So there was a congressional hearing yesterday about contraception, and, once again, men had to do all the work. Not a single lady on the panel! They were probably all eating bon bons and riding the cock carousel, like ladies do. Misandry in action!
Well, to be fair, the chair of the committee blocked a woman who was going to testify on the panel, but, you know, she probably would have just started yammering about shoes and how hot Taylor Lautner is. You know how ladies are.
Just another day in the feminazi gynocracy!
@Cassandra
What I don’t understand is why they can’t leave women the fuck alone and work towards their own birth control methods. It’s always about controlling what women do. For what it’s worth, I don’t think child support should necessarily be enforced by law. But I can also see the huge fucking difference between forcing a woman to go through an unwanted birth and have her whole changed, and a man who has to pay a few hundred dollars a month.
At the end of the day, I don’t care if men choose to opt out of fatherhood. As long as they leave women’s reproductive choices the hell alone.
But it isn’t like that for MRAs is it? because trying to find common ground is hard. Trying to change laws and implement new solutions of supporting children is hard. Changing the status quo is hard. Forcing women to do what men want is much easier though, it’s only been done since the beginning of time. To bad for MRAs and Republicans it’s getting harder though. To bad women are saying no more.
her whole *life* changed
Also I fully support zhinxy’s underground woman’s health collective idea…sadly it’s looking more and more like it will have to come to that
I just saw something really alarming from the superficially ridiculous bill banning prenatal racism. Check out this section. (Credit to Michael Bauser on Jezebel for pointing this out.)
(2) CIVIL ACTION BY RELATIVES- The father of an unborn child who is the subject of an abortion performed or attempted in violation of subsection (a), or a maternal grandparent of the unborn child if the pregnant woman is an unemancipated minor, may in a civil action against any person who engaged in the violation, obtain appropriate relief, unless the pregnancy resulted from the plaintiff’s criminal conduct or the plaintiff consented to the abortion.
AND
(A) IN GENERAL- A qualified plaintiff may in a civil action obtain injunctive relief to prevent an abortion provider from performing or attempting further abortions in violation of this section.
It’s the Meller-style MRA approach to banning abortion. If this passes it will allow the father, or the mother’s family, to sue the medical staff who performed an abortion if they didn’t give consent to it.
Addendum – All the father/mother’s family would then have to do is claim that the abortion was performed because of racism or sexism on the mother’s part. It’s yet another attempt to make performing abortions so difficult for medical staff because of all the hoops they have to jump through, and so much of a potential liability, that they just opt out of offering abortion services.
What utter bullshit. There are no words…the day is going to come where women will once again be forced to illegally abort and die. I’m sure that would make MRAs and republicans quite happy though. A dead woman is better than one who dared to make her own decisions about her life and body!
@cassandra
http://www.brook.org.uk/
maybe the UK version of planned parenthood? i used them once (when the condom broke) to access emergency contraception, i think i was 17, age of consent being 16. they didn’t inform my parents, don’t think there was a requirement for them to do so. very supportive and clear headed people working there. but the issues around contraception and abortion seem less inflammatory in the UK, what with the NHS and all, free pill and condoms.
I feel like there should be a Buttman’s Guide to Contraceptive Services after all this. I don’t even know where to start.
Buttman
Men….when a female gets pregnant. Really? how many chickens do you keep fucking? And should I call the SPCA or the discovery channel, to tell them that the chicken managed to create an intelligent hybrid?
@CassandraSays- Holyshit that is terrifying. And makes it clear that the fetus really is seen as property of the father/family, and erases the fact that it needs the woman’s body to live. WTF.
Parental notification laws already make it very difficult for young women to get abortions. Some pregnant minors don’t want to tell their parents they want an abortion, because they are afraid of being kicked out of their home for being pregnant. If a pregnant minor has pro-life parents, zie is also out of luck. There is the option of a judicial bypass for those cases but it can be so time consuming that the minor’s pregnancy might progress too far to get the abortion. Each state makes their own rules, but the further a pregnancy progresses, the harder it is to get an abortion. Alas a Blog has some good information on these laws.
Other posters have already brought up the prenatal racism bills and transvaginal ultrasound requirements that are intended to make abortion more difficult to access, especially for younger women and economically disadvantaged women. If laws make it too difficult for doctors to provide abortions, then the cost of abortion will rise as the supply falls. The same rich Republicans that try to outlaw contraception and abortion would still have access to them, just like rich people could get safe abortions before Roe v. Wade. Poor women wanting black market abortions oftentimes died or suffered serious complications, and pro life zealouts figured that was a just punishment for premarital sex.
It makes me sick that society is regressing back to the bad old days. Butthead comes right out with the misognynist reasons to oppose bc and abortion. Other conservatives try to hide their anti woman crap with paternalism and euphemistic language. I’d rather hear the arguments of “Why can’t women put aspiring between their knees?”. At least those people are honest about opposing bc just because they hate women and women’s sexuality.
I really wish there were more birth control options for men. Men aren’t viewed as sluts for having sex, but instead they’re seen as studs. The double standard would make a male pill be seen as more positive as the pill is for women. The pharmacists that balk at giving pills to sexually active women might be more open to providing pills to men. In any case, it would be awesome for men to be on their own pills and make accidental pregnancies less common.
As it is right now, here are the expectations MRA’s and other misogynists have for women of childbearing age.
1. Never have sex, because that’s slutty, unless you’re dating me and then don’t be frigid.
2. The pill is sinful, but if you have sex with me you had better buy it and use it.
3. If your pill fails because you had a stomach bug, forgot a pill, or took an antibiotic, then it means you’re a lying sperm stealer wanting to get rich off of child support.
4. If you are pregnant and want an abortion, I must give my approval first. If I veto your decision, your uterus is my property for the next nine months. If you don’t want one, and I want you to have one, I should be exempt from paying child support.
5. After the baby is born, never expect child support from the father. Don’t ask for government aid either. Most importantly, don’t be poor. Being poor makes you a BAD MOM!
So please, Buttwhiner, tell me how oppressed you are by women having low cost birth control provided by the same insurance companies that provide Viagra to men. I’m all ears.
Buttbaby, my husband got a vasectomy and did not have to pay one cent for a copay or deductible. Our insurance covered it with ZERO out of pocket expenses. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
@CassandraSays
What bill is that?
I’ve been known to engage trolls from time to time, but Buttman is a hit-and-run. There’s literally no reason to respond to him with anything other than amused derision.
I think women should be able to unilaterally choose whether or not to have abortions if men can unilaterally choose whether or not to pay child maintenance.
Under what circumstances richard? How would this apply to families of divorce?
I’m fine with this under circumstances where children can unilaterally choose whether or not to have needs.
…Hey, can I choose not to have an abortion and choose not to maintain the child? I’ll just drop it off at your house.
To be fair Holly, such an option does exist. Its called adoption. As someone who has been there and done that….its not for the faint of heart. In my eyes the three options available to women: abortion, adoption or raising the child, not one of them is an easy way out. They are all prone to heartbreak.
For the record Richard, I gave the father of my daughter three months from the time I realized I was pregnant to walk away without consequence. He chose to stay and it wasn’t until we broke up two years later that suddenly it was a horrible that he pay to support his daughter.
I fully endorse this. I assume you also fully endorse a social safety net that ensures every adult, teenager and child has free access to food, board, health services and education?
OK, fine. If the guy wants to opt out of support, he has to go whole hog and opt out of the kid’s life entirely. No weekend daddying, no birthdays, nada.
I wonder where Richard acquired the misconception that anyone in the universe cared what he thought?
Yeah, you guys love to float this fallacious argument. Men and women have equal rights to avoid pregnancy before it happens, and an equal responsibility to care for the child after it’s born. Women get to choose what happens to their own bodies while pregnant.
Also, contraception does not equal abortion. Thanks for playing, Richard.
Richard, ampersand has explained why your argument is wrong at Alas, A Blog, with Choice-for-men-aka-paper-abortions are legal child abandonment. And abortion rights are not a double standard
Ampersand said it better than I could. The only point I would add is that pregnant men can get abortions just like pregnant women. Cis men can not have abortions, because they can not get pregnant.
Ever taken a look at the legal status of frozen embryos outside of anyone’s body or surrogate cases? Hint, if there is no contract, each gamete provider equally owns a frozen embryo and each has veto rights (the embryos are either preserved indefinitely at the expense of the person opposing destruction or destroyed). In surrogacy cases, the surrogate has the right to abort or not abort. She cannot be denied the right to abort (though if she is paid, there may be some remedial measures regarding the payment). Abortion rights are contingent not on being the egg provider, but on being the pregnant person. The fact that most men can’t get pregnant is not a legal or social inequality, it’s a biological quirk. Complaining a person who doesn’t have a uterus is denied rights because they can’t have an abortion is like complaining a person who doesn’t have testicles is denied rights because they can’t have a vasectomy.
re Sylphium (the plant which was, among other things, purportedly a good contraceptive/abortifacient), was probably driven extinct because it was such a hugely popular herb.
The majority of the witing about it at the time was lamenting how hard it was becoming to find, as a means of flavoring food (apparently it had a flavor something like garlic, only much better).
But it had a very small niche in terms of where it could grow. The same people who drove the European lion extinct for their games, and could pay to have hummingbirds’ tongues, and dormice, collected by the bushel; and packed in honey to be shipped to Rome for suppers (as well as live fish from what is now Russia) were apparently more avaricious for it than the women who wanted to use it as a contraceptive.
So that’s something we probably can’t blame on women.