Anti-Lifers: Call Them What They Are

As with all Reich-wing, freakazoid demands, that the real consequences are avoidable suffering is either irrelevant to them - or exactly what they want.


David Atkins at Hullabaloo:

One of the more reprehensible tactics of the anti-choice movement is the "abortion survivor" story: the child born of rape or incest who gives thanks for not having been aborted. These stories, of course, beg the question entirely: at the time of their mother's decision, they weren't fully human or even conscious, and it wasn't their choice to make.

Well, Lynn Beisner at Role/Reboot has a challenging and powerful story to tell as well:

The narrative that anti-choice crusaders are telling is powerful, moving, and best of all, it has a happy ending. It makes the woman who carries to term a hero, and for narrative purposes, it hides her maternal failing. We cannot argue against heroic, redemptive happy-ending fairy tales using cold statistics. If we want to keep our reproductive rights, we must be willing to tell our stories, to be willing and able to say, “I love my life, but I wish my mother had aborted me.”

An abortion would have absolutely been better for my mother. An abortion would have made it more likely that she would finish high school and get a college education. At college in the late 1960s, it seems likely that she would have found feminism or psychology or something that would have helped her overcome her childhood trauma and pick better partners. She would have been better prepared when she had children. If nothing else, getting an abortion would have saved her from plunging into poverty. She likely would have stayed in the same socioeconomic strata as her parents and grandparents who were professors. I wish she had aborted me because I love her and want what is best for her.

Abortion would have been a better option for me. If you believe what reproductive scientists tell us, that I was nothing more than a conglomeration of cells, then there was nothing lost. I could have experienced no consciousness or pain. But even if you discount science and believe that I had consciousness and could experience pain at six gestational weeks, I would chose the brief pain or fear of an abortion over the decades of suffering I endured.

SNIP

 It is true that in the past 12 years, I have been able to rise above the circumstances of my birth and build a life that I truly love. But no one should have to make such a Herculean struggle for simple normalcy. Even given the happiness and success I now enjoy, if I could go back in time and make the choice for my mother, it would be abortion.

 Read the whole thing. It's a powerful and thought-provoking piece.