Okay, so feel free to ignore my Nicaragua example (although it's worth noting the Pope applauded that law, so there's powerful people in developed countries who damn well know about ectopic pregnancies who nonetheless applaud a law whose very statement contains a bald lie).
But that pharmacist who wouldn't fill antibiotic prescriptions for women who had presumably had abortions? That's not about doing what's best for the fetus; the fetuses were already dead, assuming they existed in the first place. Antibiotics are part of the aftercare for surgery; denying them was placing these women at general risk to their health and specific risk to their future fertility. Given human nature, it's possible the pharmacist just meant to be a petty asshole, but their choice of assholery strongly suggests punishing "bad" women as a driving motive.
And in my experience, often when pro-choice folks argue that anti-choice-in-abortion-and-increasingly-contraception groups are motivated by controlling women, they're talking about these sorts of examples. It may not be a conscious motive, and I don't think the claim that it's a motivation requires that it be one. I really do think it's there and that it's a major force behind the movement. (FWIW, I think genuinely wanting to save some concept of innocent helpless baby is another one. How much this concept and actual fetuses and embryos overlap...)
In the US though, I think even the majority of anti-abortion people think that women should have some form of equal rights, they just can't figure out what equal means.
Oh, gods. Sometimes I think they can't decide if fetuses should get rights no born person has (bodily sovereignty issues), or if they should get fewer (reluctance to call for jail time for the mother despite claims that abortion is murder), or if pregnancies that go tragically wrong shouldn't be allowed to be any less shitty (the intact D&X ban)...
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Date: 2008-07-17 03:43 am (UTC)But that pharmacist who wouldn't fill antibiotic prescriptions for women who had presumably had abortions? That's not about doing what's best for the fetus; the fetuses were already dead, assuming they existed in the first place. Antibiotics are part of the aftercare for surgery; denying them was placing these women at general risk to their health and specific risk to their future fertility. Given human nature, it's possible the pharmacist just meant to be a petty asshole, but their choice of assholery strongly suggests punishing "bad" women as a driving motive.
And in my experience, often when pro-choice folks argue that anti-choice-in-abortion-and-increasingly-contraception groups are motivated by controlling women, they're talking about these sorts of examples. It may not be a conscious motive, and I don't think the claim that it's a motivation requires that it be one. I really do think it's there and that it's a major force behind the movement. (FWIW, I think genuinely wanting to save some concept of innocent helpless baby is another one. How much this concept and actual fetuses and embryos overlap...)
In the US though, I think even the majority of anti-abortion people think that women should have some form of equal rights, they just can't figure out what equal means.
Oh, gods. Sometimes I think they can't decide if fetuses should get rights no born person has (bodily sovereignty issues), or if they should get fewer (reluctance to call for jail time for the mother despite claims that abortion is murder), or if pregnancies that go tragically wrong shouldn't be allowed to be any less shitty (the intact D&X ban)...