Wednesday, December 28. 2011
Celebrating girls
In a recent conversation, my sister-in-law commented on how many girls we have in our growing family. I have three girls, my brother has three girls and my husband's brother has three girls. I responded by saying that while boys are great too, it is a good thing that we are having so many girls. With 163 million "missing" girls in Asia, which is the equivalent to the entire female population of the United States, someone needs to be having girls. Lots and lots of girls.Which is why I support the Prenatal Non-Discrimination Act or PRENDA for short. It would make aborting a girl just because she is a girl illegal in the United States. You would think that making it illegal to abort a girl just because she is a girl would be a feminist's dream. The feminists must be rallying in support of such legislation, right? They are not. They say that sex selection in the United States is non-existent. They call sex selective abortion a "trumped up bill for a trumped up problem."
That seems like the only play in the pro-abortion play book. Just pretend. First, pretend a fetus is not a living human organism. Now, pretend that sex selection does not happen in America. Except there is evidence that Asians are practicing sex-selective abortions here in the United States. A study done with data from the 2000 U.S. Census shows a clear son preference in Chinese, Koreans, and Asian Indians. The normal male to female ratio is 1.05 to 1. Researchers found that for third children where the older siblings were girls the ratio of boys to girls in these populations was an grossly unnatural 1.5 to 1. The researchers concluded that sex selection is occurring and it is likely in the prenatal stage.
Richard Miniter wrote in Forbes that a study in the San Francisco Bay Area, two clinics that service a high Asian population reported that 89% of women carrying girls aborted. Miniter also reported coercion:
And, too often, it wasn’t their choice. South-Asian women, pregnant with daughters, reported incredible pressure by in-laws and husbands to produce sons and not daughters. Husbands threatened divorce or abandonment, others struck, choked or kicked their wives in the abdomen in the hopes of preventing a daughter. One woman said that her Indian mother-in-law threatened to take poison if she could not produce a son.So feminists opposed to PRENDA are not only opposed to protecting girls in the womb from discrimination but are also opposed to giving women legal protection against pressure from their husbands and in-laws to abort their girls.
See feminists that oppose PRENDA really do not want to protect women. They want to protect ideas instead. Ms. Magazine called PRENDA "an affront our rights to privacy, to bodily autonomy, and to mobilize in concert to create change and solidarity in our communities—based on our priorities and experiences, our visions for the future and our agency." Some feminists would rather protect the elusive and vague ideas of "experiences," "visions" and "agency" than protect actual girls from being exterminated just because they don't have a Y chromosome.
Do I think PRENDA will solve all of the sex selection abortions in America? No. Only getting rid of legalized abortion all together will do that. But it is important that the United States has laws on the books that state we will not stand for aborting girls just because they are girls. In the meantime, I, along with true feminists that support PRENDA, will continue to celebrate the birth of girls everywhere knowing they are desperately needed in today's world.
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Modern mainstream feminists have truly sold women down the river in more ways than I can count. That's why I don't relate to them very well. They don't really care about women as individuals.
The early feminists from the 1800's were much better than the ones we have today. The only exception to this rule seems to be the ones from the group Feminists for Life, and also from the Susan B Anthony List. They seem to really care about women.
The others only care about the ones who want an abortion. If you're not even pregnant, or worse, if you are pregnant, but refuse an abortion, they don't care a whit about you.
The early feminists from the 1800's were much better than the ones we have today. The only exception to this rule seems to be the ones from the group Feminists for Life, and also from the Susan B Anthony List. They seem to really care about women.
The others only care about the ones who want an abortion. If you're not even pregnant, or worse, if you are pregnant, but refuse an abortion, they don't care a whit about you.
Uhm...forgive me if I misinterpreted your comment and the author's intent, but is the implication here that all modern mainstream feminists are pro-choice? If so, I disagree, mostly because it generalizes not only one, but two distinctly different population of (for argument's sake) women.
I mean, I'm pro-choice (and feminist, I guess) and I think I've always been relatively open/sympathetic to the beliefs of those who aren't. This isn't the point of my comment, by the way. It's just to get my political views out of the way so whoever cares enough to read has context.
Anyway. At best, I think the first comment is overly generalized and harsh. At worst, representative of how incredibly hypocritical some pro-life arguments can be.*
For example, take this quote from the comment above:
"The early feminists from the 1800's were much better than the ones we have today. The only exception to this rule seems to be the ones from the group Feminists for Life, and also from the Susan B Anthony List. They seem to really care about women."
I get that those two groups and the commenter are pro-life. Fine. She should be allowed to support whatever organization she wants. That's her right and I don't have a problem with that, but claiming that they're the only group of feminists who care about women? Why? Because they're pro-life? Because they're in line with what she believes? ...Fine. The logic is circular, and I don't agree, but I accept her opinion.
My problem is with the following lines:
"The others only care about the ones who want an abortion. If you're not even pregnant, or worse, if you are pregnant, but refuse an abortion, they don't care a whit about you."
...Excuse me, what? That wasn't a personal opinion or a generalization that we can all agree to disagree with. It was just a mean-spirited and uninformed attack against everyone on the opposing side; and frankly, it was uncalled for.
Last time I checked, I care about all women regardless of whether or not they pregnant or pro-life. When I was younger and more naive, I was pro-life. There were flaws and unplanned preganacy probably isn't ideal, but are alternatives. And anything must be better than taking away even the possibility of a future for someone else, especially if they're 100% innocent. It just seemed intuitive and right. My transition from pro-life to pro-choice wasn't because I developed a sudden urge to kill babies and disregard other women. It was because I realized that being strictly and fundamentally pro-life is the exact opposite of caring.
Being politically pro-life is basically like looking at the world and claiming to know what's best for every single life that exists currently and will exist in the future. To borrow the language (but obviously not the intent) of the article, it's choosing strict adherence the elusive and vague principles of "protecting life," "morality," "religion," over the lives of actual people.
I'm not saying anyone should go around proclaiming that abortion be used as a substitute for birth control or to stop encouraging the development of adult stem cells over embryonic stems cells. I'm just saying that if it was really about caring and lives, rather than trying to (for example) imply that getting rid of all legalized abortion is a solution to sex-selected abortions as if that's the only roadblock instead of, say, lack of education, out-dated cultural traditions, or lack of financial/societal support. They would understand that doing the right thing only means something if you're given the choice and you choose it for yourself (to an extent, even God realized that). They'd realize that being pro-life isn't about making it the only choice, but rather making it the better one.
gets off soapbox
Sorry. Didn't mean to insult anyone. It just really annoys me when people try to take the moral high road by pushing other people down rather than lifting themselves up. Believe what you want to believe, do what you want to do, but please don't think that you're better than anyone else for it. Being a good person is the bare minimum, and frankly, no one deserves a reward for that.
I mean, I'm pro-choice (and feminist, I guess) and I think I've always been relatively open/sympathetic to the beliefs of those who aren't. This isn't the point of my comment, by the way. It's just to get my political views out of the way so whoever cares enough to read has context.
Anyway. At best, I think the first comment is overly generalized and harsh. At worst, representative of how incredibly hypocritical some pro-life arguments can be.*
For example, take this quote from the comment above:
"The early feminists from the 1800's were much better than the ones we have today. The only exception to this rule seems to be the ones from the group Feminists for Life, and also from the Susan B Anthony List. They seem to really care about women."
I get that those two groups and the commenter are pro-life. Fine. She should be allowed to support whatever organization she wants. That's her right and I don't have a problem with that, but claiming that they're the only group of feminists who care about women? Why? Because they're pro-life? Because they're in line with what she believes? ...Fine. The logic is circular, and I don't agree, but I accept her opinion.
My problem is with the following lines:
"The others only care about the ones who want an abortion. If you're not even pregnant, or worse, if you are pregnant, but refuse an abortion, they don't care a whit about you."
...Excuse me, what? That wasn't a personal opinion or a generalization that we can all agree to disagree with. It was just a mean-spirited and uninformed attack against everyone on the opposing side; and frankly, it was uncalled for.
Last time I checked, I care about all women regardless of whether or not they pregnant or pro-life. When I was younger and more naive, I was pro-life. There were flaws and unplanned preganacy probably isn't ideal, but are alternatives. And anything must be better than taking away even the possibility of a future for someone else, especially if they're 100% innocent. It just seemed intuitive and right. My transition from pro-life to pro-choice wasn't because I developed a sudden urge to kill babies and disregard other women. It was because I realized that being strictly and fundamentally pro-life is the exact opposite of caring.
Being politically pro-life is basically like looking at the world and claiming to know what's best for every single life that exists currently and will exist in the future. To borrow the language (but obviously not the intent) of the article, it's choosing strict adherence the elusive and vague principles of "protecting life," "morality," "religion," over the lives of actual people.
I'm not saying anyone should go around proclaiming that abortion be used as a substitute for birth control or to stop encouraging the development of adult stem cells over embryonic stems cells. I'm just saying that if it was really about caring and lives, rather than trying to (for example) imply that getting rid of all legalized abortion is a solution to sex-selected abortions as if that's the only roadblock instead of, say, lack of education, out-dated cultural traditions, or lack of financial/societal support. They would understand that doing the right thing only means something if you're given the choice and you choose it for yourself (to an extent, even God realized that). They'd realize that being pro-life isn't about making it the only choice, but rather making it the better one.
gets off soapbox
Sorry. Didn't mean to insult anyone. It just really annoys me when people try to take the moral high road by pushing other people down rather than lifting themselves up. Believe what you want to believe, do what you want to do, but please don't think that you're better than anyone else for it. Being a good person is the bare minimum, and frankly, no one deserves a reward for that.
The problem is not nonexistent if the issue of parental consent laws for minors isn't nonexistent. Nobody can claim that the numbers of abortions affected are substantially less here. And NARAL and such seem to have no qualms about battling against laws like parental consent that they think will have even small effects and devoting significant resources to that.
I do think that a more effective law would concentrate on the tests that could reveal the sex of an infant, since once test results are revealed there is no way to prevent a parent from claiming some other reason for the abortion.
This post inspired me to write one on the same topic on my blog (through the homepage link).
I do think that a more effective law would concentrate on the tests that could reveal the sex of an infant, since once test results are revealed there is no way to prevent a parent from claiming some other reason for the abortion.
This post inspired me to write one on the same topic on my blog (through the homepage link).
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