Abortion Gang

Are anti-abortion ‘feminists’ really ‘feminists’? Not if they seek to extend their anti-abortion stance in any way that dictates what someone else does with their own uterus, they’re not.

Just like people who support the occupation of Tibet aren’t Marxists, and folks who thought they should still be able to lawfully refuse to provide food to black people, but said they supported the right of black people to fight for rights they didn’t want them to have were not civil rights activists. Feminists who seek to control other women’s bodies aren’t feminists at all.

But I don’t think a glib answer suffices, whether it’s mine or Kathleen Parker’s. Honestly, I can’t even believe we’re having this conversation. I thought hell would freeze over first and I’d at least get to ice skate while cute, pudgy pigs with itty-bitty wings flew overhead in Bugsby Berkeley choreography.

Feminism is a social justice movement with a long and varied history; with not only waves but millions of ripples and tsunamis within, around and outside each. For a given feminist, feminism is also a process we each constantly refine and re-evaluate as we go, if we’re doing it right. A rare few of us can say we’ve never made any missteps in our feminism, or taken up views as feminist we later questioned or realized were counter to feminism, either at its core, or to our own feminism.

Parker’s statements like “we’ve now witnessed a bearded transgender man having babies — and fake wombs are inevitable — so anything’s possible, apparently. Good luck with all that,” show that her issues with abortion are hardly her only feminist hurdles.
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Heather Corinna, founder of the wonderful sex education website Scarleteen, asked if I wanted to cross-post her excellent analysis written in the wake of the murder of abortion provider Dr. Tiller. How could I say no to a sex-ed celebrity?

The murder of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller on May 31st, 2009 has resulted in a lot of conversation about abortion. It’s a topic frequently hushed, or spoken about more around its politics than the actual procedure, the experience itself and the real women who have abortions. So this increased discussion is certainly something potentially positive happening because of something horribly tragic. More discussion around anything which is or may be treated as unspeakable is always a good thing.

However, often in these conversations and news stories, language is used that’s confusing or inaccurate, and some statements are made about abortion or women who choose abortion which are false, unrepresentative or misleading. And any of this can come from either “side” of abortion debates or discussions, due to political aims or motivations, ideological ideas or agendas or just out of plain old ignorance. Just like a whole lot of people don’t know the finer points of open-heart surgery, a lot of people just don’t know what goes on with an abortion procedure, especially from a provider’s point of view. If inaccurate, misleading or ideologically-loaded language is being used, or myths are being held as truths, our communication and understanding is always going to be limited. And that’s never a good thing, unless we don’t really want to understand something at all.

Let’s start with a few typical language issues. When the politics of abortion are discussed, often language is used in talking about abortion that doesn’t actually exist in the practice itself, that providers don’t usually use or have any practical use for, and some of which is absolutely meaningless or invented only to try and misrepresent abortion or pregnancy.
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