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cultivating-wildflowers · 11 months ago

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hi there !! i was over here because you had reblogged a really pretty photograph a while ago and i wanted to see what other lovely posts you might've found in the corners of tumblr.

i looked at your account and noticed, oh, pro-life! i was a bit wary at first because many people i've seen as pro-life are misogynistic sexist idiots who say it's a woman's fault if she's raped, even if the 'woman' in question is a fourteen year old girl. i hope you forgive my initial scepticism.

however, i read your post on the pro-life argument with the way you see it (it may have been a reblog of someone else? i can't quite remember) and i have some questions. i myself am pro-abortion, but with certain restrictions (mainly the current law in many places of you can't abort the child a month before birth because it's a human, and that aborting a child for its disabilities isn't ethical in the slightest).

what about when a twelve year old child is raped? is she meant to carry the strain of a child, scorn from parents, lack of support, blame, maybe have permanent harm or disabilities from childbirth? i have an old friend who got her menstrual cycle at eight years old. if she were raped, would she need to carry the child? in my worldview, no. a child gets raped and then the next day the "morning after" pill is administered so an elementary schooler (or middle, or even high schooler) does not have to suffer.

another question: sometimes, conception happens hours or even days after the actual ejaculation. would a "morning after" pill be outlawed? because there's no way to be sure if conception has actually happened, and if it hasn't, then taking a pill or some other action to prevent conception from happening in the first place isn't "bad".

and what about women whose children died in the womb? would anti-abortion laws still apply, would she charged with murder?

what about women who due to an illness or some other reason cannot have a child because they will die in the process, killing them and the child? would the pro-life worldview condemn both lives, or would they allow this person to take a pill and cut off the few cells that could not in any world be called a human?

if some vile person killed a woman who had conceived two days prior, would they be charged with double murder for that which is not yet a blastocyst (the zygote phase is four to five days after conception).

so sorry for putting this big chunk of text in your askbox, and feel free to ignore it, but you're one of the first genuinely nice people i've seen that is pro life who isn't trying to justify arguments with religion (because separation of church and state means no religion as sole justification for law, which is what many people i've seen try to do)

thank you!!

Hello! Thank you so much for your detailed questions! I'm happy to answer as best I can. I had thought this might take a while to answer, because I had to find a few resources I knew I had linked somewhere that helped me as I was sorting through the logistics of my own convictions surrounding being pro-life. Turns out this was how I'd spend my evening, lol.

I still have gaps and I'm always happy for civil discussion. (As you know, a lot of my thoughts are under my pro-life tag. Apologies in advance that several of my links just shoot back to posts I've reblogged, but they're more comprehensive than a single webpage. I can also direct you to a couple of tumblr folks I follow who have even more resources and cover different facets of the issue than I usually reblog or that I'm still investigating.)

As you might have guessed, this got long, so I'm tucking it under a read-more. But before I do, here is my most important resource: What actually happens during an abortion. I rarely say anything is so important that everyone needs to see it. This is one of those times.

i was over here because you had reblogged a really pretty photograph a while ago and i wanted to see what other lovely posts you might've found in the corners of tumblr.

The funny thing is that used to be 90% of my blog until like two years ago, and now here we are 😅 (I lost a lot of followers when I started actually using this like a blog. I also found a lot of great friends.)

Yeah, can't say I'd care to associate with those people, either, and I'd love to challenge them on their own convictions (only, 1. I'm not really one for heated debates and 2. I'm pretty sure I, a single 20-something woman, would be immediately ignored, so why waste my time).

While I was born and raised in a pro-life family, being pro-life as an adult is a conviction I claim and have searched out for myself. I know, and science affirms, that life begins at conception. (Yes, all of those frozen embryos stored at ivf clinics are unique and full human beings. I'll be so honest with you and say even I have to grapple with that and no, I haven't begun to grasp the implications.) Every single human being is deserving of dignity, from womb to tomb. It is never permissible to murder a human being for being inconvenient. (Canadian and British government healthcare systems, I'm looking at you. Also, Iceland, I see your claim that you've eradicated Down syndrome and I know you're a bunch of lying cowards.) It is never permissible to murder someone because they have the potential to be inconvenient. I could be hit by a car tomorrow and end up with brain damage. I could lose my job and plunge into horrible poverty. I could meet some random guy and end up in an abusive relationship. If it's not ok to kill me because of less-than-ideal circumstances, it is not ok to kill a child because they might be born disabled, or into a poor family, or into an abusive situation. We need to fix their circumstances, not kill them.

(Before I get much further, this post is a collection of a lot of my favorite resources on the impact abortion has on women. More facts and figures here. Unfortunately I cannot find the link to the study, but I have seen it cited often on here that a large majority of women who considered abortion but did not go through with it, within five years, are glad they didn't get an abortion. I believe the number is between 90 and 95% but again, can't find the link.)

For the last eight years, I've worked at an organization that provides care for individuals with disabilities, many of whom have the sort of disabilities that would make doctors suggest abortion. Not one of those human beings would be better off dead. The world is richer for them being in it, and I'm happy to know them. They deserve support and dignity, not death.

There is no magical point at which a preborn baby becomes human or becomes a person. They are human from the moment of conception. I have a friend who was born nearly two months prematurely; did she have to wait a month post-birth to be considered human?

There are also no non-person humans. Personhood is not merit-based. Again, if I end up with brain damage and have to rely on other people for the rest of my life, do I cease to be a person?

It is a fact that abortion protects abusers. It is a fact that rapists and sex traffickers force women to have abortions to keep them in those horrible situations. Abortion is anti-woman, because it helps horrible men dodge all responsibility, and it prevents society at large from having to address the actual causes that often drive women to abortion.

Rape accounts for about 1% of all abortions. I'm not saying that makes it ok and I'm not trying to dismiss it, I'm just observing that it's nearly always treated as the main driver behind abortion when it is not. What it is is one of the most horrific things that can ever happen to a person, and the offender needs to be dealt with, with extreme prejudice. Killing a child helps no one. The mother deserves protection, she deserves support, and she deserves medical care. I don't know all the ins and outs of how best to handle this situation, but I believe the best case scenario is eventually a c-section. (A book I really appreciated that covered a situation like this is I Am the Exception by Anna Richey [video linked]). There are countless testimonies of women who were in this situation who chose to save their children and they are glad they did. They know the answer was not to kill children. There are countless testimonies of people who were conceived in rape who are glad their mothers chose to give them a chance at life. They know their lives have value and are worth living. Mother and child are both victims who deserve justice, not trauma heaped upon trauma.

(There's a whole discussion to be had here around child marriage and sexual abuse but unfortunately I don't have the material to even touch it. I can say making pedophilia a protected "identity" is so far off the mark that the radar can't even pick it up.)

(I will briefly sidebar to wave at the legislation being put into place to teach human development in schools via the Baby Olivia...project? [I forget what the whole initiative is called which is horrible because I've seen it around a lot lately.] I think that's actually pretty awesome. Kid-me would have been fascinated [and a bit grossed out because yeah, I was an awkward kid].)

I have to disagree there. It's still bad. Especially because, in the overwhelming majority of cases, we're talking about sex between two consenting adults who are looking to disrupt a natural process and divorce it from all natural responsibility for the sake of convenience. If you don't want to get pregnant, don't have sex. If you don't want to have a kid with that person, don't have sex with them. Simple as. Biological children are not a human right, and neither is sex.

(If you poke around at enough of my blog you'll notice I'm straight-up against birth control. For one thing, it is extremely harmful to women; for another, it is a band-aid that has completely stalled the improvement of women's healthcare; for another, it is seriously damaging the average Western woman's understanding of her own body and biology; and there's the whole disrupting-a-natural-process bit. But I digress.)

and what about women whose children died in the womb? would anti-abortion laws still apply, would she charged with murder?

Reading any of the laws in question shows that ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages aren't at all included in those laws. Those are not abortion because the pregnancy is nonviable and it has become a medical situation. Abortion wouldn't even help those situations; if anything, it would only make everything worse, and risk the life of the mother. Abortion is not medical care. Ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages have to be treated medically. All of the cases I've seen where "a woman was charged with murder for miscarriage" end up being something else like "woman miscarried and tried flushing her baby down the toilet" (yeah that was an actual thing in the last month and she was charged with improper treatment of human remains which... = human dignity.)

Abortion is not healthcare. If a woman is already at risk of complications, abortion will only make those complications worse. They will not help her. There is not a single situation where pregnancy is so dangerous that the only answer is abortion.

Those "few cells" are human. I'm also a clump of cells; I'm human. If I'm drowning (unlikely because I avoid swimming because I suck at it), is it ok for the lifeguard to hold my head underwater instead of making me calm down so they can tow me to shore?

Any reasonable human being who recognizes that the woman in question is carrying another human being, her child, would recognize that what they both need is medical care. The mother can be monitored, her condition treated as best as possible, and there's always the option to deliver early. Modern medicine allows us to support babies who are almost as early as 20 weeks premature! The answer is to take care of these people, not kill one because the other is in danger.

And in case anyone is wondering, this goes for babies who are "incompatible with life". 1. Doctors make mistakes and it's proven they often make mistakes where fetal development is concerned. (My sister got the scare of her life when a stupid tech told her that her third baby had "spots on her brain". I told my coworker, who said the same thing happened to her 15 years ago and one doctor bandied about the word "abortion" in front of her. Friends, the baby's brain was still developing. My sister's child is fine, and stupidly adorable to boot. Please.) 2. Even if that baby is "incompatible with life", the answer is not to kill them more quickly (and far, far, far more painfully). The answer is to treat them as best as medically possible, support their parents, and afford them the dignity deserving to every human being. Palliative care is a thing. For heaven's sake, let's use it more.

(My mother used to be a volunteer photographer for an organization where she went to hospitals and took pictures of babies who either had just passed or who didn't have long to live, to give their parents something to remember their children by. I also have so so many relatives and friends who have suffered miscarriages and stillbirths. I don't know that grief firsthand, but I know what it looks like, and I know that parents and siblings need support, not murder.)

(We also really need to stop treating all pregnancies like medical situations or a disease. They aren't. Pregnancy is natural. It is only when there are complications that it becomes a medical issue. I love modern medicine by and large. I love that it can help improve our lives. But sometimes doctors need to butt out and let women do what they were built to do.)

I don't know all of the legalities of double homicides in the case of pregnancy. I'm fairly certain that if it is known that the woman is pregnant, regardless of whether or not that motivated the murder, then the charge is double homicide. I would assume if the pregnancy was unknown, it doesn't apply? (I watch too many murder mystery and police procedural shows to have any faith in how these things are determined.) Morally, two people have been killed regardless, but I have no idea on the legalities.

Also, note that zygote and blastocyst are stages of human development, same as embryo, fetus, newborn, infant, toddler, adolescent, and adult.

i'm very sorry if these questions seem accusatory or rude-- i'm genuinely trying to understand the other side, because i don't feel like i can actually justify abortion if i don't know how the "other" side would approach ethical questions. i put "other" in quotation marks because while we have two very much opposing sets of ideas on how abortion should be approached, above all we care for the welfare of people and want the best for everyone. so sorry for putting this big chunk of text in your askbox, and feel free to ignore it, but you're one of the first genuinely nice people i've seen that is pro life who isn't trying to justify arguments with religion (because separation of church and state means no religion as sole justification for law, which is what many people i've seen try to do)

I don't think any of this comes off as rude or argumentative in any way! You laid out every point very clearly and it's nice to be able to discuss it as clearly as I am able (which, admittedly, is sometimes as clear as milk) instead of feeling like I have to defend myself (usually in that case I just give up and delete the ask). Again, I'm happy to look into any of this further and to provide better resources if there's something lacking in any of my points. I'm by no means perfect, and my arguments, while driven by a deep-felt and sincere conviction, are not as thorough as perhaps they should be. That's on me to work on, but I'm happy to do my best in the meantime.

Part of my convictions are grounded in my belief in God, but as you are aware, they can't be my whole foundation, and if the person on the other side of the conversation doesn't share that belief, we need another point of common ground for our discussion. (Secular Prolife is an excellent resource if you want more in-depth, non-religious discussions of this topic. I know there are others, but I don't have the list in front of me.)

And it is important to explore all sides of the issue! It's kind of hard to argue coherently otherwise. I see this discussion all the time from people "on the other side" or on the fence, both people I know and total strangers. I'm familiar with a lot of their arguments, both the ones they consider good-faith and the ones that are obviously driven by vitriol. Listening to them only helps bring clarity to my own knowledge and convictions.

I know so many people who are "for abortion with exceptions" are sincerely motivated by concern for other people. The onus is on them to figure out why, for them, that means killing some people for the sake of others. It's not enough to say "Well, I've never been in that situation, so I don't have room to speak". Abortion is a human right's issue. We all have a place at the discussion. Because at the end of the day, it comes down to one thing:

Abortion is the intentional killing of a child, a human being. It doesn't matter the reason behind that killing, whether it's a question of health, social circumstance, situation in life, or fear. It is murder.

And it is never ok.

For further reading (the majority of these are actual links, not links to tumblr posts):

This post and the notes are my-go to for the breakdown of the key abortion arguments.

Choice42

Carrying To Term

New Wave Feminists

The Human Defense Initiative

Birthright International

Abortion73

Rehumanize International

And again, if you are looking for more nice and rational people who are willing to discuss things like adults, I can give you a list!

#woof #that took....so much longer than I meant it to #.... guys it's 10:00 #HOW IS IT PAST 10:00???#I was supposed to do my laundry and set up my sewing pattern and read a book and eat dinner and and and #ah well #that's my brain y'all #@ anon: thank you AGAIN for being so cool!#it was nice to get to break it all down point by point and I hope I helped at least a little #I nearly killed my computer making it open a bunch of bookmarks all at once (it's a baby; there were never more than two dozen at at time)#again: I am always open to anons on this topic provided they're polite and seem to actually want to discuss this #cheers!#pro-life #discourse tag #asks #mine

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