On Choice- a “Guest Post”

I am quoting this post from Shakesville (a wonderful feminist blog that even includes daily pictures of cats (!) meaning of course it’s one of my favorite websites) in full because there is absolutely no way I could have said it better.

So, there’s this story today about Sarah Palin telling an antiabortion group in Evansville, Indiana how she momentarily considered aborting her last child when she learned she was pregnant at an oil and gas conference in another state:

“There, just for a fleeting moment, I thought, I knew, nobody knows me here. Nobody would ever know. I thought, wow, it is easy. It could be easy to think maybe of trying to change the circumstances. No one would know. No one would ever know.”

Ultimately, Palin said she realized she had to stay true to what she’d been saying for years — that “life is valuable because it is ordained.”

“I had just enough faith to know that trying to change the circumstances wasn’t any answer,” Palin said.

But the governor said the experience gave her an appreciation for what women and girls facing unwanted pregnancies go through.

“I do understand what these women, what these girls go through in that thought process.”Bullshit.

Fleetingly considering that you could get away with a secret abortion when you’ve got the means to support the resulting child isn’t the same thing as any woman or girl facing an unwanted pregnancy, 73% of whom cite “can’t afford a baby now” as the reason for the termination.

Fleetingly considering that you could get away with a secret abortion when you have government-paid healthcare isn’t the same thing as any woman or girl facing an unwanted pregnancy, about one-fourth of whom cite their own health or possible health problems with the fetus as reasons for the termination, owing to concerns including “a lack of prenatal care.”

Fleetingly considering that you could get away with a secret abortion when you’re a conservative politician with visions of national office who might only end up as Governor of Alaska instead of President of the US if you don’t get an abortion isn’t the same thing as any woman or girl facing an unwanted pregnancy, many of whom might never finish high school, or might not finish college, or might lose their jobs, if they don’t get an abortion.

Just saying that abortion crossed your mind for the briefest instant in an abstract way doesn’t give Palin any kind of insight into the experience of a woman or girl who’s seriously considering an abortion.

It does, however, give her all the expertise she needs (along with conferring a deeply undeserved air of courageousness for her “brutal honesty”) among the retrofuck dunderheads who turn up at anti-choice events to hear her speak. And so when she says to them, “It was a time when I had to ask myself was I gonna walk the walk or I was gonna talk the talk,” they can laud both her bravery and unassailable ethics—the flipside of which is implicitly demonizing as amoral cowards all of the women and girls who didn’t make the same choice, made ever that much easier by Palin’s convenient masking of her fortunate circumstances. What a fucking hero.

One of the greatest ironies of the anti-choice movement is that it is chockablock with people who are rich with choice. The reality is that Palin never had to seriously consider abortion, because she is rich with choice. Her privilege inoculated her against abortion being her only choice—and for that she wants applause, even as her politics cast millions of the women to the opposite fate.

Just…. damn.

Posted originally by Melissa McEwan, reposted with permission.

-BFF

 

Bristol Palin Loses Her Voice and Her Autonomy

As everyone has probably heard by now, Levi Johnston, Bristol Palin’s ex-fiancee and father of her child, went on the Tyra Banks show to talk about his relationship with Bristol. Almost needless to say, based on what Levi has said during these interviews, Sarah Palin is unhappy with his ” flat-out lies, gross exaggerations, and even distortions of their relationship”. Apparently, unbeknownst to the American people, Bristol can no longer speak for herself, and so my post tonight focuses on the  response put out by the Alaskan governor’s office, specifically these two choice items:

“Bristol’s focus will remain on raising Tripp, completing her education, and advocating abstinence,” the statement says.

The statement ends, saying, “Bristol realizes now that she made a mistake in her relationship and is the one taking responsibility for their actions.”

Wait, what? I was pretty sure Bristol went on a Fox interview stating that a goal of abstinence was pretty unrealistic. And I was also pretty sure that it takes two to tango, and two to “take responsibility for their actions”, as the statement says. Perhaps what we’re actually seeing is delayed anger from Ms. Palin at her daughter for not following more closely the tenets Palin preached in both word and Alaskan policy- funding abstinence-only education.

Bristol Palin was entirely correct when she says abstinence is not reasonable. We need better, comprehensive sex-ed for students, and poll after poll after poll shows that this is what the majority of American parents want taught to their kids, even across political ideologies. (The only evidence refuting these polls can be found on websites promoting abstinence-only education, which of course is completely unbiased.)

But this isn’t even the point- what really gets me angry is that this is coming out in a statement from Palin’s office, in direct contradiction to what Bristol actually said, and in fact goes so far as to intimate both punishment and blame by stating that “she is accepting responsibility”, which is language repeatedly used by both abstinence-only educators and stringent pro-life advocates. I would argue that the main tenet of abstinence-only education is punishment: punishment for having sex and enjoying sex, and most of all, being forced to “realize and accept the consequences” of having sex, even though AO educators focus on lying or distorting the facts surrounding sex, STIs, abortion, and contraception.

Seriously, if that girl is old enough to make the choice to have that baby, raise that baby, and speak out in direct opposition to her mother in the public eye, she’s old enough to speak for herself. And more than old enough to have her own opinion.

-BFF