – at least until they are born. After that birth (often, too often in fact) forced birth most anti-abortion people I’ve known in my life don’t give two shits about those babies. In millions of cases, “those” women (and “fathers”) should have according to supposedly moral “Christian” people have thought about the consequences of having sex. Even if they were married. Or the women were “sluts, whores, etc. that DESERVE to be inflicted with the burdens of trying to raise a child, keep that child healthy and raise it into being a productive citizen.
Pro birth is NOT the same as pro-life no matter how you spin it. Yes, I’m sure there are exceptions in the ranks of people who believe as you do (and perhaps you are one) but they are the exception and not the rule!
My point is that nature makes reproduction inefficient and that includes human reproduction. And if one is a person of faith and therefore subscribes to the concept that while we don’t always understand it God has a plan that GOD is the biggest abortionist of all.
You have the right to decide for yourself if you want (or ever wanted) to carry a child to term, and then care for that child and bear the time and expense of raising them to adulthood – and beyond. For most people who are parents it’s a lifetime commitment and both in my personal family and at one time professionally I’ve witnessed up close and personal the devastation felt by middle aged and older people who have had one or more of their children die before they did.
You do NOT have the right to force others to adhere to your own personal beliefs on something so intense and life altering.
I doubt anything I’ve written will cause you to reflect on your beliefs the way I have over the decades. I could write reams about that, and even about how starting in early adulthood I helped people who turned to me for such help sort through what to do about an unplanned/unwanted pregnancy. I worked very hard to keep MY personal feelings out of it and focused on helping a woman or couple sort through what was best for them. What years or decades later they could look back on with a measure of peace. Sometimes abortion was chosen, sometimes adoption and sometimes the choice was made to raise a child as best as they could. I never had children of my own (another long story) and was never faced with the choice of a romantic partner who became pregnant and sitting down we me to discuss options so I don’t know for sure what I would have felt in the circumstances of my life at that particular time. But I am grateful that I, and more importantly women I’ve known and ALL women have so often had (despite the best efforts of self-righteous people like you!) a choice.
I for one don’t like this issue being reduced down to cases of rape and/or incest. It’s broader than that. But YOU who are oh so self-righteous about having been born and getting to live your own life apparently don’t have to carry the reminder (often triggered by seemingly innocent statements, images or events) of some guy FORCING you (perhaps over and over) into being a vessel for his lust, threatening your life, beating you, tearing your vaginal organs, cutting you or shooting you and perhaps even thinking he’d left you for dead and all that physical and psychological trauma. Unlike you I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Ok, perhaps that’s a bit unfair on my part because maybe you don’t actually wish it on the woman who was forced to give birth to you or anyone else. But you are at best indifferent to it and that I find disgusting.
Worse, given you appear to have brains and some legal talent it makes me sad that you haven’t applied those traits to work for providing economic justice, universal health care, living wages for all workers and so many other things (including good sex education and quality birth control) to reduce the need for abortion in the first place!
Maybe there’s more money and fame in being a “My mommy got raped by a serial rapist but thankfully for me she wasn’t allow to ‘murder’ me in the womb” activist. Not that it hasn’t always been that way but that asshole Joe Rogan had a TV show that showed how far people will go for their proverbial fifteen minutes of fame.
Jones proves he doesn’t understand how government works much less what the governor can do.
As the governor, he can INFLUENCE action but he CANNOT simply ban abortion. Governors do have executive order powers but an attempt to ban abortions outright would put him in an immediate conflict with the legislature (even if the Legislature wants the same thing, it’s THEIR prerogative to pass the necessary legislation that the Governor then signs). And picking a fight with the Legislature by trying to usurp their power will make a lot of his other wants and goals that much harder to approve (he might ultimately get his abortion plan done but legislators have LOOOONG memories, especially when governors overstep their bounds).
Look at it this way: there will always be states where abortion is legal and women will be traveling to them. This will be quite a boon for the hospitality, airline, bus, etc. industries.
There comes a point where you have to look for silver linings if only to keep from going insane.
A few years ago Ireland had a vote on their constitutions abortion ban – keep the ban or repeal. It looked like it would fail to repeal until a woman wrote a letter to the editor with the account of her recent experience of losing the baby’s heartbeat in the 8th month of pregnancy.
The doctor could not assist in any way and she had just a few days to find a solution – in England, which required buying plane tickets, hotel rooms for her and her husband plus a small casket for the return trip.
I couldn’t find the letter or I would have added a link.
Losing a baby at this stage is a trauma and adding all the costs and pressure of getting all the other aspects of traveling is over the top.
The Irish ban was overturned even though it is a very conservative country.
I’m prochoice, but 30 years ago my then wife & I had spent 3+ years mired in infertility. We each went through multiple procedures, eventually participating in a sperm donor program. We did this 3years. Monthly, at the end 2x month. We went against medical advice & used pergonal, a hormone. Unbelievably, she got pregnant. A month later,, she had to be rushed to the EMERGENCY room screaming in agony. The emts & I could barely get her into the ambulance. She had, as we learned later, 11 eggs in one ovary that had either ruptured or twisted. The hospital staff tried to stop me in the waiting room as she was rushed back into the treatment area. As I barged in, the MD was getting ready to give her a shot. I screamed loud as I could “STOP!!!” , my wife still screaming. The doctor & I shouted back & forth as I learned that shot of morphine would likely kill the life in her, as she was only a month pregnant. I threatened to have every lawyer in town at his door by sunrise(still shouting). He finally agreed to titration with demerol. Today I have a beautiful 29 year old daughter. I probably acted more pro-life in a way polite society would never do. I now have two wonderful grown daughters, (the second adopted as an infant), & I can easily say NOTHING is more fulfilling & blessed than to be a parent. I’m prochoice, but I think women considering abortion should be given every resource to consider alternatives, & society should make it easier by caring more about the children that are here. If I knew I, & my potential child had access to unlimited support during the process & beyond, I may choose differently. One question. Why should MEN, in 2021, in a democratic Republic, be deciding what WOMEN do concerning this??? Except to be part of a supportive network. Or, if u find urself battling the medical establishment @ 3am, the woman, herself, unable to advocate for herself.
My question exactly, why is it mostly men who want so damned much to control a woman’s reproductive health. Sure there are women who want the same thing, but the biggest mouths and egos involved in this fight are men, always men. Demented, controlling, hypocritical, so-called pro-life men who are fine with war, the death penalty, denying vaccine and masks to children and others, who are fine refusing funding for SNAP, Medicare, education etc for children, but by God that fetus is going to live! It’s about the control, the hatred for and envy of women, misogyny.