dead™

See, we have this concept called “bodily autonomy.” It’s this….cultural notion that a person’s control over their own body is above all important and must not be infringed upon. 

Like, we can’t even take LIFE SAVING organs from CORPSES unless the person whose corpse it is gave consent before their death. Even corpses get bodily autonomy. 

To tell people that they MUST sacrifice their bodily autonomy for 9 months against their will in an incredibly expensive, invasive, difficult process to save what YOU view as another human life (a debatable claim in the early stages of pregnancy when the VAST majority of abortions are performed) is desperately unethical. You can’t even ask people to sacrifice bodily autonomy to give up organs they aren’t using anymore after they have died. 

And here’s another point: When you say that “rape is the exception” you betray something FUNDAMENTALLY BROKEN about your own argument.

Because a fetus produced from sexual assault is biologically NO DIFFERENT than a fetus produced from consensual sex. No difference at all.

If one is alive, so is the other. If one is a person, so is the other. If one has a soul, then so does the other. If one is a little blessing that happened for a reason and must be protected, then so is the other. 

When you say that “Rape is the exception” what you betray is this: It isn’t about a life. This isn’t about the little soul sitting inside some person’s womb, because if it was you wouldn’t care about HOW it got there, only that it is a little life that needs protecting.

When you say “rape is the exception” what you say is this: You are treating pregnancy as a punishment. You are PUNISHING people who have had CONSENSUAL SEX but don’t want to go through a pregnancy. People who DARED to have consensual sex without the goal of procreation in mind, and this is their “consequence.” 

You’re very statement has already killed since Roe vs. Wade was overturned. It is because these very situations came up and, because abortion is denied “except in special cases,” nobody would perform the very much needed procedures until pain, suffering, and death had already resulted.

Want something closer to what can happen to you? Imagine finding out you had cancer and lawmakers telling you doctors can do nothing until it’s stage 4, a “special circumstance”. When it’s terminal. When your odds of surviving are so low that they won’t even try to save your life.

I just want to say that your gut feeling of “abortion should be available in case someone needs it” and feeling uncomfortable with the idea of it being used when it’s “not needed” isn’t a *bad* instinct. It feels very grounded and logical and compassionate.

But the devil is in the details. Who gets to decide when it’s needed? How do you prove that you qualify? Who do you need to prove your qualification to? How long will that take? What happens if different authorities disagree on whether or not you qualify? Every barrier to access prolongs ANYONE getting this care, and makes it more likely for people to get caught in the cracks and suffer. And that’s what we’ve seen in places where these restrictions have been put in place.

But there ARE ways to help reduce the number of abortions *other* than restrictions to access. Improved access to contraceptives, improved access to prenatal health care, more resources for people in domestic abuse situations, better parental leave policies, more funding for child care, Medicare, low income housing, foodstamps. When you make pregnancy (and parenthood) less dangerous, more affordable, and less potentially damaging to a person’s quality of life, then fewer people will feel like abortion is their best option.

Mel finds out why uncle Mud had the outdated uniform