#( tw: abortion )

[dezxerneas]

Okay, What The Actual Fuck. Idk if my brain is just going to needlessly dark places or did Aabria just imply that Lemli got pregnant, twice, just to kill the infant(206 would actually mean that it wasn't an infant but a ~10 year old kid since babies have more bones, but let's just ignore that for now) so that she could burn it to keep the old magic going a just little bit longer.

B2 was evil. This is just unforgivable. I would have cast the Evan Kelmp brain shut down magic as soon as I realized what she did.

[topguncortez]

abortion rights are health care rights.

[evesaintyves]

Remus Lupin/Nymphadora Tonks, rated M, eleven 200-word drabbles. Warning for mentions of abortion.

 She must have fallen asleep. She thinks it’s a fly crawling up her neck, for a minute, and nearly swats it before she realises it’s his mouth. Her heart gives a squeeze that is aching at the same time that it is sweet—how little it takes from him, these days, to wring a few drops of nervous hope from that tired old thing. But she turns to him, anyway, and they don’t speak but he kisses her a little, and fuck, there goes her gormless heart again.

Read it on Ao3.

I wanted to say a few things about what went into this fic below - and I will be talking about abusive relationships and abortion from a secular, pro-abortion-on-demand perspective, so if that's likely to trouble you I recommend giving it, and the fic, a miss.

This story is set around chapter 7 of Deathly Hallows, "The Will of Albus Dumbledore," when Lupin and Tonks leave Harry's birthday party to avoid being seen by Rufus Scrimgeour. This period of canon gives us several glimpses into how Lupin & Tonks's relationship is going and it strikes me as a really scary and unsafe time for Tonks. Lupin's unhappiness is so evident even Harry notices it, while she's described as "radiant," - meaning pregnant, but also that they're clearly not on the same page. Around this time we see Tonks facing some of the disturbing realities of being married to Lupin: Bellatrix's pursuit of her in the battle of seven Potters, having to flee from her boss so he doesn't see them together. Tonks's mentor is dead (and we see when that happens that Lupin's not all that interested in supporting her as she's reeling from it), Tonks's family is pretty unhappy with her (according to Lupin), things are unraveling.

(I'd like to point you to two takes I really love on how off-kilter their interactions are right before this, around the time Mad-Eye dies: Fallen Warrior by @bikelock28 and Mandible by @saintsenara - both of these authors have had a huge influence on my writing and my thinking about hp canon.)

I've always been kind of obsessed with this particular moment between Lupin and Tonks - when we see Lupin seize Tonks by the wrist and haul her out of the burrow. It's an alarming interaction, to me, that suggests the possibility of a very frightening dynamic setting up between them. Tonks is an adult, she's aware of the consequences of being seen together. I'm not even convinced she had to leave in the first place instead of changing her appearance or just making herself scarce upstairs for a while. There's no argument that leads Lupin to grabbing her out of desperation - he just says bye to Harry and hauls her away. Not by the hand, like he's trying to keep her from tripping or something. By the wrist, so she can't let go, which seems even more likely to unbalance her. It's a dismissal of her autonomy at the very least, he's treating her a bit like a child, and it's probably quite embarrassing for Tonks. The way she makes excuses for it the next day, in the context of everything else we're seeing about this relationship, only makes it all seem unhealthier. If I witnessed this interaction between a friend and her new husband, I'd be checking on her.

And in the midst of this rapidly-disintegrating relationship with this escalatingly-discontent and reactive husband - Tonks is finding out that she's pregnant, something that will complicate things even further and tie her to a man who does not really seem to want to be with her.

This fic came to be as I was thinking about the way Lupin talks about Tonks in "The Bribe," when he reveals that she's pregnant and they've split up, in a way that respresents this development as something abhorrent and humiliating but also downplays his culpability for it: ...then Lupin said, with an air of forcing himself to admit something unpleasant, "Tonks is going to have a baby." And how devastating that attitude might be for a Tonks who is happily pregnant.

But we don't really know how happy she is to be pregnant. We never hear about it from her. We see her as radiant in an early appearance, sure, and the baby ends up getting born, but that's all we really have to go on. And I have to wonder what options Tonks might have had if she didn't want to be pregnant or wasn't sure. She'd have had access to a legal abortion through the muggle health system up to 24 weeks, but there's evidence in canon that wizards are fearful of and disgusted by muggle medical practices (e.g. Arthur's stitches in OoTP). And wizarding society seems pretty regressive in some respects: people get married and have children young, there's no mention of divorce or blended families or out-of-wedlock babies - and yes, that's also because these are childrens' books (and books that privilege a certain kind of familial love above all else) but this is the text and the universe we have to work with. Notably, the immortal human soul demonstrably exists in this world and I think it's pretty safe to assume that most people believe in it - it seems to be pretty common knowledge that a dementor can remove the soul from the body and that ability is encoded into the wizarding penal system. What does that mean for abortion access in that world? Do wizards believe that an embryo or a fetus is an ensouled person and that it would be murder, or something like that, to terminate it? Even if a magical abortion is legal, what are cultural attitudes toward it like under this belief system? How difficult or inconvenient is it? I'll leave the particulars of how the wizarding legal and medical systems function to someone smarter than me, but... I work in health care, and I've seen the ways that even vague or minor barriers to access - stigma, embarrassment, misinformation, wait times or travel requirements, the levels of executive function and emotional regulation required to keep multiple appointments and talk to a bunch of providers about a sensitive issue - mean that some people who need care won't get it. We don't really know if Tonks unreservedly chose to keep her pregnancy, or if she just didn't have meaningful access to another option, or if access was just hard or unpleasant enough that she didn't make a decision until it was too late.

There's a tendency in some Remadora fic— including one of mine, in a way I didn't think much about until later—to frame the hypothetical of Teddy being aborted as a regrettable tragedy, thankfully averted by the power of true love, and not as a reasonable response to the difficult circumstances and something everyone might have moved on from and been fine - and I think that's understandable. Teddy's important to trajectory of Tonks and Lupin's lives. It's okay to love these characters and want everyone to be as happy and whole as their situations allow. And I think that we have some (at least mildly gendered) expectations that of course our faithful Tonks wants to stay married, wants a child with the person she loves. But I wanted to depict this slice of their relationship with sympathy for a Tonks who is seriously considering ending her pregnancy - who has at least as much reason as Lupin to just want shut of the whole thing. I would have, in her position. I have seen friends locked into horrible situations with abusive partners by pregnancy.  I think you could argue that not having Teddy and getting out of that relationship might have meant a different outcome for Tonks in the battle of Hogwarts. And I think that it's entirely possible for Tonks to have wanted an abortion that she didn't end up getting - for whatever legal, cultural, or psychological reasons - and for Teddy to still have been a welcome and loved child when he was born.

Anyway, let me know what you think.

[image: from francis bacon, three studies of figures on beds, 1972]

[diazsdimples]

If watching/performing abortions in the 3 years of studying midwifery tested my pro-choice mindset then seeing the utter relief and the magnitude of thankfulness our clients had for us strengthened it just as much. I was pro-choice before being involved in their care and my god I am even more so now. Every abortion I've been involved with has been a truly eye-opening and positive experience where I've met some of the most incredible people. The strength of every person that comes into the clinic shouldn't be understated - it isn't a decision that's ever made lightly and for most cases involves a lot of inner turmoil. It's important to remember that banning abortion doesn't stop it from happening, it stops it from happening safely.

[storiesbyjes2g]

All in

[hannahssimblr]

Note: this update contains mention of abortion. Please proceed with caution.

Where the sun is unrelenting in the south, the Dublin sky is a woolly grey. I pull up to the curb on the Clontarf seafront, where a chilly breeze raises the hairs on my arms. The gate to Alison’s flaking blue townhouse squeaks in the same key it always did, and the grass that sprouts from between the cracks in the concrete slabs is longer than it was in the spring. Unruly, as my mother would say, before leaving a passive-aggressive note in the letterbox about it. I dodge the stinging nettles that have liberated the bush by the steps and knock on the door. 

She’s home alone. She assured me she would be, and it is strange to experience her house in such a state of emptiness when it’s usually so lively. Her sisters would be arguing over a hairdryer, and her mother yelling down the phone because the signal was bad at the back of the house. Today’s silence feels mournful. The hallway is a battlefield of laundry and boxes of junk, all piled up like they are ready for the dump, but those boxes have sat unmoved for years, dust building on chipped plates and plastic toys, sun-bleached of every colour but blue.

She brings me into the living room, where the wall paint cracks and peels to reveal the smooth, pink plaster, like flesh beneath skin. We sit together on a soft, floral sofa and Alison tucks her hair behind her ears. She looks raw, her freckled skin ruddy and taut from crying. 

“You’ve gotten tanned,” she says.

I don’t know what to say to that. 

“Wait there a minute. I’ll make you a cup of tea.” 

I take her hand to stop her before she wafts away to the kitchen to distract herself, murmuring, “I think we should talk about what you’re going to do.”

She chews on her lip, already chapped, and her eyes do an anxious tour of my face. “Did you tell Jenny Smythe?”

“No.”

“Because she tells everyone everything, you know, if Jenny Smythe knows, then everyone might as well know...”

“I haven’t.”

“Does she know you’ve come to Dublin?”

“She thinks I’m visiting my family.”

“Could have come up with a better excuse, I have to say.”

“Nobody is ever going to know about this except for me, I swear. I’ll take this to my grave.”

She shrugs. 

“Okay?”

“Okay, yeah.”

Holding her hands feels like the right thing to do, but it doesn’t surprise me that she flinches away when I try. The inches between us on the cushion feel like a mile. 

“So… How far along are you?”

She frowns at the floor. “Six weeks, maybe seven, I dunno.”

“Right! And, um, do you…” I clear my throat, “Like, does…”

“It’s okay that you don’t know what to say.”

I realise I have been holding my breath, and blow it all out of my nose until my lungs empty. I feel like I’m deflating, like the battered football on the lawn outside. “Any word from Aaron?”

“No, and I doubt I’ll hear a thing. He was going on about how he wanted to be single in college anyway, so, I suppose we’re just fast-tracking that decision,” a hollow, incredulous laugh escapes her. “And I’m obviously not invited to his debs anymore. Message received.”

“Do you have any of his friends’ numbers?”

“I’m not going around ringing his friends. I’m not a desperate person.”

“Fair enough.”

“God.” She shoves the heels of her hands into her eye sockets and rubs them, hard, choking out one dry sob while a hand on the broken mantlepiece clock ticks, stuck, twitching between one second and the next, “This is so bad, like, I can’t really even believe how bad it is. I can’t fully convince myself that it’s real.”

“You’re going to be fine, no matter what comes of it.”

“It’s actually funny, almost, because this is dead-on, exactly what everyone predicted. Why is it that I can’t ever seem to, like, rise above their crap expectations of me?”

“Don’t be saying that.”

“Imagine,” she says, eyes dancing enthusiastically with her own painful musings, “how they’d all be laughing about it, how obvious it’s always been that I’d be the one this’d happen to first. ‘Bet you a tenner,’” Her voice drops in imitation of some generic boy, “‘Alison Littler’s going to be the first one in our year to get pregnant.’”

“Nobody was ever saying those things… It doesn't just happen to people like you. It could happen to anyone, it’s just luck of the draw, isn’t it?”

“I was always careful,” she says. “Always. I know that nobody would believe me if I said that, but I was.”

I haven’t been. That first time, with Michelle, I didn’t have any protection on me and we carried on anyway, and years ago, that disastrous time with Clóda, I couldn’t really see what I was doing. I was too wrapped up in the moment, in the midst of the anxiety and the sand, to notice what had slipped. I shudder to think of myself in some grim alternate universe, next to either of them in a room like this one, having the same conversation. The only reason I never was is because of dumb luck. 

I stare at a piece of thread on the carpet. “You know, I’ll do whatever I can to help you, whatever you decide to do.”

Her voice is almost inaudible. “Thanks,” and I take her hand and run my thumb over the bumps of her knuckles, little freckled mountains. 

It seems gauche to bring it up, like the wrong moment, but it is the reason I am here. I doubt the right moment will reveal itself organically.

“How much do you need me to give you?”

She rests her cheek on my shoulder, her hand curling around my upper arm while her eyes stare straight ahead and unblinking. I’m certain she feels weird, unsubtle. On the phone she squirmed with humiliation, acknowledging our distance, the tactlessness of her request, her clumsy delivery, But I told her I didn’t care. Excruciating times call for excruciating questions, and I have never felt attached to money, truly lacking of, or protective of it.

She speaks, finally, “Around six hundred.”

“Does that include travel?”

“No. I didn’t think that far ahead.”

“You’ll need to go, right? To London, or Liverpool or something.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

“So that’s what? Another hundred, maybe? And if you want to stay overnight-”

“I was hoping maybe I’d just fall down the stairs instead.”

I pause. “Was that a joke, or?”

“Yeah.”

“Right, I couldn’t tell from the way you said it.”

She peels a flake of skin from her lip and gives it a thorough examination before flicking it somewhere. I give her knee a shake so that she will look at me, and then she does, blue eyes frightened, stark against her pale features, light eyelashes, round lips, like a Botticelli angel. “Have you spoken to your friends about this? Who else have you told?”

“Nobody, just you. I don’t want anybody knowing my business.”

“But your friends-”

“They wouldn’t get it. They’d think that my choice is wrong, and they’d say all of this stuff to me that’d make me feel worse.”

“Alison…”

“No,” she insists. “I’m going to do this, and I’m going to pretend I didn’t, and then I’m never going to talk about it again, okay?”

“Okay.”

Tonight I will lose sleep over this conversation, the look she has on her face. Her fear, dread, resignation, even that dot of blood on her lip will repeat on me. I will mull endlessly over the things she goes on to tell me, her anxieties of being caught, being shamed, the loneliness of her journey, the clinic, and how they might judge her, and what she will do if she feels faint. Perhaps, she ponders, instead of waiting in the airport, she will go to the cinema after the procedure. Then, at least if she passes out, nobody will tell her she’s too ill to board a plane. Even when pooling our money together, her savings and the last of my summer allowance, there is no wiggle room for a second flight home. 

“Thank you for telling me this,” I say now, when things still feel okay, and the gravity of her choice has yet to sink in. 

“I kind of knew that you’d get it.”

We have this in common: born to a teenager. The circumstances were different, and our lives were too, but we both, Alison and I, know the strange, desolate pain of being mothered by a person who had either no desire or no ability to raise a child. 

At seven, I wasn’t supposed to hear my cousins discuss, in hushed tones, at Aunt Maureen’s dining room table, how Colette refused to hold me for months when I was a baby. About the myriad of excuses she made when someone passed me to her, like how she had left something in the oven, needed to wash her hands, make a phone call, get some air. I think that even if I hadn’t heard them criticise her, I might have known it anyway, on some deep, cosmic level, like how birds know to reject their defective young. It reveals something deep, painful, and true. Perhaps it would be stranger if I knew she had wanted me. At least now I don’t find her confusing.

“I’ll send you the money as soon as I get to the bank,” I say. “And then you’ll let me know when you’re going? If you need anything while you’re there?”

She says she will, and we hold each other on the floral couch, surrounded by all the random things in her living room until it’s time for me to go, and I know, even if I am the only one to ever know it, that I have done something good. 

Beginning // Prev // Next

[kissalopa]

He acts so sad, like he wasn't the one suggesting it

[ffcrazy15]

Man, some pro-choicers will really accuse you of wanting to do painful medical procedures instead of letting the little preemies born alive after a failed abortion pass peacefully, you monster—and then completely flip their shit when you point out that they’re apparently cool with that same baby that they said feels pain getting dismembered in a D&C.

Which is it, fellas? Are they incapable of feeling pain and therefore aren’t being tormented by the doctors trying to save their lives with invasive medical procedures, or are they capable of feeling pain and therefore fully experience the violence of getting taken apart or crushed during an abortion?

For the record I don’t advocate doing painful extraordinary care for infants born alive who are too sick or injured to survive, they just kept putting words in my mouth. Also for the record I know not all pro-choices are like this, thank God.

[aestariiwilderness]

Any Appeal to Objective Morality (“Should”/ Rights /Bodily Autonomy) In Defense of Abortion is Inherently Self-Contradictory & Illogical

Not intended to be confrontational! Just, hopefully, thought-provoking to anyone who happens to mosey on by my little corner of the Internet. I noticed a very common fallacy in "pro-choice" arguments and had some thoughts about it.

For abortion supporters: 

I have to ask, where are you getting this “should”? This common appeal to bodily autonomy as an intrinsic “right” that all humans should recognize and observe? The very concept of intrinsic rights flies in the face of the popular pro-abortion belief that must assume that the value of a human is extrinsic and thus arbitrary (i.e., must fulfill certain conditions or criteria to have worth sufficient to live, such as being wanted, being a certain age or size, having a certain degree of independence, or being in a certain location, being a certain “race”, being a certain sex, etc., etc.). Since biology and science are very clear that the reproductive product of two humans is a unique human from the moment of conception, it follows that an unborn child/ “fetus” is a human from the moment of conception and thus also has those intrinsic, inalienable rights – the same ones which you claim somehow give you the right to transgress her inalienable right to life. This, in itself, is all you need to show that this pro-abortion belief is inherently self-contradictory. Even beyond that, the point is moot regardless – every civilized society recognizes the need to restrict the lesser right of bodily autonomy in the case of its expression becoming a direct/active threat to another’s primary rights (i.e., the right to life). (Otherwise – murder? Meh, a matter of opinion. “I was expressing my bodily autonomy to hack her into pieces and stuff them in a trash bag, officer! What are you gonna do about it?” Secondhand smoking laws? Violations of the smoker’s bodily autonomy. Laws against underage drinking or driving under the influence? Don’t even try it. Seatbelt laws? No, because bodily autonomy!) 

But there’s still more than that! Any appeal to recognize bodily autonomy or any other “inherent” or intrinsic human right must be an appeal to an objective morality – a moral standard from a higher authority that applies to all humans, regardless of belief, culture, time period, or other factors. Without this appeal to a morality that all instinctively recognize, there could be no “should” about anything. Might would make right, and only the evolutionarily fittest individuals or societies “should” survive. Without objective morality, no one would care about anyone else’s rights to anything, because those rights themselves would be a nonsensical concept. 

Even better – this particular higher moral standard to which you appeal is unique and easily recognizable. It is that of the God of the Bible (see Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis for a more step-by-step process to that conclusion). This is the same God in the same Bible that commands “do not murder”, says that He is our God from the womb onward, provides unborn children with the same legal protection that is given to born people, and consistently speaks to, refers to, and interacts with the unborn in exactly the same way He does with the born. 

In short, the pro-abortion belief appeals to an objective morality it usually claims not to believe in and the moral standard of the same God they usually also say they don’t believe in (and the same God who says “don’t murder” and that unborn babies are people) in order to say that murdering other people is an intrinsic right for some people. 

Make it make sense! :D  Sources:

https://acpeds.org/position-statements/when-human-life-begins https://www.tumblr.com/life-advocate-feminist/622491663491842048/life-begins-at-conception-masterpost?source=share Abortion: A Matter of Choice? · Videos · Creation.com  

https://issuesinlawandmedicine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Jacobs_36n2.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/19-1392/185346/20210729162737297_19-1392%20BRIEF%20OF%20BIOLOGISTS%20AS%20AMICI%20CURIAE%20IN%20SUPPORT%20OF%20NEITHER%20PARTY.pdf https://www.str.org/w/what-exodus-21-22-says-about-abortion https://biblearchaeology.org/research/contemporary-issues/2243-abortion-and-the-ancient-practice-of-child-sacrifice https://resources.care-net.org/pro-choice-christians/?utm_source=lifenews.com&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=abortion_hotline_pledge https://youtu.be/P3j0raroDqM https://www.openbible.info/topics/the_value_of_human_life https://bibleteacher.org/2019/08/08/all-human-life-is-precious/

Proverbs 31:8 

Luke 1:44 

2nd Kings 17:17 

Jeremiah 19:5 

Genesis 9:6 

Exodus 21:22-25 

Matthew 7:20 - 23 

John 15:14 

1st John 1:5-10, 2:3-6 

Exodus 20:13 

Mark 10:13-15 Leviticus 20:3-5 (https://biblehub.com/hebrew/mizzaro_2233.htm) 

Matthew 18:10, 14

Psalm 22:10

Jacob & Esau, John the Baptist, Samson, etc. Judges 16:17

[ediblegoldstars]

This is honestly the best way to handle protestors, imo.

[x] <- Twitter account link for updates

[topguncortez]

[bisexualbard-writes]

can you IMAGINE the political discourse around reproductive rights in a universe where soulmates exist.

anti-choicer: you're killing someone's soulmate with an abortion! pro-choicer: you can't kill a soulmate with an abortion, because fate knows that fetus isn't going to be born in the first place! The abortion is destined to happen!

[duffsmckagan]

Kirk could’ve had a kid in the early 90s with his then gf Sarah (who was 17/18). He was supportive of her decision to get an abortion. Kirk really is boyfriend material. The fact that he was very supportive of her 🥹.

[storiesbyjes2g]

We can work it out

[happy-lemon]

Zuri brought up waiting to have a baby when they are both ready, but that didn't go over well. Now they are both sad for different reasons and not sure how to bridge the gap.

[kissalopa]

All of that was too much for Manuel, so he asked Paulina to consider pregnancy termination.

Since she also didn't want to have children right now she agreed.