As Americans of all sorts mourned the end of Roe v. Wade, a loud minority of abortion opponents spent the day today taking a little victory lap, mocking those who support safe abortion and accusing them of being “sluts” and “whores” unwilling to “take responsibility” for their “degenerate” sex lives.
If you think I’m exaggerating, do a search on Twitter for “women” )or “whore” or “slut”) and “responsibility” and gaze in wonder at the hundreds of vile results that come up.
Keep what in their pants? Vaginas don’t stick out and are not detachable.
Some (awkwardly) worked other issues into the mix:
Some managed to remember that penis-havers also play a rather important role in pregnancy. But honestly their politics aren’t much better than those who focused entirely on bashing women.
How many of these abortion-haters are also MAGA-hat wearing fans of Donald Trump, one of the most irresponsible men to ever hold high political office in the US, a man who can’t open his mouth without letting loose another lie, a wealthy man who pays less in taxes than many much less rich than him, who doesn’t respond to subpoenas, who as a businessman is known for stiffing contractors and lying about donations to charities, and who has declared bankruptcy seven times. Oh, and who is spreading the big lie about winning the election he soundly lost and who has cheered on insurrectionists trying to keep him in office.
How many of these people are supporters of a political party (the GOP) that has devoted several decades to chipping away at democracy, who through racist voter suppression and gerrymandering is trying to engineer a corrupt regime based on minority rule.
These are people who refuse to wear masks when they know full well that masks protect other people more than they do the wearer; their anti-mask, anti-vaccine approach has cost us who knows how many excess deaths in the pandemic. Instead of taking responsibility for the deaths they have caused and are still causing, they would rather invent and spread fanciful conspiracy theories about masks and vaccines that anyone with even the most basic understanding of science would dismiss as nonsense. Instead, they choose to believe lies that many of them know to be lies.
Closer to home, these are people who will refuse to take responsibility for the deaths that unsafe and illegal abortions will cause. Not “might cause,” will cause. Nor will they take responsibility for the violence of the anti-abortion movement over the last several decades — and the deaths they have caused.
I could go on and on and on.
But I guess what I’m saying is that these are the last people on planet earth who should be lecturing anyone about responsibility.
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I know I’m not American so my response may not be as common generally.
What was my first thought? Savita Halapannavar. How many more of these will we be hearing about?
I know there are several cases every year in the USA that we don’t get to hear about, but I dread the future if this decision goes that way.
@oncewasmagnificent
If my experience is any indication, none. Our media doesn’t talk about those cases at all so people there (even myself!) never learn they exist.
I will point out that this concept of “sluts” has little basis in reality. The women who have lots of casual sex? With occasional exceptions (i.e. total idiots), are very cautious about STDs and unwanted pregnancies. The ones who get actually punished for being “sluts”? With occasional exceptions, victims of some kind, whether from rape, abusive manipulation, or even just atrociously bad education. And, I suppose, drug addiction probably counts, though I suspect they’d argue otherwise. Whether they meant to or not, their “morality” involves punishing those who have been done wrong and are already suffering from that wrong, while the ones who they have declared evil usually get away freely, barely even noticed.
Which is a running theme with “traditional morality”, it seems. Scapegoating easy targets in order to feel superior usually matters more than actually enforcing said morality.
[Edit] That being said “usually” doesn’t mean “doesn’t matter at all”, as the Roe and Casey indicate that they’re willing to enforce it given the chance.
Hypocrisy is a core value of conservatism.
How many abortions has Donald Trump paid for? My guess — based on having lived on this planet for a while now — is lots. Even though he’s a cheapskate.
Let’s say it louder for those in the back: NOT.EVERYBODY.WHO.HAS.AN.ABORTION.IS.A.SLUT.
Married, monogamous women have ectopic pregnancies, stillbirths, and other life-threatening complications all the time. Contracting rubella while pregnant, a common occurrence a few decades ago, is risky for the mother. It disrupts fetal development and results in terrible birth defects (antivaxxers might want to pay attention here).
Many abortions are pregnancies that were very much wanted but went horribly wrong. Nobody ever talks about all the future unborn babies who are saved because a timely D&C preserved the mother’s life.
Most of these tweets come across as “other people are having fun and I don’t approve”.
I am not American either, though what happens in the USA tends to happen in the UK a few years later, so we will need to be on our guard against the small minority of MPs who want to repeal the ”67 Act. I am so sorry that you are all going through this dog shit, and worried for all the people wh will suffer as a result.
I don’t think the sexual habits of people who need abortions is relevant, even if they are sexually promiscuous that is their choice and no one elses business except their partners. Yes there are people who have abortions for all sorts of heart-breaking reasons, yes there are people whose contraception fails them even when they have taken it/used it perfectly, yes there are people who are ignorant enough to get pregnant because they believed some stupid myth like “you can’t get pregnant the first time”, but none of that matters. Access to medical care, including abortions, is a fundamental right and the only people involved should be the medical staff and the patient.
Kat, you think he would pay, rather than just bully the woman into it?
Trump was known to use his bodyguard to threaten his former lovers. I suspect that what he did in cases of unwanted pregnancy. He wasn’t even thrilled about hus “wanted” kids and only had eyes for Ivan’s, ignoring the boys till they were adults.
So the men writing these tweets are angry because no sluts are slutting with them and the women writing them are just hoping to make the angry men be nice to them, I guess?
@Dave, Weasel-Rah:
Considering the number of documented cases while as President where Trump not only fired people working for him while they were off travelling rather than doing it in person, but in many cases people found out they were fired from the news reports rather than from anybody in the White House… yeah, that tracks with Trump’s previous behaviour. He seems to absolutely hate being in a situation where he has to actively face somebody that might be in a position to yell back at him.
What Is wrong with that? Shouldn’t men AND women have Equal rights? A man cannot avoid the consecuences of his actions, at least not legally. Why Women should have a right that WE don’t have? You made a mistake? Deal with that, as any other adult human being.
I have been sexually assaulted a few times, and the last time it happened I became hyper sexual. That was the only way I felt like I had any worth or that anyone could like me. Part of the problem was I hadn’t quite admitted that what happened to me was assault. Thankfully I never had to have an abortion because endometriosis has done a ton of damage to my uterus and it’s uninhabitable at this point, plus it was at least protected.
Hearing all this garbage about women being sluts who need to be punished just fucking hurts me so much. I know I shouldn’t let it, but sometimes that doesn’t make a difference. People have no idea what a person is going through or why they’re doing the things they’re doing. It doesn’t matter how many people she’s slept with or anything, she is still a person who deserves rights and autonomy.
I am so disgusted by republicans and SCOTUS and how these people have cheated in order to take things away that are life saving. They don’t care, in fact I think some of them want us to die horrible deaths because awful things happening during pregnancy and childbirth according to some people is how we are paying for Eve’s “sin”.
I used to like to say “If you engage with a conservative ‘pro-lifer’ long enough, they will inevitably admit that the see pregnancy as a punishment for unapproved sex.”
The last few years, “long enough” has been about two exchanges.
And regarding Cheeto Benito… what’s the over/under how many abortions has he paid for or caused to be?
@Allandrel: More like one exchange.
What is also not discussed are the women that have a miscarriage and need an abortion as a result to not go septic. This is already a grey line in the Texas cases, and doctors are or can withhold treatment and let the woman go septic as before then the miscarriage is not ‘life threatening’. They don’t want to risk their entire livelihood over one patient and this horrendous law.
@Joaquin is an example of one of these people that believe all abortions result from slutiness. No birth control measure is 100%, and some women are the victims of rape and incest. Some women have a miscarriage and need an abortion to not go septic.
So, if you want equal consequences for it, how about this. If you get a woman pregnant and she dies as a result of complications from the pregnancy, we can put you to death. That sound fair?
Or maybe if a woman suffers an unplanned pregnancy and doesn’t want the child, she can choose instead to have the baby forced on a random man along with all the medical bills for the whole pregnancy to take care of without any say or legal recourse.
Or maybe better yet, all men could be reversibly sterilized at birth, with it only reversible with their wife’s consent.
Or perhaps if personhood is at 6 weeks, child support can start then too. I mean it is only fair that the man pay his fair share of the consequences.
But somehow, I doubt you would like any of these options, as they are consequences for you. I mean if you didn’t want to be a father, you could just keep it in *your* pants.
Personally, I think that responding with “not all women who have abortions are sluts, there are women who were assaulted or have ectopic pregnancies or other justified reasons to have an abortion” is already giving the pro-lifers too much consideration, because that is implicitly admitting that there are women out there who have unjustified reasons to have an abortion. It’s already ceding ground by accepting the framing that abortion is an evil, but sometimes it is a lesser evil, and the argument is only about what conditions it is justified under.
I refuse to engage with abortion debates as anything other than an issue of bodily autonomy. I don’t fucking care if some hypothetical person wants an abortion because she’s been having unprotected sex with ten different men every night. She still has a right to terminate the pregnancy. If there isn’t a decision you can make that would grant people the right to drag you off the street and forcibly take one of your kidneys, part of your liver, or a pint of your blood to donate it to someone in medical need, then there isn’t a decision that you can make that removes the right to have an abortion.
@Joaquín
Your right, there for if a pregnancy kills the mother, we put the man who got her pregnant to death as well. that makes it equal. oh and we cut open his stomach if she needs a c-section. and he can’t have coffee for 9 months.
They’re also really really racist.
@Jazzlet:
…yes there are people who are ignorant enough to get pregnant because they believed some stupid myth like “you can’t get pregnant the first time”…
Or who rules-lawyer their way around everything except Tab A into Slot B, except that semen transfer can occur in other ways; the culmination of fundamentalist Christian ignorance-based sex education is a bride who arrives at the altar diseased and pregnant but with a hymen in mint condition.
@Joaquin/Acid Kritana/Squack
Men — except for trans men — can’t get pregnant. This means that only women and trans men can have abortions. You’re probably talking about a “paper abortion” in which the father gives up his obligation to support a child that he doesn’t want. But the person who gives birth to a child is also obliged to support the child unless they relinquish that child for adoption.
Maybe it seems unfair that the pregnant person gets to choose to continue a pregnancy despite a man’s protest — but the guy was aware of the possibility of pregnancy before they had sex. He could have chosen to keep it in his pants. He didn’t, so he’s going to have to deal with the situation, as a grown-up would. He cannot avoid the consequences of his actions.
I’ve noticed this curious phrasing (that wealthy influential men secretly pay for their partners’ abortions) come up time and again, exclusively in the context of US political discourse. I sometimes wonder what exactly is being implied here.
I get that getting an abortion in the US often involves a hefty out of pocket payment. Yet, it seems like most women (or couples) can handle that without involving a wealthy sugar daddy. Of course, in relationships of genuinely unequal wealth, you might expect the man (if he’s the wealthier partner) to cover the woman’s unexpected medical expenses in full, rather than in half. I don’t really know the usual etiquette for proper sugar daddy relationships – like do you just expect regular payments/gifts or do you ask money for specific/unexpected personal expenses?
Yet, the phrasing “pay for someone’s abortion” seems to imply responsibility for more than just having sex while being relatively wealthy. Is the implication here that the woman is being more or less bribed into having an abortion she might not otherwise choose? Because the relationship is assumed to be somehow illicit from the conservative standpoint (unmarried, adulterous, paid sex) and therefore the prominent conservative man stands to lose more than just child support money? Would the man this situation be judged less harshly by pro-lifers if he was reluctant to approve or support his partner’s abortion? (Trick question, they don’t care about wealthy powerful men having illicit sex or causing abortions anyhow.)
I’m reminded of how Donald Trump reportedly paid a massive “hush up money” lump sum to Stormy Daniels, with whom he supposedly had an “affair”. IIRC he had her sign some sort of formal NDA, because he was apparently doing it behind Melania’s back, and quite obviously also because paying for sex is technically illegal. Certainly, not all of that money was just for hushing her up. The NDA probably didn’t include anything legally enforceable about possible abortion, but I’d assume in these kind of arrangements the woman is expected to take the cost of any possible abortion from her personal account after the original lump payment. Would it still count as Trump “paying for” her abortion? How do you distinguish between paying for abortion vs. paying for general hushing up?
I’m not sure where I’m going with this. There’s just something that bugs me in the casual use of the abovementioned phrase.
@Joaquin: All people have the right not to be pregnant. How is that not equal?
@Catalpa
I agree, and similarly I dislike arguments such as “some people use hormonal contraceptives for reasons other than preventing pregnancy” and “being LGBT+ is not a choice.”