Your morality is in the way of my rights...

One of the key arguments that are being thrown at me about abortion is that it "isn’t just about me".
No, it isn’t. However I cannot think of anyone other than me who should have the decision making ability in this situation. The choice to carry, birth and raise an entire human IS MY CHOICE and it should not be illegal, or unsafe to terminate, if I should choose to, just because YOU don’t like it.

Equal rights means you take ownership TOO!

Hey you! – yes you Sir...
The politition who told me he would NOT be voting to make abortion a health issue, instead of a crime...

Let’s talk about how YOU can also be a baby killer.
Yes, you!
I’m a feminist, which means EQUAL rights for all so I think it is about time you took ownership of your half of the responsibility.

Let’s say you are feeling randy.
So you have a hand shandy.
THINK OF THE BABIES!!!!!
Oh no, they aren’t viable then?

Ok, so you are feeling randy and you have an ‘appropriate’ receptacle for your sperm (a Woman, married to you)
But you used a condom??
OH MY GOOOOOOOD THE BABIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!!!
Oh no, this also isn’t a problem?

How convenient how they aren’t viable life until you are no longer the one responsible...

Even if you are a purist, and you don’t use condoms... who can afford 9 kids in this expensive world? So what do you do?
I won’t expect you to explain to me how you don’t have a gazillion children right now, but short of you killing some future life off I’m lost for ideas.

So let’s say you follow all the “honouring future life” rules and have a beautiful baby.
She is perfect, ten fingers, and ten toes.
She grows to be beautiful, smart, witty and well liked in her community.
She could be ANYTHING. A doctor, lawyer, diplomat, scientist, leader...

Then at 16 she decides to have sex, or is pressured into sex. (we won’t get into the stats on rape in NZ since you are probably patronising enough to think you can ‘let’ rape victims have an abortion).

And that sex causes a baby.
She probably won’t tell you until and abortion is too late, because if pre-marital sex and contraception are off the cards, then your judgement is pretty much guaranteed when she slips up.

Now what? This baby of yours... her future is about to change. And change BIG.

This pregnancy has a
10-15% chance of a miscarriage in NZ at her age according to statistics NZ.
If there are twins there is a 2% chance of still birth
If triplets there is around 8% chance of still birth.
‘Your baby’ has a 5% chance of postpartum bleeding.

If any of these events are, or cause a death, and she didn’t use contraception (including the morning after pill and abortifacient pharmaceutical drugs), or have an abortion because of you, was the subsequent miscarriage, stillbirth or maternal death YOUR fault?
If we are going to blame the loss of a future life on me, surely you can own your part in this mess?
No? Gee, what a surprise.

If your little girl and her baby survive the very real statistics behind pregnancy and child birth she will have physical reminders for the rest of her life.
Options include: Stretch marks, varicose veins, incontinence, linear nigra, c-section scar, episiotomy scarring.

Then what?
She gives up her self-centred fulfilling future (for now) to take care of this baby?
Or will you make her adopt it out?
Would you give her a choice?
Why put her through all this only to then take that baby off her?

In fact, if you would give HER a choice, why not me?

In fact – what makes YOU qualified to make any kind of decision for either of us at all?
Since you take NO responsibility for YOUR choice’s effects on others, why should we care what you think?

Because I do not take abortion lightly
I remember every. Single. Woman that I ever assisted in a D&C on in the public health system.
Not one of them was happy to be there.
Every one of them wanted to be.
Every one of them knew what was happening, and owned their decision.

So how about you stop judging and listen for once, to the people this actually effects. Listen to the voices from the lives that actually live it.

Because your opinion? Doesn’t matter to me any more than mine appears to matter to you.

Heart breaking.

I have been arguing over on an anti-abortion site that has misused a quote of someone staunchly pro-choice.
The blogger used a quote out of context; it is clearly explained in the blog post here - about how she was misquoted to be used against her own beliefs.
First I was just really ANGRY.
The “pro-lifers” I have had to deal with in the past already have a plethora of fraudulent techniques such as doctored photographs or mislabelled scans of foetuses much later term than what they claim them to be. Why do they need the words of someone smart enough to come back and argue the point with them? Why waste time and heartache like that?
I did some looking into the woman who wrote the blog’s background.

And my heart broke.
This woman's story is why abortions SHOULD be legal to anyone who needs one.

If someone young is raised in a household ethically or religiously against contraception, and they have unprotected sex, they will very likely get pregnant.
Is it the woman’s fault that she was raised without education of how to take care of herself?
When she DOES get pregnant, and either doesn’t know about the morning after pill, or cannot take it due to religious beliefs (or in this case, unavailable in the era conception occurred) what then?
And then, after four months of denial (her words not mine) she does come out to her family her father says she SHOULD have an abortion... what then?
I cannot imagine this situation.
My heart broke for her.
She was doing the right thing, living life by morals, that were then turned upside down to suit the ONE person in this scenario who would never have to live with it himself – her father.

In the USA on July 1976, Congress passed the Hyde Amendment banning Medicaid funding for abortion unless a woman's life was in danger.
I can only assume that, and the fact it was an illegal act having an abortion “after viability” as decreed by the New York state at the time is the reason that she was subjected to a traumatic saline induction abortion (contraindicated after 16 weeks), instead of the less traumatic surgical abortion under anaesthetic.
Non legitimate facilities run illegally would use options that would enable deniability and ability to move the woman if someone came to check.
As someone who hadn’t made the decision themselves and were well down the path of pregnancy, this would have most likely been traumatic. (and it was according to her story)
I do not know who the “doctors” were who put her through that, but I do know that with legalisation and less stigma women receive the support, counselling, full decision making process and explanation of what will happen.

None of this was afforded to her.
No support, no decision making process
No care while in the ‘hospital’.
No one held her hand and talked her through what was happening.
No support after, or links to groups that she may have found helpful.
Nothing.

The fact that her father essentially forced her to undergo a procedure should not happen in a legal operation.
Could my father take me into the public hospital and have a mole removed for me?
No, the doctor sits down and talks to the PATIENT and only the patient to discuss the procedure. It is called informed consent and is legally required before any operation.
This process clearly did not take place.

With contraception the pregnancy may be prevented.
If not, the morning after pill can also protect against pregnancy
If abortion is de-stigmatised, legalised, and allowed by the church, an early term abortion of a zygote is far less traumatic than a late term illegal abortion.
If not, an illegal late term abortion of a foetus causing all sorts of side effects is still available.

The end result of all of these outcomes is the same.
A woman who has not completed a pregnancy.
The difference is in the trauma that woman had to endure, and her recovery and mental health afterwards.

THIS is why contraception and abortion should remain legal and the judgement and religious docterine against it needs to STOP.


Note from Scuba Nurse.

Me using her story without her permission is rude.
Me using her story to speak against her catholic faith is horrible.
Me using her words to support a point of view she opposes is cruel.

As soon as she apologises about HER blog post about Lauren’s story, I will do the same.
...At least I didn’t use her words out of context.

My take on the “Birth Or Not” website.

This is probably one of the sickest ‘pro-life’ stunts I’ve seen in a while.
It’s right up there with their doctored photos and bullshit stories about imaginary women who had terrible lives and cancer after an abortion.
For info on what the site is about, go here.
I’m not linking people to the site itself, because I’m damned if I will give them more traffic.

I was trying to figure out why they have bothered?

They* already have a large amount of misleading info out there on fetal development.
They* already have “help clinics” for people seeking info on abortions that either manipulate the women to alternatives, or delay them so long an abortion is no longer possible.
They* already attack women in public and on internet forums for openly discussing abortion and their experience with it.

So why this?
What has been missing so far?

Answer: The ability to openly discuss and attack on a forum that will show an overall ‘winner’ in a clear definable final outcome.

This site offers them the opportunity to vilify abortionists and women who take the choice to abort. Anyone and everyone will comment and the way they have set this scenario up, very few people would select the abort option.

People who are informed and pro-choice would not select an option AT ALL because we are pro-choice. So the only people voting are those insensitive enough to find it funny, and want to wind the pro-lifers up, or the Pro-lifers.

The way this scenario will end up, the couple will keep the baby and thank those who supported them, anyone who voted abort will clearly be in the wrong (as they ARE, we can’t choose for someone else!). The sick comments recommending that they “kill the baby” (some planted, some actually written by people angry enough at the hoax to not think too hard about how their responses will be used against them) will be waved triumphantly in the air to prove how sick “pro-abortionists” are.

Several issues I have with the site (beyond it being a blatant hoax and one of the sickest concepts I’ve ever heard) is that they have missed the point completely.
I have yet to meet anyone who identifies as “pro-abortion”. This isn’t semantics, this is reality.

No one celebrates abortion.
No one looks forward to having one
No one looks forward to performing one.
But until women have 100% control over their reproduction abortions will be needed.
I am not going to get into this, as Julie over at the Hand Mirror expresses it more clearly and eloquently than I ever could

*The prolife activists on the internet



A message to those who have written the website or support it.

The opposite of anti abortion/prolife is not pro abortion; it is PRO CHOICE.
You have missed the point again.
We will not be voting on this. No one should be voting on this.
It is the parent’s choice what to do and no one else can make it for them because no one else has to live with that choice.

That means that this site isn’t actually hitting the supposed target audience at all, because no matter what the outcome, we don’t have a vote. There are only one (or two) votes that count when it comes to the choice of abortion.
To make someone keep a child, or carry one for 9 months, bond then give it up is just as sick as making someone abort.
Your website is bizarre, what is the role of the mother? Just an incubator while you expose her to the world’s judgment?
A black and white results Poll in a world of grey medical and life ethics is as irrational and irrelevant as the website you have written.
By writing this website you have hurt, frightened, and upset more people on the “pro-life” side of the coin than any other. I wish there was some way you could call each and every distressed person who really believes there is a couple that callous out there and apologise for using their beliefs and life experience to get good coverage.

Shame on you.

An overview of the “Birth or Not” website and surrounding hubbub.

There is a charming website on the internet that Boganette linked me up to.
I almost didn’t click on it, just the description alone made me feel sick. It is a blatant prolife propaganda machine, just another way to incite rage and allow people to rant about their points of view without seeming like they are aiming it at anyone in particular (specifically the vulnerable young people genuinely seeking information on thier terrifyingly real issues.)

I cannot be bothered playing into their game and linking to the site (and giving them more readers) but it is easily findable – just follow the trail of rage across the internet!
If you are interested the ministry of truth has posted about this site, and pretty much proven that is linked with another right wing political site, and the URL was purchased over a month before the supposed conception – talk about foresight!

The basic line is that a married couple in their early 30s who have had 2 miscarriages and are actively trying to start a family have opened up a site with weekly pregnancy updates (complete with scans WTF?)
And a public Poll on whether they should abort the child.
The original line was that it too could have genetic defects and spontaneously miscarriage and they wanted to avoid the heartbreak.
Now the pregnancy is further along they are clearing tests etc for birth defects (they specifically mention Down’s syndrome) with flying colours, and the fetus is healthy so I fail to understand why the question and poll are still up there.

The language used is so obvious it is pathetic. The words “the pill” are always in brackets and they use highly emotive language to describe the fetus while still claiming to be indifferent to the outcome of the poll.
They have given it a nickname and mention things like it sucking its thumb in utero.

Here are some of the messages on the boards, some are witty, and some are tragic and not unusual. They are breaking people’s hearts who actually believe in this scenario and people who cannot have kids are horrified at the public display of cruelty.

“I’m Pro-Choice, but I differ with most Liberals when it comes to WHEN you make that choice. If you are unable to figure out how to not get pregnant then you shouldn’t reproduce in the first place.
You showed us your mental capacity by getting pregnant when there are hundreds of ways to avoid it, then publishing this website for some insane reason.
Don’t listen to the poll. Please kill your baby.
Please spare the rest of us from your horrible gene pool.”


“My vote…Save the child, euthanize the parents.”


“I do not know if this is a hoax or not, but on the chance that it is not, I implore you to choose life. My husband and I have never been able to conceive, but have two beautiful children, thanks to the gift of adoption. I am so thankful for the courage and honesty of their birth mothers, both of whom admitted their inability and unwillingness to raise their children, but who were willing to continue their pregnancies and give their children life, and give us the opportunity to be parents. I am daily grateful for the gifts that they have given to us and to their children.”


“For anyone in genuine trouble, teen pregnancy, or carrying an unwanted embryo as a result of rape or incest PLEASE check your sources. There is a lot of info out there and some people have an agenda.”
For those of you sick enough to think you can make a life changing choice for someone else…. I hope you see the light one day.”


“It saddens me that you would even contemplate a forum such as this. The creation of a life is no simple daily task that should have input from anyone other than yourselves. After 2 miscarriages already, this should be a no-brainer that you would want to do everything possible to preserve this pregnancy. My wife and I have one wonderful son and have had 3 miscarriages since his birth. I do understand the hesitation for another try, as the miscarriages have tainted the whole experience and the hopeful joy of a parent during pregnancy – but to put this to a vote is a slap in the face to not only other parents, but God himself. This is between the two of you and God, and really no one else. I wish you great luck, and hope that you have a wonderful healthy baby.”

And lastly, my comment,

“WAKE UP READERS!!!
This is a sick “pro life” hoax.
The opposite of anti abortion/prolife is not pro abortion; it is PRO CHOICE.
You have missed the point again. We will not be voting on this. No one should be voting on this. It is the parent’s choice what to do and no one else can make it for them because no one else has to live with that choice.
Adoption is not an option in the poll because everyone would take it in this scenario (since your fictional characters are clearly too callous to be parents). And that would cause unity, not the massive arguments you want.
Nice try.
Abortion is not ideal but until women have 100% control over their reproductive life it is needed.
Who the hell are you to make a woman bear the fetus of her rapist, or a child bear a child? Or a make a woman who may die in childbirth carry on?
Morals are never black and white and cannot have a POLL because the answers are not black and white either.
Grow up.”

For a follow up opinion piece I wrote click here.