And yes, it is a somewhat crappy neighborhood.

The weird thing about this story is that I was directed here from a social news website. Even though I am familiar with these crisis centers, I imagined that this bad situation was happening somewhere else. I never imagined it would be my home state. You always think and hope that the problem is somewhere else…

Well, you know how we feminists are: no sense of humor.

Twisty, I for one liked your humor and was going to add to it. Glad I didn’t.

I interviewed another possible sub the other day. he’s a frickin’ godbag it turns out. That’s another as my plumber is too. mind you, nice people as i don’t get it their political shit as they haven’t a frickin’ clue and could care less because they are going to heaven anyway.

They are everywhere and they believe they are right, it is the core of christianity; chauvinism complete.

1) IN a society where many women still don’t hold the power to make choices about how and when they will have sex in a relationship, women will have pregnancies that they do not want and often may not be able to handle emotionally, economically or physically.

2) In a society where rape and incest are rampant, women and young girls will have pregnancies occur that they did not want. To expect that a women or young girl traumatize her body and mind further by being forced to carry the seed of her rapist is beyond cruel and unusual punishment in my mind.

3) In a society where teenage girls are pressured to have sex as early as 12 or 13 and yet are almost completely reliant upon the willingness or interest of their parents to inform them of birth control methods and attainment, unwanted pregnancies will occur.

4) In a society where speaking about sexuality and sexual activities is embarrassing to some and possibly the cause of fear of harm in others, unwanted and unplanned pregnancies will occur.

Making abortion illegal conpletely or even with conditions, will mean that women will have to stand before a judge and describe in lurid detail the sexual activity that caused their pregnancy. The consequences of such public disclosure will of course, be borne by her alone.

THe fact that anyone would even consider that a pregnant woman should have to stand before a judge or some other party and explain how they incurred the pregnancy and every other lurid detail speaks volumes about how little our society cares about women and their experiences. it also speaks volumes for how little our society values a woman’s ability to make her own decisions about her life and how our society (partriarchy) has no problem asserting that they should be involved in every aspect of a women’s life.

mind you, no one asks a man to step forward before a panel of women and justify his order of viagra.

To belittle the physical, social and economic consequences of carrying a child to term, not only belittles the experience of child rearing completely. The anti-choicers focus on glossy Dr. Spock-like, middle class images of children, completely downplaying and trivializing the work and lifetime committment that child rearing is.

To ban abortion or make its services less available by legal means ( already effectively taken place by coercion), would be to relegate unfairly, women and women only, to a life of servitude economically, socially and physically to a child for which that women has no way to guarantee support for from the absent parent.

For many woman to include the father or even her family in the process of her decision making, or to have to include them in the rearing and upbringing process of raising a child, could lead to undue harm and abuse for a lifetime, much less possibly for the child as well.

Annie figure this: Those who wage the war against abortion rights also have supported wars against:

Funding for government support of single mothers who cannot affort the resources to care for a child
Funding for enforcement of child support laws
Funding for making birth control available free or cheap so that all woman can afford it
Funding for birth control and sex education
Funding for affordable health insurance initiatives
Funding for teen pregnancy prevention programs which usually target females

Also, consider that women still on average, earn only .75 to every dollar a man makes, which means that her ability to afford to care for a child on her own is 24% less. That’s over an average, which means that high earner women are included in that number, which skews the fact that most women who are forced to have a child whether they like it or not, are by and large, low income women who can even more ill afford to support a child alone.

Since fundies believe that all women should stay at home and not work
That all women should not get divorced
That all woman should not pursue careers
that all woman should live under the control of a man

Also consider that still, in almost all households, the woman still assumes the major duties of child care, without help or pay and with no right to demand that the other party that helped bring the child into the world help raise it, with the exception of child support, which is a joke anyway.

pro-choice means just that; leaving the choice to have an abortion or not solely with the woman. it is the core of women’s rights and the stomping it out is the at the core of attacking women’s sovreignty and economic freedom.