thebicker:

reistrider:

campdracula5eva:

bebinn:

rhrealitycheck:

Scarlet Letters: Getting the History of Abortion and Contraception Right

Abortion was not just legal—it was a safe, condoned, and practiced procedure in colonial America and common enough to appear in the legal and medical records of the period. Official abortion laws did not appear on the books in the United States until 1821, and abortion before quickening did not become illegal until the 1860s. If a woman living in New England in the 17th or 18th centuries wanted an abortion, no legal, social, or religious force would have stopped her.

Reminder that records of contraception and abortion exist all the way back to 1550 BCE in ancient Egypt!

This was a really fascinating read. Until the early 19th century, abortion was legal until “quickening,” or when the pregnant person first felt the baby kick – anywhere from 14 to 26 weeks into the pregnancy. Society only began to condemn it when people decided white, middle- to upperclass women weren’t having enough children soon enough in their lives, and when male doctors started taking over traditionally female health care fields, like midwifery.

Yep, shockingly enough, it’s never, ever been about the life of the fetus – only about misogyny, racism, and classism (ableism, too, though the article doesn’t discuss it).

The bolded is hella important.

From the first article: “Increased female independence was also perceived as a threat to male power and patriarchy, especially as Victorian women increasingly volunteered outside the home for religious and charitable causes.”

Quick reminder that the modern pro-life movement didn’t even begin until the 1970’s. Conservatives were angry about the birth control pill and Roe v. Wade, and so the pro-life movement was developed as a TARGETED response to women’s lib and reproductive rights. In a lot of non-Western countries, the idea that an embryo is assigned any value or rights at all is just mind-boggling.

anti-capitalistlesbianwitch:

This Doonesbury abortion cartoon was originally written by Gary Trudeau in 2012, in response to a Texas law requiring women to have an ultrasound before an abortion. It was banned from many major newspapers, and they ran syndicated cartoons in its place.

Now seems like an appropriate time to bring these cartoons back, with the passing of Texas’ new law requiring the burial or cremation of miscarried or aborted fetal remains. I guess we’ll have to wait and see if Trudeau decides to write the sequel.

(Source)

escapedosmil:

thebicker:

reistrider:

campdracula5eva:

bebinn:

rhrealitycheck:

Scarlet Letters: Getting the History of Abortion and Contraception Right

Abortion was not just legal—it was a safe, condoned, and practiced procedure in colonial America and common enough to appear in the legal and medical records of the period. Official abortion laws did not appear on the books in the United States until 1821, and abortion before quickening did not become illegal until the 1860s. If a woman living in New England in the 17th or 18th centuries wanted an abortion, no legal, social, or religious force would have stopped her.

Reminder that records of contraception and abortion exist all the way back to 1550 BCE in ancient Egypt!

This was a really fascinating read. Until the early 19th century, abortion was legal until “quickening,” or when the pregnant person first felt the baby kick – anywhere from 14 to 26 weeks into the pregnancy. Society only began to condemn it when people decided white, middle- to upperclass women weren’t having enough children soon enough in their lives, and when male doctors started taking over traditionally female health care fields, like midwifery.

Yep, shockingly enough, it’s never, ever been about the life of the fetus – only about misogyny, racism, and classism (ableism, too, though the article doesn’t discuss it).

The bolded is hella important.

From the first article: “Increased female independence was also perceived as a threat to male power and patriarchy, especially as Victorian women increasingly volunteered outside the home for religious and charitable causes.”

Quick reminder that the modern pro-life movement didn’t even begin until the 1970’s. Conservatives were angry about the birth control pill and Roe v. Wade, and so the pro-life movement was developed as a TARGETED response to women’s lib and reproductive rights. In a lot of non-Western countries, the idea that an embryo is assigned any value or rights at all is just mind-boggling.

Oh look, the pro-life movement is old school meninism.

Unpopular Opinion: I don’t see how abortion can be considered anything other than premeditated murder.

brothersintheimpalaarchive:

Well, it’s pretty simple to understand “how”. The term “premeditated murder” functions on the acceptance of a few premises. Here’s two that are important in this conversation:

1. It requires that a person is killed

2. It requires that the killing is wrongful

Many pro-choicers would disagree that abortion is premeditated murder because they don’t think either of these clauses applies to a (generally nonviable) fetus.

Not everyone defines life (or perhaps sentient and therefore considerable life) at the same stage of fetal development. Therefore, some pro-choicers would disagree with your labeling because they don’t agree that abortion is the killing of a person. Instead they understand it as the killing of the biological precursors to a person.

And it’s definitely not as simple a situation as a mother who um “premeditates the murder” of her fetus because she has some evil (‘wrongful’ if we’re looking back to the two premises I outlined earlier) ulterior motive. Reasons mothers have for opting for abortion that are arguably better than bringing the baby to term:

1. The baby was a result of rape.

2. Mom knows she won’t be able to provide adequate emotional/financial support for baby. She knows she won’t be able to give baby an even relatively good or healthy life.

3. Mom knows she won’t be able to provide and she doesn’t want to inflict a life of foster homes/homelessness on a child because of the pretty much infinite list of shitty things that are known to happen in the foster system.

4. It is unsafe for the mother to carry the baby to term because of health reasons and doing so would most likely kill her in the process.

5. The baby is anencephalic or otherwise in almost complete certainty of being unable to function or remain alive outside the womb for any period of time.

Regardless of whether you think these motivations and understandings of abortion are valid or not, you have to accept that if you choose to define abortion as “premeditated murder” and leave no room for any other view, you’re implying that even for the cases in which the child would be unloved/unsupported/brought into poverty/abuse/incapacitating sickness/abandonment/etc… or potentially kill the mother if brought to term, the mother who makes the decision to opt for a more humane/safe option of aborting the fetus should be considered not only a murderer, but one that is thought to have wicked motivations. I feel that this conclusion is fundamentally wrong.

mooselyfe:

strangelyobsessedwithstuff:

revengeofnemo:

If a 16 year old would want to adopt a child no one would give it to her because she isn’t 21 yet or not an adult or maybe too irresponsible.

So if a 16 year old is so irresponsible and not an adult yet so she wouldn’t even be allowed to adopt a child, then why would the government force her to get that child even though she might not want it?

Let’s talk about how logical the bill against abortion is nowpoli

apersnicketylemon:

chickenslayer99:

This is killing a human life.

At 23 weeks chances are good that this fetus is being removed because it is:

a) Already dead
b) Suffering abnormalities such as it developed no brain, or had a serious genetic condition that would kill it quickly.
c) Was actively dying (not dead yet but would be within a few days, 100% guarunteed, 0 chance of saving it)
d) Was actively killing the pregnant person.

Late term abortions, as shown here, make up only 1.5% of all abortions. The above four reasons are the only reasons such procedures are performed. Almost every abortion performed after 20 weeks is done on a wanted pregnancy. So you know what that means? You’re calling people who miscarried murderers. You just implied people who had a miscarriage or would have died murderers. How dare you call yourself pro life for that.

Now for the fun fact: They used to use a different procedure for these abortions in which they removed the fetus intact and allowed these people to grieve for the intact fetus, have pictures, etc. Pro lifers decided people losing a wanted pregnancy should not be allowed to grieve an intact fetus and we were left with this.

Congrats. Your movement is the reason they use this one now when people lose a wanted pregnancy late into the pregnancy. Your movement is intentionally making it harder for people to recover from the lose of a much wanted pregnancy. It’s your movement who left grieving people with this instead of allowing them something easier to deal with, something that would let them hold their deceased fetus.

Congrats. If you think you were ‘saving’ something think again. You’re hurting born people. You’re hurting people who lose a wanted pregnancy by shaming this abortion procedure. And you’re movement is the reason this is procedure doctors are forced to use now. You’re probably an awful and mean person to tell people losing a wanted pregnancy that they’re killers.

howprolifeofyou:

things that actually help lower abortion rates:

comprehensive sex education

free/easily accessible birth control [x] [x] [x]

better healthcare to make it more affordable to be pregnant [x]

paid maternity leave to make it more affordable to raise a child

things that don’t help lower abortion rates:

harassing people outside of clinics [x]

spreading lies and misinformation about abortion

murdering doctors [x]

making abortion illegal or hard to access [x] [x] [x]