In an earlier article about abortion, I had stated emphatically that in a culture in which women are considered things for use, the results of such use are likewise considered things to use or to throw away. In other words, when women are regarded as things for sexual use and then as things for disposal afterward, then natural result of this use (the conception of children) are likewise regards as things for disposal. The humanity of women has been ignored and denigrated. The humanity of children has been ignored and denigrated.<\/p>\n
. . . I have blogged repeatedly that abortion is dehumanizing and degrading to women. Abortion degrades and dehumanizes both women and their children.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
There is nothing at all about abortion in and of itself that degrades or dehumanizes women. As I\u2019ve become more involved with my local Planned Parenthood clinic, one thing that I\u2019ve come to feel very strongly is that the availability of abortion is actually the opposite of degrading or dehumanizing to women\u2014rather, it grants them a choice, options, and control over their lives.\u00a0I agree with other pro-choice advocates when they argue that it is the idea that women should be forced to continue pregnancies they don\u2019t want or can\u2019t afford to continue that is dehumanizing and degrading. But Kae Am\u2019s entire essay reads like she\u2019s never considered, or even heard, this perspective.<\/p>\n
Oh, and on the point of abortion being dehumanizing and degrading to children\u2014there is nothing about the fact that women can choose whether to continue a pregnancy or terminate it that degrades or dehumanizes my daughter Sally, or my son Bobby. What Kae Am is actually referring to when she says \u201cchildren\u201d is the embryo\/fetus. This also obscures the pro-choice goal that every child be a wanted child\u2014there is actually a very good argument to be made that abortion is actually a good thing for children, as it helps ensure that they will be born into families where they are wanted, loved, and cared for. But again, I get the feeling that Kae Am has not heard this perspective, or at the very least has never actually listened<\/em> to it.<\/p>\n
When women are things for sexual use to dispose afterward, then natural result of this use are likewise things for disposal. Recently, the news has reported that three women\u2014Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Gina DeJesus\u2014had been abducted by Ariel Castro.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors said Thursday\u00a0they may seek the death penalty against Ariel Castro, the man accused of imprisoning three women at his home for a decade, as police charged that he impregnated one of his captives at least five times and then starved her and punched her in the belly until she miscarried.<\/p>\n
Castro now faces murder charges for the deaths of the unborn. And here is where the humanity of women connects to the humanity of children.<\/p>\n
Castro regarded neither women nor children as humans. When they became pregnant, he forced abortions upon them for more sex. What he had done is indeed abortion. Abortion is the termination of an unwanted fetus. And this shows how abortion dehumanizes both women and children.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This makes no sense at all. Kae Am is, I believe, trying to suggest that regarding women as not human and regarding abortion as morally acceptable go hand in hand, and her argument to that affect is to hold up one man who both kidnapped, raped, starved, and tortured women, beating them until they had miscarriages. And then she does it again:<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Kermit Gosnell trial\u00a0is another prime example of how abortion dehumanizes women and children.<\/p>\n
After the abortion,\u00a0Shayquana Abrams testified, she was so ill and in such pain that her aunt took her to a hospital. Abrams said she was diagnosed with a \u201cgrapefruit-sized abscess\u201d on her side and a blood clot in the vein near her heart<\/p>\n
And the feet of her aborted baby were severed for Gosnell to use as decorations. Gosnell decorated his dwelling with the feet of several aborted babies. Gosnell gave his women pain medication that never worked, and whenever the women protested or squirmed, he slapped and punched their legs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Castro and Gosnell both regarded women as less than human and performed abortions, Kae Am tells us, and that means abortion is inherently dehumanizing and degrading to women. I\u2019m sorry, in what universe does that actually follow? What about the vast, vast majority of those who provide abortions who do<\/em> believe in the humanity of women, and who provide abortions in large part because<\/em> they believe in women\u2019s humanity? The abortions Gosnell performed were degrading to women, but it does not follow that all abortions are degrading to women or that abortions are inherently degrading to women. Similarly, it was, yes, very degrading for the women whom Castro starved and beat until they miscarried, and even dehumanizing, but in what world does it make sense to compare miscarriages induced by beatings with abortions woman freely choose\u00a0exercising\u00a0their\u00a0own agency?<\/p>\n
Castro faces murder charges for the forced abortions of the children conceived by rape, but if these women had went to an abortionist to eliminate children of rape, there would never be any murder charges because the children would instead be considered non-living non-human entities or burdens for removal and disposal. I say this to reveal the hypocrisy and how our culture has a subjective double-standard over women and children as if they are human in some instances and non-human in other instances. Either women and children are human, or they\u2019re not; the answer should never be \u201chuman in some situations; non-human in other situations.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I don\u2019t know what charges Castro is up on, but if he\u2019s being charged with murder I suspect it\u2019s more out of a desire to impose the death penalty on him than anything else (Do I think he should be charged for starving and beating the women? Yes. Do I think he should be charged with murder for it? No.). Castro\u2019s beating the women until they suffered miscarriages was a crime, but it was a crime for a different reason than Kae Am seems to realize. These beatings were not a crime against the embryo or fetus, they were a crime against the women<\/em>. Forced miscarriages or abortions, however they are performed or induced, are always wrong\u2014they violate a woman\u2019s bodily autonomy just as much as does forced pregnancy. I would guess that Kae Am\u2019s inability to see that pro-choice individuals\u2019 opposition to forced abortions (or in this case miscarriages induced by beatings) is not hypocrisy (actually, it\u2019s rather the opposite) is at least in part based on the lack of emphasis placed on consent in many parts of Christianity.<\/p>\n
Pro-abortion advocates tend to focus on abortion in cases of rape as if the abortion itself would make the world a better place for women. What about stopping rapes and preventing rape altogether? So far, I have not heard any discussion from that side about how to do this. Eliminating rape is never a topic that comes up among the pro-abortion advocates. Abortion in those cases does nothing to make society better for women because the injustice against them has still been committed. A society that embraces and welcomes the human dignity of women would never have rape. Instead, our culture considers that atrocity along with bondage and sadomasochism entertaining through pop culture.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
. . . what.<\/p>\n
This is why I seriously doubt that Kae Am has ever gotten to know or actually listened to anyone who is pro-choice. Eliminating rape is never a topic that comes up among those who are pr0-choice? What?<\/em>\u00a0WHAT?!? This is not just a misrepresentation, it\u2019s an outright falsehood. It is pro-choice women, in actual fact, who are the most vocal in efforts to prevent rape. Has Kae Am never heard of Slut Walk? This idea that pro-choice women\u2019s solution to rape is \u201cwell, let\u2019s just make sure rape victims have access to\u00a0abortion\u201d is ludicrous to the extreme.<\/p>\n
That said, Kae Am is right that a society that embraces and welcomes the human dignity of women would never have rape (or at least, rape would occur at a far lower level). Where she\u2019s wrong is that a society that embraces and welcomes the human dignity of women would also be a society with accessible abortion services.<\/p>\n
Abortion is the result of a misogynistic culture and of misogynistic acts. In a culture that truly valued the humanity of women, there would never be any need for abortion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
No. No no no. First, Kae Am has not actually demonstrated that abortion is the result of a misogynistic culture or misogynistic acts. Her only evidence\u2014indeed, her only argument\u2014is that Gosnell and Castro were both misogynistic and performed abortions or induced miscarriages. Let\u2019s make an analogy. Let\u2019s imagine that there is an anti-Semitic painter. Does that mean that all painters are anti-Semitic? No<\/em>.<\/p>\n
Second, I get the feeling that Kae Am hasn\u2019t heard of Beatriz, the El Salvadoran woman suffering severe pregnancy complications who will die as a result of her country\u2019s ban on abortion. No matter how much a culture values the humanity of women, there will always be a need for abortion\u2014and of course, I would argue that abortion access actually flows from that very valuing of women\u2019s humanity. However, there is one point in which Kae Am is correct here. In a culture that truly valued women\u2019s humanity, women would have ready access to the most effective forms of birth control and would also have access to things like paid maternity leave and pregnancy-friendly work policies, and these things would indeed bring the need for abortion down. One would hope that Kae Am is also in favor of these policies.<\/p>\n
Here, we see abortion as the result of Ariel Castro\u2019s misogyny, and the misogyny is shown evidenced in the case of abortionist Kermit Gosnell.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Let\u2019s embellish the analogy I gave above, and imagine that our anti-Semitic painter paints anti-Semitic paintings. Would we therefore conclude that all paintings are anti-Semitic, or that painting itself is inherently anti-Semitic? No. Now look, I\u2019ve heard the example that abortion is dehumanizing made a lot more effectively than this before, it\u2019s just that Kae Am isn\u2019t doing it. She isn\u2019t saying that abortion denies biology and women\u2019s maternal nature, and is thus anti-woman. She\u2019s saying that some misogynist men performed or induced abortion . . . therefore abortion is misogynist. And I\u2019m sorry, but that just doesn\u2019t follow.<\/p>\n
Throughout this country and other western countries with legalized abortions, men enjoy sexual relations until the woman becomes pregnant; then, they offer money for the abortion because the prospect of responsibility for the reproductive act is a burden upon them and because all they really wanted was the sex.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Here\u2019s what\u2019s confusing here. Kae Am acts like this is the fault of pro-choice proponents, seemingly not realizing that the most\u00a0ardently\u00a0pro-choice individuals are also generally the most ardently feminist, and thus the most ardently opposed to the idea that women are simply objects to be enjoyed for sex. Those who are the most pro-choice are also those who are the most vocally arguing that women need to be viewed as people, not as sex objects or as playthings, but as fully equal and fully worthwhile people<\/em>. Kae Am might write a thought provoking piece by arguing that abortion somehow sabotages feminists\u2019 efforts to bring about a world where women are viewed as fully and equally people (I don\u2019t see the mechanism for that, but that piece definitely has the potential to be more interesting), but that\u2019s not what she\u2019s doing. Instead, she writes like she\u2019s never actually met or spoken with anyone who is pro-choice, and has no clue what they actually believe or what the perfect world they envision looks like.<\/p>\n
I have blogged repeatedly about how our hypersexualized abortion-obsessed culture neither acknowledges nor appreciates the true humanity of women. I wrote how\u00a0Jessica Winter asserted<\/a>\u00a0that women need birth control and sex in to be regarded as humans. I have also written about how abortion is used to eliminate large numbers of the unwanted female population \u201cgendercide<\/a>\u201c; that women do not appreciate their own bodies when they have an abortion. Planned Parenthood has campaigned against a law aimed to prevent gendercide in this country. I have posted about how young girls throughout western cultures are\u00a0pressured into performing sexually<\/a>\u00a0. Boys coerce, manipulate, and essentially force themselves upon girls. An epidemic of teen girl suicides occurs when they succumb to pressure to send explicit pictures of themselves and then commit suicide when those pictures become sexual fare for a general audience.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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