More thoughts on the cognitive dissonance in the anti-choice movement

[jianantonic]

I had an abortion.

I am not a murderer. I don't believe the fetus I aborted was a human. Sure, it was life, but so is an amoeba. I'm not in favor of mass amoeba killing just for sport, but if you have a reason to kill an amoeba, like you're walking and you just didn't see it there, well, that's okay.

If you believe my abortion was murder, that is your right. We have different beliefs on what it means to take a life.

But I'm a pacifist. I'm anti-gun. I'm anti-war. I'm anti-violence. Anti-death penalty. And I'm a vegetarian. I don't kill individuals -- human or not -- that can feel pain, and I don't support anyone else doing that, either.

A stranger called me a murderer today. A stranger who is pro-gun, pro-war, pro-death penalty, and pro-killing-animals-to-eat-them, thinks that the fetus I aborted was a life and I deserve to rot in hell for ending it. But she's in favor of activities and policies that kill people who walk this earth. And animals. I understand if you don't think animals = people. I think a lot of the animals we eat are a lot smarter than most infant humans, and certainly moreso than fetal humans. But anyway, I think we can all agree that a human being who walks the earth is definitely alive. A person. But you call it un-American to not support our violent efforts against others, and will talk yourself blue in the face over the idea that terminating an unintended pregnancy is murder? That's where you are WRONG.

If a vegetarian pacifist anti-death penalty pro-lifer wants to call me a murderer, that's fine. Their beliefs line up. I still disagree, but they have integrity anyway. But unless you are all those things, calling me a murderer is disingenuous at best. And kind of rude, don't you think?. 

Comments

[quandary87.livejournal.com]

You go.

I'm too drunk to post an opinion that dodged people's sincerely held belief at the moment, but again you go. A small collection of cells that can't survive outside of the parent organism is merely that and at the parent's call to keep or drop. It's just cells. It doesn't have feelings or concerns, and consequently why should it have rights?

The details of arguing fetuses in later trimesters is undoubtably reasonable, but not the case here.

[acousticel.livejournal.com]

Love to you. No one should judge you. You are not a murderer. I'm a Roman Catholic dyke/genderqueer vegan without a uterus who is sending love to you because you are a human who had to make a choice for your life. I'm always so shocked at how women especially judge other women for it. Until you're in another woman's shoes, you can never know.

This world has enough freaking people in it already. I see one less live birth as a plus given that a North American white baby can eat up so many more natural resources than say an indigenous baby in Africa. I am really reviled by a lot of society for my child free by choice (and medical infertility due to pcos).

Thank you for this. Women who speak up about abortion choices are my heroines.

[jianantonic.livejournal.com]

<3

[redlily.livejournal.com]

Can I just . . . you can be pro-choice and child-free by choice without slagging on breeders. Meg made the right choice for her, but it's not because it kept America free of another white baby.

And while society may give me a lot of lip service about being a great American for having given birth to a nice white baby boy, money talks (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/08/07/3468715/motherhood-penalty/) and bullshit walks (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2015/10/21/nurses-fathers-teachers-mothers-why-do-we-devalue-someone-the-minute-they-care-for-others/).

[kixeldorado.livejournal.com]

*ponders the ethics of amoeba hunting*

[redlily.livejournal.com]

I'm gonna say — as a vegetarian — that the vegetarian thing is a red herring that will probably not win over anyone. The way we sustain ourselves is always going to involve the death of animals (http://smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1722#comic) whether we like it or not. And we evolved to be omnivores. It doesn't do anyone any good to guilt other people about eating the diet we evolved to eat.

The other stuff is dead on, but I think it was flamingophoenix who hit on something even closer to home. Just ask people if they protest fertility clinics, which have collectively discarded literally millions of fertilized eggs since the invention of IVF. That's an exact equivalence, and it's so fun to watch people squirm about that. Because the true answer is, they want women to be punished for having sex. But they can't say it aloud.

[istar.livejournal.com]

Completely agreed! I eat mostly vegetarian, but talking about it on the internet does not win any arguments.

Pro-lifers are not interested in science or medicine, even when they argue on the internet about "what the majority of scientists agree on". They are repeating what they've been told by leaders in their community who reinforce anti-science viewpoints in speeches on a weekly basis.

[redlily.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the IVF thing is an argument that will at best make about 5% of pro-lifers do a self-examination. But you're dead on about the majority.

[deepseasiren.livejournal.com]

I think what I find is the irony of how people think, Meg. I had an abortion many years ago, and when I told a male friend about it, who by the way happens to be a Vietnam vet who most likely 'aborted' the lives of innocent people over there and other soldiers in battle, he sort of surprised me by his vehemence against abortion. I thought, if you think abortion is murder, how the hell can you justify being a soldier and murdering others? And he had said something about it being in self-defense. I said " When you dropped a bomb on a village, how is that self-defense??"

Or when people who are pro-death penalty are against abortion, and the basis for abortion is " well it's wrong because it's murder" you should be against 'murder' in all forms.

[acousticel.livejournal.com]

Just going to say that I don't think that I deserved the slagging as I slagged no one. If anything I'm apologizing for women like me who can't have kids (hence the medical portion of my comment) who judge women who've aborted because of envy. I am child free by choice made by my body before I really ever got the chance to choose; so I comfort myself by saying I actually chose not to have kids. How does that slag anyone when science tells us that the western world population numbers are even more pressing on the environment than fuel or plastics? It's just my opinion, and I was supporting Meg. I respect your opinion and hoped that my comment would be received in th safe-making manner that I posted it.
Peace. Walking away now.

[silkandbones.livejournal.com]

I don't know the details of your abortion, but I'm with you. Obviously we don't know how we're going to react to something until we get to a point where we have to make a decision, but I fully believe in the right to choose, should it come to that. People who support wars, guns and the death penalty for example (as you mentioned) but claim to be pro-life, probably mean they are pro-birth to be honest. Having a child does not end at giving birth, being pro-life should mean ensuring a quality life for that child, a safe environment for them to grow in, an education all the way through to college/university , access to proper healthcare and support (at the very least). I think for example for me at this minute, I use birth control to avoid getting pregnant, but if I accidentally did, I am in no way prepared to have a child and more importantly, I don't want to.
One of the arguments that I just can't stand is the whole "well what if they were to find the cure to cancer/aids/whatever?"; and what about the thousands of people killed because of war who could very well already be on their way to finding said cure?
Like I said I can't say I've been there, but I have friends who have and the whole argument makes me so angry I just end up ranting a lot of the time.

[pinkhorizons.livejournal.com]

I get your point on the vegetarianism, I think it's a great example of the cognitive dissonance around abortion beliefs. It's too easy for those of us who eat meat to totally divorce the process of eating steak from the taking of life that precedes it. Life that is way more "alive" than a clump of fetus, at least as I see it (as someone who works with farm animals). Sure, anti-abortion people can say they value human life above all else, but that is making a choice to do so. But apparently only they get to choose which lives are really "alive." When other people make different choices, they're murders. Riiiight.

What I get from the anti-abortion movement is "I never kill... except all the times when I do."