If you were to ask a conservative man what he would do if someone restrained him and forcefully extracted his bone marrow, his answer would probably make mention of a veritable arsenal kept in his cabinet. He’d likely feel perfectly justified in killing any assailant who would dare to make any use of his body whatsoever without his consent. Whether or not the assailant needed the marrow to save his life would make very little difference.

Why? Because we have a unique right to our own bodies. If anyone wants something of them, they go through us. As much as our homes and property mean to us, the right to ownership over things is nothing compared to our right to bodily autonomy. This is why rape is rape and not ‘theft of sexual services.’ It’s why we don’t draft organ donors or force the population to relinquish a pint of blood every eight weeks. It’s also why forcing pregnancy is illegal and abortion isn’t.

The “pro-life” method of getting around this is claiming that pregnancy and motherhood are the natural purpose of women, and therefore a blessing, regardless of the circumstances. It’s bullshit. Anyone with any respect at all for women knows that each of us have our own hopes and goals in our lives, and sometimes they just don’t include pregnancy or children. For some women, it’s the ultimate joy in life, and for some of us it isn’t. Telling a woman facing an unwanted pregnancy that pregnancy is pregnancy and therefore a blessing is like telling a rape victim that sex is sex.

Here’s the bottom line: whatever the moral dilemma over humanity, personhood, and what that means for a fetus, women have the right to abortion because they have a right to decide what resides in and lives off of their bodies. Many pro-choicers* do in fact see a moral crisis in aborting a late term fetus that may have the capacity for feeling, but they understand that the law shouldn’t force someone to do ‘the right thing’ when it would effectively destroy their basic human rights.

*Even Amanda Marcotte, scourge of the religious right, sees a moral issue with killing a sentient fetus. It just doesn’t mean that women’s rights can be instantly negated.

One of the facets of pro-life argument that I absolutely CANNOT stand is the idea that we poor, mentally-unstable females must be kept from abortion for our own good. Whenever I hear it, I get the distinct mental image of someone gently stroking a nervous cat before casually offering it a bowl of antifreeze. The pro-life establishment has never been interested in upholding women’s welfare, and when it given the opportunity, it will make every effort to endanger women who would dare go against its wishes.

For example, Tom Minnery (Vice President of Focus on the Family) on the “Partial-Birth Abortion” ban:

“The old procedure, which is still legal, involves using forceps to pull the baby apart in utero, which means there is greater legal liability and danger of internal bleeding from a perforated uterus. So we firmly believe there will be fewer later-term abortions as a result of this ruling.”

Yes, Minnery applauds the fact that women will be endangered by the legislation his organization fought tooth and nail for. Tell women you have their best interests at heart, then push politics to make their medical care as risky as possible. Groups like Focus on the Family love to point out how dangerous abortion supposedly is, but it’s not every day that they publicly pat themselves on the back for doing their part to make it that way. Fortunately for pro-lifers, they often don’t have to bother with using the political system to force doctors to perform more dangerous procedures. Spreading lies and misinformation about current abortion techniques usually suffices. Rachel at Women’s Health News has a wonderful informative post that debunks the recent pro-life myth that medical abortions induced with RU-486 are killing women “at an alarming rate” and cause infertility and miscarriages.

The plain and simple statistical fact that pro-lifers NEVER admit is that women are exponentially more likely to die from childbirth than from abortion. But while anti-abortion advocates try to use the inherent risks of abortion to criminalize it, pro-choicers trust women to weigh the risks themselves and make their own decisions. None of us will try to limit births simply because they can be dangerous. The idea of it sounds ludicrous, but then, so should the idea of limiting women’s reproductive freedoms for their own good.

Amnesty International is reaffirming its stand in favor of abortion access for victims of rape, sexual assault, and incest, and in cases when pregnancy poses a risk to their lives or a “grave risk” to their health. The policy change (Amnesty previously called itself “neutral” on abortion - it opposed forced abortions, but neither attacked nor supported voluntary abortion) was inspired by regions like Darfur, where rape is being used as a weapon of war.

“Amnesty International stands alongside the victims and survivors of human rights violations. Our policy reflects our obligation of solidarity as a human rights movement with, for example, the rape survivor in Darfur who, because she is left pregnant as a result of the enemy, is further ostracised [sic] by her community,” said Kate Gilmore (Executive Deputy Secretary General of Amnesty International).

Amnesty International is still far from acknowledging the right to abortion as fundamental in defending each individual’s bodily integrity, but it’s taken a huge step in the right direction. Countless victims will finally have all of their options open to them. Amnesty is also calling for an end to the criminalization of abortion “to ensure women have access to heath care when complications arise from abortion and to defend women’s access to abortion … when their health or human rights are in danger.”

Ratzinger is not a happy Pope:

The church, which considers abortion to be murder and never justified, has urged Catholic organizations to withdraw their support for
Amnesty over the policy. The Vatican says Amnesty has “betrayed its mission.”

If forcing pregnancy on battered, assaulted women so they cannot return to their communities is “the mission,” then it’s about time it was betrayed. If sentencing innocent women to death by keeping abortion out of reach for those in risk is “the mission,” then we need to drop the damn mission. It’s just tragic that religious leaders are so desperate to keep victims of human rights violations in the dark.

The newest and shiniest excuse to chain women to their kitchen sinks is here: a Swedish study has found that gender equality in a household increases the risk of illness and disability.

Yes, we feminists are skeptical:

The British newspapers that ran this as a news story (”Why feminism ‘could be bad for your health”‘, was the Daily Mail headline) didn’t provide any statistics to support this theory, which had me pondering just what “a strong link” (as The Independent put it) actually is. How much more likely is one to be disabled, for instance, if one hails from an equal household? Is equality a prime factor here, or is it simply that people with managerial jobs - male and female - work harder and drink more and go to bed later than people without? Sadly, the only number provided in most of the coverage was that the study was conducted “across Sweden’s 290 municipalities”. Gosh, that’s a lot of municipalities, I guess we’re supposed to think. They must be right, having studied as many as all that.

I don’t usually put much stock in studies that can’t provide any solid evidence for their conclusions - but let’s humor it a bit:

The scientists, from the Swedish National Institute of Public Health, said a possible explanation for the link between equality and illness is that men’s health may be adversely affected by a loss of what had been seen as traditional male privileges.

Look, if your testicles shrivel up and drop off the second society starts to question male privelege, you’re not really doing very well at making the case that men are naturally superior. Real men can accept that respecting women as equals doesn’t somehow adversely affect their manhood. The differences between the sexes aren’t something to be ashamed of, but making assumptions about them in order to promote a skewed hierarchy is just bullshit.

They suggested that women’s health could be damaged by greater opportunities for risky behaviour as a result of increased income combined with the stress of longer working hours.

Yes, if your money supply isn’t under the complete control of another individual, it’s probably easier to get your hands on a few packs of cigarettes or a six-pack. But women aren’t children, and their husbands have no right to dictate what they can and can’t do to their own bodies. Discussions and compromises are one thing; authoritarian control is another.

And child-rearing, while rewarding for many parents, is no easy job. Different jobs are associated with different stressors, and I remain unconvinced that stay-at-home parenting is inherently less stressful than every other line of work. If anything, this theory exacerbates the myth that parenting is an inferior choice - it’s not!

This isn’t the first attempt to charge feminism with numerous social ills. Zoe demonstrates:

For ages now, for instance, the argument has been bandied around that feminism gives you cancer. Sounds unlikely? Well, let me walk you through the theory. Having children later - which is what happens if you are a feminist and you work - makes you more likely to get breast cancer. Not having children at all - which is what happens if you are a feminist and it’s all about you rather than nurturing - makes you more likely to get breast cancer and ovarian cancer. Drinking and smoking - which is what happens if you are a feminist and you are financially independent, and you don’t do what you’re told - gives you throat and mouth cancer; smoking, of course, also gives you lung cancer. Just about the only cancer feminism doesn’t give you is prostate cancer, and I wouldn’t put it past us feminists to start stealing prostates the way we’ve already stolen managerial positions and bar stools, would you?

So, there you have it. Feminism causes cancer. According to American journalist, Naomi Schaefer Riley, it also makes you more likely to be raped and murdered because feminists go out in the evenings and drink more than we should. (And, laughably, we think that whatever we wear and wherever we go, yes means yes and no means no. Idiots.)

Feminism will not cause the end of Western Civilization as we know it. It really won’t. It didn’t cause the plague, it wasn’t behind Katrina, it didn’t result in the atrocities of Abu Ghraib, and it doesn’t act as a new sort of chemical castration method.

You know what the problem is with American women these days? Somewhere along the line they got to thinking that they were, you know, people. Equals, even. They started acknowledging their own desires and setting their own standards; they began to direct their own lives and choose who would be a part of them.

Clearly, we’ve been spoiled.

One company offers a “solution”: mail-order brides who are beautiful, significantly younger, educated [and] unspoiled by feminism.

That’s what a real man wants; a woman who:
- is perdy
- is wrinkle-free
- has an Eastern European education
- thinks of herself as a second-class citizen, and
- wants a one-way ticket out of her country - and is willing to marry herself off to get it.

Ladies, you can have him.

The real tragedy in all this is that these women live in a world in which they feel their best option is to be plucked off a website and shipped away to a foreign country to marry a complete stranger - someone who’s probably paying a few grand for a good-looking wife who will clean the dishes with a smile on her face and do as she’s told.

And all this is marketed as “true love.”

Ugh.

I am for options.

I am for voluntary abstinence, contraception variety and availability, and sex education.

I am for safe abortion, adoption options, and motherhood.

I am for those women who choose to be mothers, those who will choose to be mothers, and those who choose to not be mothers.

I am for freedom, self-determination, and choice.