Abortion is legal. It is our right, it should be our choice if we need to make it. If you are against abortion, don't have one. It is NOT the right of anyone else, male or female, to make that moral choice for someone eles. It is NOT the right of one person to impose their religious beliefs on another person who does not share their belief or faith on that issue. The premise of those who are anti-abortion IS strictly a religious one, and it is NOT based in any science. The very worst of those positions of faith is the idea that personhood should exist at conception. So long as you don't know when conception occurs, you cannot regulate it or define our conduct relating to it. The idea that any form of 'personhood' exists absent some minimal sentience is contrary to our understnding of ethics.
We should use the same legal determination of life that we use for death as in brain death. To create an entirely separate critieria is wrong.
Inherent in the contraception argument and as a corollary in the anti-abortion argument is the assumption that when women choose to have sex, whether that is in the relationship of marriage, or not - again, an individual, personal moral and religious decision that is our right to make as women, as human beings - it is inappropriate for one group to impose their will on others. Our sexuality is an innate right, it is core to our rights of autonomy - the right to make our decisions about ourselves; the right to our identity - our sexuality is a core part of how each human being defines who we are as a larger part of our identification of gender; and our right to personal physical integrity or bodily integrity, which is the right not to have our body intruded upon by others. The right to physical integrity includes everything from the right to freedom of movement from place to place, to the right to be safe from the government harming your life or body. It usually also implies a right to be safe from violence, including sexual assualt.
What is moral or immoral in the decision to have sex is how we behave. Do we exploit another person for our selfish gratification. Is having sex an intimate expression of deep emotion, or is it a casual sexual release we should better seek in masturbation. Do we care for our partner, treating them with dignity and respect, or is their manipulation or even coercion involved. Do we have a monogamous obligation or moral commitment to someone else, as in a spouse or children that we need to honor. Are we honest or dishonest in our promises and expectations, honest with both ourselves and our partner. HOW we go about having sex, how we make our moral decisions about sex, both for our own dignity and human value as well as that of our partners is what makes sex moral or immoral. Are we being consistent with our religious beliefs about sex, or not; those are personal decisions of conscience and should not be dictated by the conservative ant-sex /pro-guns and violence failed morality of the right.
The notion of basic human rights as accepted world wide is apparently a foreign concept to our Republicans and other conservatives in this country. The right, especially the extremists among them who have hijacked the party, routinely violate the basic human rights of women. They not only violate them, they don't even know what they are when they violate them - and don't give a healthy god damn when they do, but instead pat themselves on the back with a sickening smug self-righteousness.
Inherent in the arguments are the assumptions that women are somehow sluts if we have sex, and that having sex is inherently immoral. We see this in the acceptance and defence of the far right of the offensive views of Rush Limbaugh; we see it in the tepid statements of all of the Republican candidates for president, who thought that maybe, kinda, sorta, in an iffys ort of way that he should have possibly used different language. NO. What was wrong was the premise of Limbaugh's position about women having sex, and his language in calling women sluts was only a part of what was wrong, but it wasn't the worst of what was wrong.
The core value of how sex is regarded as vile and dirty and demeaning is what is wrong on the right, as is their vile attempts to try to control what goes on between consenting adults behind the closed doors of their bedrooms. If the prigs on the right believe that oral or anal sex is wrong - they shouldn't have it. If it is the chosen behavior of consenting adults, in the context of safe sexual practice, it is no one else's business. If it is consenting safe sex between consenting adults who have the same gender, it is no one else's business. We can tell the right is wrong on this, because they have to make up lies, and use pseudo science to promote their point - like lies about homosexuality having anything to do with pedophilia any more than heterosexuality does, just like their lies about other aspects of life and sex and health, espeically women's reproductive health.
That is because the right also likes to violate our right to privacy, in conjunction with violating our rights to autonomy, identity and integrity. Conservatives do not have the right to define our sexuality, and they shouldn't be permitted to do so in this way. If it works for them to think sex is dirty, they should keep that to themselves. It is not as if they behave with any greater moral virtue, despite all of their claims to morality and family values, than anyone else. It only makes their conduct all the more hypocritical, not to mention they clearly missed he lesson of history that we learned in prohibition, that you cannot legislate morality.
That is wrong, it is unjustified, it is grossly offensive. It is sexist, for not condemning men, additionally, for the occasions when MEN have drunken sex, binge drinking which can lead to unprotected sex, sex with a partner incapable of giving informed and aware consent. It is part of the male dominant misogynistic attitude on the right towareds women, and towards sex. It is wrong, and we need to push back against it as hard as we humany can. This is the very core of the horrible, regressive, just plain backwards and wrong-headed notions about women and human sexuality that I wrote about here on conservative perversion. Not conservatives who happen to BE perverts, conservatives who have as their core social and cultural norms assumptions which are inherently perverse, and unequal in how they view women as human beings, assumptions which objectfy women and which treat women as a consumable commodity.
Men should not be telling women when we can and when we cannot make that choice, nor should politicians be telling our doctors what they can and cannot do for our medical care. THAT is intrusive, big government. We women are not controlling male reproductive health care; we are not dictating unreasonable laws or medical misinformation when you choose a vasectomy, when you can use boner pills, or how and when you should manage your prostate health. We do not dictate to you your testicular care. We do not control, limit or restrict male contraception options.
The very worst of what happens when the right does their hatchet job on women and reproductive rights are occurrences like this, this is the REALITY of women, of human beings, making medical decisions about their lives. THIS is the kind of autonomy over our lives, and our bodies, that the right jumps in with jackboots to tyrannize us and deny us. The right, the immoderate right is a bunch of bigoted fascists for creating the following situation in the name of righteous morality. They are tyrannts, they are immoral, they are unethical, and what they have done to women and to relationships between men and women and to families must be stopped, and must be undone.
This is the crime of the tea party, the anti-abortion / anti-choice religious zealots. They are rights violators. They violate the right to equality, including the right to equality of equal pay. They violate families rights to make moral decisions about their own lives. And their very culture violates women.
It is wrong, it is bad, it must go.
Thank you to the woman in the first video, in Iowa, for so graciously, calmly and articulately standing up and telling right wing nut extremist Rep. Steve King how wrong he is. Thank you - you set an excellent example, one we should all emulate, and not only to admonist Steve King.
We need to admonish the right, politicians, men and women, but also their supporters, and their media, and their blogosphere. The zealots on the right are vile hypocrits, they are ignorant and promote gender and sexuality ignorance, but worst of all theyare violators of our rights. They dishonor the word 'Freedom'and 'Liberty' every time it comes out of their mouths, their keyboards and their pens.
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