Why I Can't Vote Republican-Abortion

OK, look, I really try to stay out of the political fray because I suspect that engaging in online discussions rarely changes anybody's mind-most of the people reading you are either there because they are already of a similar mind or else they're just there to fight. Generally people get pissed off, somebody gets compared to Hitler, and the whole thing goes downhill. So...blech. (If you've already read my The 47% post or my Gay Marriage post, you can skip ahead to paragraph five, after the line break). I don't like confrontation, and unless I already know your position and know that you agree with me, I'd rather not let you in on mine lest you think I'm an idiot, or, worse yet, decide to spend the next hour telling me why I'm an idiot. But I have to do this. I never thought I would say this, but there are things going on in this election that I have literally been losing sleep over, and I feel like if I don't put this out there I will have failed in some way. I promise I will do my best to be thoughtful and respectful and reign in my snark, and I expect you to do the same.

This started because, to my surprise, I kept seeing my Facebook friends "liking" Mitt Romney. Well, not totally to my surprise-I knew there would be a few-but some of them were a surprise. If you came here from Facebook, I know you (at least a little), I like you, and we probably have a lot of shared experiences in one way or another, so how are we seeing this thing so differently? I want to ask "What are you thinking???" but that tone generally doesn't engender useful conversation, and I'm tired of all the comments (on both sides) along the lines of "If you support [the other guy] you're an idiot! Sorry if you don't like my opinions, but it's a free country and I can say all the vitriolic, non-constructive, name-calling things that I want to. Don't forget to go to the polls on Nov. 6th! (Unless you're voting for the other guy-LOL!) (Also, my football team RULES!!! And yours SUCKS!!!)" (That last part doesn't have anything to do with the other--I just think it's annoying).

So, I wanted to take the time to explain why I feel the way that I feel. I don't really expect to change anybody's mind, but if there's anybody out there who's still on the fence, or who isn't interested in voting for their own sake, I do hope that I can help convince you to vote on behalf of me, your fellow American. Even if I don't, even if you know right here and now that there is NO WAY that is going to happen, I hope you'll still read, so that you at least understand where I'm coming from. And I do hope you'll comment to explain your side of things or to ask me questions. I just ask that if you're going to comment, you read all the way through to the end before doing so and keep everything civil, relevant, and thoughtful.

I plan of voting Democratic this election cycle, not because I am stauchly pro-Democratic or because my family has always voted Democratic (honestly, I don't even know if my family ever voted). The fact of the matter is, I like Barack Obama, but more than that, I can't stomach the things that I keep hearing from the Republican party. According to GOP.com, the Republican party was all about things like abolition, free speach, and women's suffrage back in the day, and those are all things I can get behind. They say that, "With a core belief in the primacy of individuals, the Republican Party, since its inception, has been at the forefront of the fight for individuals' rights in opposition to a large, intrusive government." So, what happened?

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Warning: This is loooong, but it's all really important to me, so if you're reading this, I really appreciate it. This is not a plea for you to vote for Obama, but, at the very least, it is a plea for you to please NOT vote for the men mentioned below. They are prepared to take away the existing rights, or, at the very least, limit health-care coverage, of literally every woman of child-bearing age in this country (by the way, according to my calculations*, that's approximately 95,000,000 women), and they are doing it carelessly, thoughtlessly, and based on information that is flat out wrong.

I can't think of anything more intrusive than a government telling you that you cannot marry the person of your choice or telling you that you must have a child against your wishes. I tackled the first one in a previous post; now let's talk about that second one.

I know that whether you're pro-life or pro-choice, your position is probably pretty well-ingrained, and I'm not likely to change your mind here. I think everyone should absolutely find a representative who supports her views and vote her conscience on this. My plea this election cycle is this: If you are going to vote to restrict someone else's choices based on your beliefs, at the very least, make sure that the person representing you knows why they are trying to do so and understands the facts relating to that decision.

I think by now, we've all heard about Missouri Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin's reprehensible "legitimate rape" comments. Just in case you haven't, here you go.


Now, maybe he did misspeak-I will give him the benefit of the doubt and allow that maybe he meant rape of the forceful, non-consensual kind, and not statutory rape, which could be consensual and not forceful. To be fair, I'm not sure how you briefly make that distinction without sounding like a jackass (I think maybe we should get rid of the term statutory rape altogether but that's a whole separate argument). Either way, his statement implies that if you are a victim of rape and you become pregnant it is somehow your fault. You failed as a woman to "shut that whole thing down." Also, does this imply that if you become pregnant you weren't actually raped? Wow, now you're a failure AND a liar. Wait, maybe you're only a failure OR a liar. Either way, way to handle your rape, loser. Besides, it's not like it's going to be an unexpected cost or burden to you; you might still be able to finish your education and afford to care for your new baby. If not, there's always welfare assistance, and I know most Republicans are big fans of that! Seriously, what happens in these scenarios? Does the law go after the rapist for child support? Maybe he gets your address so he can send you a check every month? Does he get visitation rights for the next 18 years? No, honestly, how does this go forward? Eve Ensler wrote an open letter to Akin that I think every politician should have to read.

Actually, let's go back to that statutory rape thing for a second. I think having terms like rape and statutory rape is where you end up with problems like the misunderstandings and hurt feelings brought about by Wisconsin Representative Roger Rivard's comments about girls who "rape so easy." He wasn't saying that some girls are easier to rape than others. Because that would have been insensitive. In response to a case regarding a 17-year old high school boy who was being charged with sexual assault for having sex with a 14-year old girl, he was just sharing a story about how his dad warned him that consensual sex with your girlfriend can turn into "rape" if the girl gets pregnant and doesn't want to take responsibility. *sigh* Look, again, I will go way, way out on a limb here and say that maybe Roger Rivard is not the creep that this statement makes him out to be. Roger Rivard could be a perfectly nice guy who just happens to have a dad that's kind of an inarticulate creep. Either way, the fact that he didn't have the good judgment not to share that story in public, makes me question his leadership and decision making skills.

Shortly after the Akin dust-up, Pennsylvania Senate candidate Tom Smith, was asked about his position  on abortion exceptions. He then proceeded to explain that, to a father, finding out that your little girl accidentally got herself knocked up without being married is the same as finding out that someone held her down and forced her to have sex with him. You can listen to the audio, but there's a lot of background noise, so I've gone through and done my best to provide an accurate transcript of the Q&A here:

Reporter: Hey, Tom...Tom? In light of Congressman Akin's comments is there any situation that you think a woman should have access to abortion?
Smith: My stance is on record and it's very simplistic. I'm pro-life, period. And what that congressman said, uh, I do not agree with at all. He should have never said anything like that.
Reporter: So in cases of incest or rape?
Smith: No exceptions.
Reporter: How would you tell a daughter or granddaughter that, who, who, God forbid would be the victim of a rape to keep the child against her own will? Is that, is that something that you would...do you have a way to explain that?
Smith: I lived something similar to that with my own family. She chose life, and I commend her for that. She knew my views, but, um...fortunately for me, I didn't have to...she chose the way I thought. Now don't get me wrong it wasn't rape.
Reporter: Similar how?
Smith: Uh, having a baby out of wedlock.
Reporter: That's similar to rape?
Smith: No, no, no, but, uh...put yourself in a father's position, yes, I mean it is similar. [emphasis mine]

The conversation moves on to other issues before a reporter brings the conversation back around to Smith's previous comments.

Reporter: Can I just ask you to clarify one more time the question that [the other reporter] asked you? Did I just hear you say that having a child out of wedlock is analogous to rape?
Smith: No, I did not say that.
Reporter: You did say that.
Second Reporter: You did say it, sir.
(mumbly, panicky kerfuffle)
Smith: I said I went through a situation...
Reporter: With your daughter, with a daughter?
Smith: Yes, and it's very very difficult. But, do I condone rape? Absolutely not. But I propose life,  yes I do. I'm pro-life, period.
Reporter: So what is the similarity between those two, in other words? It's just that there's a decision involved?
Smith: A life. There's a life that needs protecting. Who's going to protect it? We have to. I mean that's...I believe life begins at conception. I'm not going to argue about the method of conception. It's life, and I'm pro-life. It's that simple.

Smith's spokeswoman later clarified that "the situation" wasn't with his daughter. No other details were given. So...Smith knows someone who once had a baby out of wedlock and that is as emotionally disturbing and frightening for him as if she'd been raped. Boy, that IS simple.

Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock would support a ban on abortions with exception for the life of the mother, but, like Smith, he believes that life begins at conception, "even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen." After a lot of backlash, he tried to backpedal by saying that he meant God intended the life, not the rape that caused it, and I believe him. I'm sure he never meant to say that God intends for anyone to be raped, but if you believe that God is responsible for all things, doesn't that include the rape? Why do you get to be the arbiter of what God intended and what he didn't? And if we, as a nation, have decided that God-intended rape is wrong, then how can we also say that the resulting pregnancy is right?

Joe Walsh, the Republican candidate for Illinois' 8th Congressional District, is also "pro-life without exception." After a recent debate with his Democratic challenger, Tammy Duckworth, he clarified his position by saying that "There's no such exception as life of the mother, and as far as health of the mother, same thing. With advances in science and technology, health of the mother has been, has become a tool for abortions any time and for any reason."

Mr. Walsh, have you seriously never heard of a mother's life or health being negatively impacted by a pregnancy? About women dying or being unable to conceive again due to complications of pregnancy or birth? Ectopic pregnancies (pregnancies outside of the womb) still happen fairly regularly. If a baby starts to grow inside a fallopian tube and the mother doesn't miscarry naturally, the tube will eventually rupture. The baby can't survive, and the mother's health would be at risk as well. Removal of the embryo through induced miscarriage or through surgery would, technically, be an abortion. As I understand it, Akin would at least allow for that, but Joe Walsh wouldn't even make that exception. He is so pro-life that it is worth risking the mother's life to save the baby's life. Even when there is no way for the baby to survive.

Republicans keep talking about The Dignity and Sanctity of Human Life, but I don't think that they apply it evenly across the board. They are all about the sanctity and dignity of a human life when it is a clump of cells without a heartbeat, but that concern seems to disappear when they are considering the women who already exist as a fully-formed human being.

I realize that it is probably a pretty rare situation in which a doctor ever has to say to a woman, "There are complications, and I can save you or I can save the baby, but I may not be able to save you both. You need to make a choice." I can't imagine being in that position, and unless you've been there, neither can you. You also can't assume that the decision that a married woman with no other children would be the same as a mother of three whose husband has just died in combat or from an illness...or from anything. Both of those women might have an equal respect for human life, but a married woman with no other children might say, "Try to save the baby. My husband will take good care of him." The mother of three might say, "I have three other children and nobody else to take care of them. I need you to try to save me." Are you really going to tell me that she doesn't have the right to make that decision, the decision to save the mother of her children? Again, I realize that this is probably an extremely rare situation, but if it were you or someone you knew, would you care about the statistics?

Tennessee Republican Scott DesJarlais who identifies himself as Pro-Life, recorded himself "pushing a woman--a patient he'd been sleeping with while working as a physician--to have an abortion, in hopes of showing the recording to his wife and saving his marriage." I don't even know where to start with this guy. Clearly, there are several issues here, but I think Stephen Colbert said it best when he said, that the Congressman is "adamantly against abortion except when it endangers the political life of the father."

These are the men who, if elected, will be making policy for the women they represent and possibly influencing federal policy, thereby affecting all women. These are men who are either so delusional about their right to power over women or are so sure of their religiously-guided stances surrounding situations that they will NEVER have to deal with personally that they are willing to impose it on all the women they represent and possibly even those they don't.

I am begging the ladies of Missouri, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, and Tennessee, to please vote in this election. I can't imagine that these are really the guys that you want representing you. Even if you are a Republican, is party affiliation worth keeping someone like this in power? Do these men illustrate your party's platform of a non-intrusive government that's fighting for individual rights and the sanctity and dignity of human life? If so, then...I don't know what else I can say. Thanks for reading this far, I guess; and if you've read this far, then I hope you'll at least hear me out to the end.

Men, you have a say in this too. Is this how you want the women in your lives treated. If your daughter came to you one day, crying, telling you that she had been raped and that, on top of having been physically violated, emotionally scarred, possibly infected with HIV or some other sexually-transmitted disease, was also scared that she might be pregnant, who would you want making the decisions about what to do next? Do you want the Todd Akins of the world telling her that if she's a real woman she will just "shut that whole thing down" and she won't have anything to worry about?

What if your wife came home and said she had been raped. Would you both be looking forward to the baby that might be growing in her belly right now (squee!)? Do you want the Richard Mourdocks and Tom Smiths out there telling her (and you) what a miracle this is and how blessed she should feel to be carrying and then giving birth to her rapist's child? I'm not saying that every woman would opt for abortion in these situations-I understand that some women might choose to keep a baby in these circumstances, but shouldn't they be the ones who get to make that choice?

I know that adoption is always a possibility too, and one that Republicans are pushing for, but, again, that forces a woman to carry a baby that she may not want to carry and then leaves her to deal with the emotional aftermath of having given up her child. No matter how sound the reasoning behind it, no matter how sure you are that it's the best, least-worst decision, I'm sure that leaves a mark on your heart. I read a book a few years ago called The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade, and if you think giving up a child is no big deal, I would encourage you to read this book.

What if your sister called you, excited because she thought she might be pregnant and a couple weeks later called to say that it's a tubal pregnancy. The baby implanted in the fallopian tube and unless she miscarries naturally, it might burst her tube. Aside from any pain this may cause it may also reduce her chances of getting pregnant in the future. She's disappointed and scared and wants to have the developing fetus removed. Do you want Joe Walsh telling her that A) She's crazy-these types of things don't happen, B) she should stop trying to use the "health of the mother" excuse as a "tool" to get an abortion, and C) She can't. She's just going to have to wait and hope that she miscarries naturally. If that doesn't happen, then she'll just have to wait until the baby gets big enough to rupture her fallopian tube and once it finally dies, then a doctor can go in and scrape out the necrotic tissue. I'm sure Mr. Walsh will keep his fingers crossed for you that sepsis hasn't set in by then and that that ruptured fallopian tube doesn't make it harder for her to conceive next time! Even if Republicans don't succeed in banning abortion, they will try to exclude funding for health-care which provides abortion services. Technically, this would fall into that category. So, ha! Even if you do manage to get your "medically necessary" abortion, you're still going to have to pay for it yourself.

Look, I've never had to make a decision regarding abortion, but I'd like to know that in the future, if I ever find myself in a situation where my pregnancy might kill me (physically or spiritually), I would have the right to decide what to do about it, and I would hope that all the other women in my life would have the same choice.

*I made my calculations based on information from the 2010 U.S. Census using number from the Resident Population by Sex and Age table and included females in age categories "10 to 14 years" through "50 to 54 years". Even if you moved the lower and upper age brackets to just include women between ages 15 to 49, you would still be talking about almost 74,000,000 women.

What I'm Reading Now-Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men

Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men by Mara Hvistendahl--According to my notes, Jonathan Last's Wall Street Journal Review is what prompted me to add this book to my reading list, and, wow, has it been a journey! It took me a long time to get through this book, not because it was boring or a chore to read but because I could only read a few pages at a time before having to set the book down for a cooling-off period. This might be the most infuriating and frustrating book I've ever read. It's infuriating for the attitudes that led to and continue to support the practice of women aborting babies because they are girls; it's frustrating because there are just no easy answers. I think the epigraph at the beginning of Chapter 15 sums it up the best:

There is always a well-known solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong.

--H.L. Mencken  

Most people are at least somewhat familiar with China's one-child policy. It's pretty self-explanatory--basically, couples are allowed one child. Although, I have to admit, I wasn't sure what the consequences of having more than one child are/were. According to the book, compliance with the policy resulted in preferential health care and education benefits (p. 144). According to a 2010 article by Hvistendahl, the consequences included forced abortions and sterilizations and excessive fines. While the one-child policy was a mostly well-intentioned attempt at population control for the good of the planet and the nation, the consequences have been dire. Most couples in Asia, when faced with the reality of only one child, would prefer a boy over a girl, plain and simple. Infanticide was common, but emerging ultrasound technology made sex-selective abortions a quick and relatively easier way for couples to make sure their one child was a boy. When it became obvious that infanticide and sex-selective abortions were taking place on a large scale, the government did loosen up its policy to say that if a couple's first child was a girl, they could try again for a boy. (After all, not even the Chinese government is unfeeling enough to make parents settle for one crappy-ass, worthless girl child. Sorry. See what I mean about needing a cooling-off period?) While this has helped to protect a lot of first-born girls, it still didn't help many would-be second-born girls.

Knowing what I knew about China's one-child policy, I went into this book prepared to be all, "Way to go, China!" while flipping it the bird, but it turns out that it's much more complicated than that. First of all, the problem is much more wide-spread than just China. Second, as it turns out, the United States and other Western nations actually had a pretty heavy hand in this whole population control thing, and it's not just because we didn't anticipate the results. (The results, by the way, are that, as of 2005, approximately 163 million females were missing from Asia. That's more than the entire female population of America.) Scientists saw the potential problems created by a society full of men with no potential mates. The British microbiologist John Postgate understood that, "Women's right to work, even to travel alone freely, would probably be forgotten transiently. Polyandry might well become accepted in some societies; some might treat their women as queen ants, others as rewards for the most outstanding (or most determined) males." (p. 102-3) Well, sign me up! Sounds good, eh, ladies? Despite this bleak view, he believed that "sex selection was advisable, for 'the only really important problem facing humanity to-day is over-population,' particularly in 'under-developed unenlightened communities.'" (p. 103). Way to take the long-view, Postgate.

The trouble now, from a U.S. perspective, is that most people here would agree that sex-selective abortions are wrong; attitudes about girls need to change. The problem is, while Americans are all pretty much in agreement that it's abhorrent to abort a fetus just because it's a girl, and we're ready to tell Asia to get its act together, we're not quite ready to lead by example. (By the way, it's not always a matter of abortions being legal/illegal; it's often a matter of enforcement.) Pro-lifers are all over this, of course. Restricting abortion on any grounds is a move in the right direction as far as they're concerned. Pro-choice folks are having a harder time though. Restrictions on *some* abortions is a pretty slippery slope to restrictions on *all* abortions. It's even hard to get people on the same page about sex selection. What if the sex selection is pro-girl? That would be progress, wouldn't it? Girls are now being valued--that's good, right? What if the reason girls are being selected for is because now poor rural families can expect to receive high bride prices from rich families trying to marry off their sons?

As it turns out, Americans are, generally speaking, pro-girl. In the latest iteration of pro-creative technology, preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) allows couples seeking in vitro fertilization to choose the sex of their babies, and Americans seem to prefer girls. In fact, "[f]or the most part parents going through PGD or sperm sorting dread having a boy. Girls are the goal for 80 percent of [Huntington Reproductive Center] Fertility's patients..." (p. 256). So, as Americans, we're mostly agreed that sex selection is wrong...when it's anti-girl, and we can pretty much agree that aborting a baby just because it's a girl is wrong...but what if we just discard the boys before they are even in the womb? Like I said, no easy answers.

I posted some thoughts on Goodreads.com when I was about half-way through the book, and you can see a lot more quotes there. This book covers so much ground and provides so much food for thought. I haven't even scratched the surface in this review. I highly recommend it, just give yourself plenty of time to get through it!

 

What I'm Reading Now-The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade

The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade by Ann Fessler-This book was heartbreaking to read. The author and her mother were both adopted, and after a chance encounter with a woman who had surrendered a daughter for adoption around the same time that Fessler was adopted, Fessler began working on an autobiographical project about her adoption, and during her presentations she would invite others to tell their stories of adoption. From this grew her book. She began to realize that many of the stereotypes that people had about women who had given up babies during the post-WWII era were false. Most of these women were woefully uneducated about sex and birth control. They just had no idea. Some of them knew how pregnancy occurs, some did not. Most of the time their boyfriends assured them that it wouldn't happen to them. These were not tramps who were out sleeping with everyone they met on the street; often they were in committed relationships and deeply in love. These were not frivolous women who saw adoption as an easy fix to a mistake. These were women (often girls) who lived in a time when being an unwed mother was about the worst thing you could be, perhaps only slightly higher on the social scale of acceptability than axe-murderer and Communist. Maybe.

According to Fessler, poor women tended to keep their illegitimate babies more frequently than middle class women while rich women came from families who were able to pay a doctor to quietly take care of the situation. The middle class girls who found themselves in trouble didn't have the money to obtain abortions, which were still illegal at the time, and their parents absolutely couldn't risk the shame and scandal of having an unwed pregnant daughter.

The solution was to send these girls away to a maternity home where they would finish out their pregnancies, deliver their babies, and surrender them for adoption. The girls were usually so horrified about all the trouble they had caused their families that they felt they were in no position to argue about this solution, nor did it even occur to many of them to do so. At the homes they were generally counseled about what a wonderful thing they were doing for all these married people who wanted babies and couldn't have them and what a wonderful thing they were doing for their babies who deserved so much better than they could provide. They were counseled on how to give up their babies, but they were rarely informed that keeping them was a legal option as well. They didn't know that keeping their babies was an option in most cases, so they did as they were told and signed the papers, all the time being told that in a few years they would get married, have other children and forget all about this. A few did inform the homes that they wanted to keep their children, but they were told that if they did so they would then be responsible for all of their medical and boarding expenses. Most of them simply did not have the money to do this, and often their families threatened to disown them if they decided to keep their babies. They were not counseled about any financial aid that might have been available to them. So, most of them played the role of the dutiful daughter, did as they were told, and tried their best to forget about their babies.

Not surprisingly, none of the women in this book managed to forget their first-borns. They lived every day with the pain of having given up their children and not knowing what kind of lives they had. They couldn't talk about it-many of their friends and family never even knew what had happened, although I'm sure many suspected that they hadn't really gone away to help take care of their sick grandmothers during their senior year. It just wasn't something that was talked about. Many of these women went 30 years or more never telling anybody about the baby they had been forced to surrender so long ago. It was a loss, and their pain was never even acknowledged much less dealt with. To make matters worse, the fathers of their children were often held completely unaccountable. Sometimes the fathers were interested in staying with the mothers and even raising the child, but often their parents would talk them out of it. While a young woman could be kicked out of school for being pregnant, no such punishment existed for the young men who had gotten them that way.

Some of the women in this book spoke of depression and mysterious physical ailments that they could never really figure out but that disappeared once they broke their silence and/or found their grown children. Depression seems to be a very common ailment among women from about my age through the baby boomer generation, and I'm wondering now if this might be a big reason for it. Dealing with the emotional pain that these women spoke of in isolation and without the skills to deal with it or even acknowledge it certainly must have contributed to countless cases of depression through the years.

I think this book would be extremely helpful for anyone who has suffered silently through the pain of a forced adoption-just knowing that other women out there have gone through the same thing has got to be a huge relief. Even women who willingly gave up their children, for whatever reason, could probably benefit from this book, as I'm sure many of them still wonder about their children. I think this could also be helpful for children who have been adopted and have suffered with abandonment issues, feeling like their own mothers didn't even want them all these years. So often the mothers DID want them, desperately, but they just didn't know that it was even an option. Like I said, this book was heartbreaking for me to read, but I'm glad I read it.

This book focused on the aftermath of surrendering a child for adoption which occurred in large part because abortions were illegal at the time and also because abortion went against many families' religious beliefs. I would be interested in seeing a similar follow-up of mothers who aborted children, both before and after it became legal, either by choice or because that's what their parents decided would be best for them. I'm sure many of them found themselves in similar situations-young, single, still dependent upon their parents, and scared to death. I'm sure many of them also lived with this as a secret that they were not allowed to talk about, but I think the big difference would be that they never got to hold, feed, and care for their babies after they were born as did most of the mothers who surrendered their children. I would like to know if they felt the same way as the mothers who were forced to give up their children, if they felt they had any choice in the matter or not, and if they have the same sense of loss. One of the things that many of the mothers in the book said was difficult was that they didn't know if their children were still alive or not. They lived everyday wondering about their children's fate. In the case of abortion, the fate of the child is obvious, but does that make the sense of loss any less or just different?