Listening: To Venus and Back, Tori Amos
I'd rather be: at peace

Yesterday the Senate passed the Victims of Unborn Violence Act and President Bush is scheduled to sign it soon if it hasn’t already done it. He expected to be eager to sign it, if not gleeful.

I’ve had to take several stabs at opening this post because I’m so furious it’s hard to get very far without grinding my teeth so hard it hurts.

Goddamned hypocritical motherfuckers!AAAauuuurrrrgh! How dare they!?!?!


I’ve written about abortion before. I’ll try to keep from rehashing my positions, but since this is an extension of that I’ll remind you that I am pro-choice. Thus far I have CHOSEN not to have a child and I’d like to keep it that way.

How dare they tell us it’s not about abortion but straight out say it’s supposed to protect “children” at their most vulnerable? How can they possibly stand the stink of their own bullshit? A fetus in utero is not, NOT, NOT vulnerable. It’s one of the safest places IN THE WORLD. An infant’s body is exceedingly vulnerable to infection, trauma and is the very definition of powerless. A fetus is housed in a body, the entire biological imperative of which is to protect it!!!

Legally, per Roe v Wade, a fetus is an extension of a woman’s body. If it goes to term, then it becomes another human. Until then any woman carrying a fetus may treat it as part of her body. Protecting it by law is like giving special status to a kidney or a foot. It makes it in some ways more important than the entire body, even though the part could not survive without the entire body. It singles one physical condition out and makes it specially protected.

It’s dumb, it’s shortsighted and will set up a precedent to curb a woman’s right to choose what to do with her body. Not to mention it takes it out of her hands if she wants to keep or dismiss charges against anyone who may be held responsible for the loss of pregnancy.

And that’s without going into the fact that it doesn’t say any other permanent disability will be prosecuted, just this one. And it doesn’t do anything for men who may be similarly hurt – if a man is attacked and rendered infertile what are his options?

Abortion will always be around so long as there are sharp, pointy things in the world. And people who turn to violence simply because they can will always be around so long as people don’t suddenly turn into angels. Ideology…morality… there is no place for it in legislative bodies, only order and precedent. Therefore patting oneself on the back for protecting some idea of a person without taking into account the living, breathing bodies that brought that idea into existence…It’s like issuing me a patent for my time travel machine that maybe I’ll build after I’ve taken the requisite physics courses.

Ugh. How dare they say that they’re acting in the best interests of children when they so blatantly disreguard “born” children who have no one to care for them? Where is the law that makes it a federal crime to harm a child who is a ward of the state? Where is the encouragement of adoption and foster care to provide all that a child that is not aborted will need? Where is the push to care for women who have to make hard fiscal choices regarding caring for a child born from a failing relationship so the child doesn’t have to know the same emotional blackmail that created him. Where are the communities that will support women who will ostracized for their choice to bring a child to term?

On their souls and on their blood, how dare they?