Yes, you can buy t-shirts! And hoodies, and aprons, and coffee mugs, and buttons, and keychains, and more!
All of my profits will go to Planned Parenthood.
Just click here to go to my Zazzle store.
T-Shirts, etc.
We Hunted The MammothBucking the Backlash
Planned Parenthood helped me with two hideous IUDs that nearly destroyed my reproductive organs and helped me with alternative birth control. So I heart you for supporting them.
Mammoth booz
Compulsory pregnancy is what pro-life advocates are supporting. That is a fundamental denial of the womans right to control her own body. It is a hard choice, grow up and take the adult responsibility.
I am pro-life, personally but that doesn’t stop me from supporting organisations like planned parenthood. They do so many other things besides abortion and without them helping women with contraception there would be even more terminated pregnancies. I believe the USA should just have socialised healthcare like we have here in the UK.
@Undomesticated Goddess
I had a very abusive childhood and I am still happy to be alive. I could argue that being aborted is much worse than having an abusive childhood. I actually feel rather blessed to be alive and I think every child deserves a shot. We actually need to work towards a more educated and socially equal society where child abuse has a lower prevailance. Prevention is the best method and I would rather this than the lives of children being taken away.
All right. This cinches it. Following you on Twitter and whatever other social media I can find on your side bar now 🙂
I support everyone’s right to reproductive choice…and necroposting.
I am here to Necropost for the forces of compassion and reason!
So, I have a lurker here for quite some time and I only just took a look at the merchandise. I love the shirt, and I was very excited to see that the profits go to Planned Parenthood. I am very broke right now, but when I’m not I will be snatching one of those up. Believe me. Then I scroll down and the first comment nearly made my eyes ragebleed.
Here’s the thing. I was the firstborn daughter raised by a mother who was only nineteen when she gave birth to me. My conception was an accident, and my nineteen year old father hadn’t expected to wind up with children. I’m twenty six now and NEVER want to have children. Hell, I think I’m too young to get married, so I can relate with him. He wanted my mother to get an abortion, a fact that she reminded me of more than once (starting at around the age of ten) because she grew to hate him and wanted to alienate my younger sister (accident number two) and I from him. Her reign of terror against him also involved coaching my sister and I to lock the doors and hide if he showed up when she wasn’t there. She told me the story about how he tried to strangle me with headphones multiple times (the last time she brought it up she changed the story so that he’d only used the headphones to restrain me when I wouldn’t sit in time out. I was only two at the time but I was willful from the start according to all accounts, so this is the version that I believe.) She also believed that my father had molested me. I have no idea what happened there because being taken in to be checked by the doctor is one of my earliest memories, but since my mother frequently dated irresponsible young men it is just as likely to have been one of them as my father.
All of this manipulation worked. I was TERRIFIED of my father, for all those reasons and half a dozen more that mostly involve how my mother would react to him. He died in a car crash when I was thirteen so I will never be able to sit down with him and ask him his side of the story. I mention all of this because, even though her side of the story was the only one I knew, when she told me that he wanted to have me aborted I just felt empty inside. I was a sad and lonely child most of the time. I was terrified of adults because most of the ones in my life were unkind and unpredictable. I learned that the only way to get respect and power was to be masculine, so I worked to be the toughest kid in my grade for years. So when I heard it was possible that I may have never existed, I wasn’t frightened. My life was already a battle and I was so used to being scared that the feeling couldn’t even be used to control me. I was just too used to it. If I had been aborted, my life would just be the struggle that never was. I would have been freed years before I learned what it was to fear death.
Let me make it clear that I am too damned stubborn to have ever been suicidal once in my life for all the abuse that I have suffered. The thought would cross my mind, but I decided every time that my death would make things too convenient for the people who were making me suffer. When I was a child I chose to fight because I knew of no other way to stay safe. When I was a teenager, I chose to fight because I didn’t want my selfish mother and her boyfriend to get off easy for what they were putting me through. Now, I choose to fight because I don’t want other children, or other women, to suffer as I have suffered. I want to live in a better world, and I will be the change I wish to see and then some.
My life started to get better about three and a half years ago, when I was inspired by the mass protests in Madison Wisconsin. That means I went through over two decades of turmoil to get to a somewhat balanced and hopeful place, and even now I will tell all anti-choice people that if my fetal self could have know how it would have had to struggle, I would have chosen to end it there. The day I was born via c-section I was strangling on my own umbilical cord. It is my dark joke that I somehow knew the future then and was trying to off myself just so that I wouldn’t have to spend a lifetime trying to deal with my mother and her abusive family.
I am pro-choice because I prioritize those who have the ability to suffer over those who don’t. And as someone who was nearly aborted, I get really ticked when someone tries to use abortion to scare me into being anti-choice. It didn’t work when I was eleven, and it won’t work now.
So, um… on the topic of shirts. TRIGGER WARNING if you’ve struggled with an eating disorder or related body issues.
I’m an average-sized human woman and I can’t find a size on Zazzle, in any style they offer that I’d actually want, that will fit me, unless I choose a men’s size. No prob, but men’s sizes are way too wide in the shoulders and look goofy on me.
»» My point – any chance you could sell just the graphic so I can use it on a different t-printing site, or make it downloadable so I can get it screened on a shirt I already own? I’d be happy to pay the regular shirt price just to have a shirt I can actually wear. Waddaya think?
Brief Zazzle kvetch… why, when I wear a U.S. 12, do I need to order a 2XL shirt because the XL will be skin-tight? Even Zazzle knows this is a b.s. standard – they state in many of their descriptions that the style “runs small, order one or two sizes up”. Hrmph.
Also- I’m going to ignore any hateful comments about my body that may follow this question, and humbly ask others to join me in ignoring any bunkum of that nature.
Wow, I can’t believe the insane reactionary horseshit that started this thread. It’s almost as if these are a bunch of bourgeois “feminists” who don’t acknowledge the reality of impoverished women who desperately need abortion services just to survive. I fucking hate capitalist “feminists” who are only really in it for their capital-owning sisters. That’s not feminism. That’s an extension of patriarchy.
I agree basically 100% with Kristen’s comment from 2012. I do not understand why the destruction of a human life is somehow seen as justified because that human life might alter the life of another person. For me, abortion only makes a lick of sense if the fetus/zygote/bag of goo/baby/call-it-what-you-want can be demonstrated to pose an immediate and inevitable threat to the life of the mother, e.g. ectopic pregnancy or a girl who is so young that delivery is likely to be impossible. In these instances, a very simple utilitarian argument can be made that since the death of the mother will almost certainly mean the death of the child too, it is better to save one life than zero lives.
Outside of this, I feel it is reductionist to the EXTREME to assert that the child in formation has no sentience, no sensation, and is sub-human and can therefore be annihilated. Ultrasound imaging of fetuses in utero demonstrate that as soon as the child has musculature enough to move, it will react immediately and vigorously to the introduction of an abortionist’s vacuum needle. I don’t know what more to say at that point as to me, the horror of that reality is sufficient to make my stomach turn at the thought of terminating this life.
To be fair, I must disclose that I am a father of a young girl who died in early infancy and that this no doubt colors my view of early life and causes me to lean in the pro-life/anti-choice/evil-male-misogynist (pigeon-hole it however you like) direction.
I will also say this to be fair though: I am happily married to a woman who is proudly and robustly feminist and equally proudly and robustly anti-abortion. I consider myself a feminist proudly and robustly and have repeatedly engaged with men and women who have fired off misogynistic nonsense, anti-female nonsense, anti-equality nonsense (and anti-black, anti-Jew, anti-Muslim, etc. nonsense) and have tried to find some means of reaching that person at a level they can understand and help them see why equality, tolerance, and mutual respect are a better solution than hatred.
I feel that we have allowed the issue of abortion to be a deal-breaker for a lot of people, as if this is a boiler-plate issue in equality. Somehow you can be hard-line feminist, staunchly feminist, loudly feminist in every other issue of your life, and yet if you suggest that perhaps the unborn deserve regard, protection under the law, and concern, you are suddenly an ape, an oaf, and a knuckle-dragging conservative nut.
I suppose what I would do is ask those in our midst who feel that abortion rights are necessary in order for women to be able to say they have equality and protection under the law this: do you really think that devaluing the most vulnerable segment of our population will result in increasing the value we place on life collectively as a society? Or do you think it will result in cheapening the value we place on life?
I feel deeply that what we must arrive at as a country is a way to be consistent in our belief in the goodness and dignity of *all* life. This goes far beyond just saying “Nope, you’ve got to have the baby.” This must drive to the heart of the issue: how can you claim to be pro-life and then do nothing to support the mother when she does not want or cannot provide basic care for the child? It is callous to the extreme to take the stance that “Well, she got pregnant so that’s on her.” Even if the pregnancy is the result of irresponsibility on the part of the mother (and many MANY unwanted pregnancies are *not* the result of this), what you’re saying is that since mom screwed up, a new life doesn’t deserve to have the same opportunities and advantages afforded to children of mother’s with means to provide for them. That is heartless, sick, and disgusting.
We cannot continue to speak out of both sides of our mouth when we call for an end to abortion. If we are going to insist that all life be protected, we need to be prepared to provide the mothers of unwanted children with some modicum of health care for well-baby visits, for delivery, and for adoption fees. We cannot both require the mother to carry the baby to term AND displace the cost of so doing to the mother. Neither is this an unreasonable expense, because it is, after all, in the government’s best interest to promote new life since more citizens means more need for government. I believe the government could justifiably defend the sanctity of life without contradicting its purpose which is, at least ostensibly, to defend and protect the lives of its citizens.
At the same time, can’t we do research to determine a means whereby we can transplant a fetus to an artificial womb with low enough of a risk rate that it would mimic the rate of spontaneous abortion/miscarriage in vivo? Surely with the rise of nanomedicine, the kind of microvasculature required to connect fetus to uterus via the placenta could be efficiently severed from mother and transferred to an in vitro surrogate. This is no doubt a scifi fantasy at present, but at some point all of science was a scifi dream, even antibiotics.
I hope this position can be at least somewhat more palatable than the tired old “Have the baby and shut up” angle that some ultra-conservative hacks have adopted in the past. I hope that this doesn’t make me your enemy or the subject of profanity and oath-swearing. I truly do value the lives of women (and men, and those who are intersexed), and I recognize in the same breath that 100% of unborn children are women, men, or people with intersex. These are people who will grow up to laugh, to love, to hurt, to have dreams, to have frustrations, to overcome obstacles, and to contribute in meaningful, wonderful ways to their cities, regions, states, country, and to the world. I do not see this, therefore, as a women’s issue, but as a human rights issues: human beings have the right to live.
As such, please know, David Futrelle, that I support what you do deeply. I am so glad that online misogyny is tracked and mocked, because sometimes I read this stuff and it makes my blood boil, and I fear that the world will fall into another millennium of darkness at the hands of people seeking to make women small and afraid. Sites like this, like Hail to the Gynocracy, like Right-Wing Watch, etc. give me a great deal of hope and encourage and help make my day a little brighter. I share links to your stories with my network of friends and fellow church-goers through Facebook, and I find that most of them support what you do. Those who don’t support it and question why what MRAs do is wrong I have found are often willing to talk about it, and most of them come around and understand why the MRM is so abominable once they’ve heard a few stories of their misdeeds. I have only found a few people who cannot be reached in this manner, and typically those are the “Why the heck is this person even *ON* my friends list anyway? I don’t remember adding them…” sort of people. So while I cannot buy t-shirts etc. from you knowing that the money would support Planned Parenthood, I can provide web traffic to your site, a heart-felt thank you for what you do and the bull crap you have to slog through daily, and my enthusiastic encouragement to keep doing what you do. I hope this means I’m still allowed to comment here and enjoy the content of your website as I am not here to troll, not here to try to make anybody feel bad, ruin anyone’s day, etc. And I don’t even mind cats though I’m more of a “thank goodness I don’t have to clean up poop today” sort of person (i.e. no pets! :D)
So, DS, I used to feel the way you do about it, and I agree it would be great if we could transplant fetuses to be developed in machines, but we can’t right now, so that isn’t a viable solution right now to the question of who gets to use the body of the mother. The only viable answer to the question of who gets to use the body of the mother is the mother. The only person with any rights to any part of the mother’s body is the mother. I don’t think it can get any simpler than that. And total bodily autonomy means the mother’s reasons for not wanting to carry a pregnancy to term are irrelevant.
This line of reasoning always leads me to wonder, why is it that:
– An egg has no rights
– A sperm has no rights
– An egg and a sperm combined should be able to vote and drive
Hey DS,
I’m a human. Not an incubator. If you think I, or any other person with a uterus should be treated like one, you are no feminist.
Abortion rights are a non-negotiable deal breaker. They just are.
The government cannot and should not force anyone to have their bodily autonomy violated in order to spare the life of another.
Disagree with that statement? Then surely you should agree that the government should round up people and force them to give up one of their kidneys in order to transplant those into people who need kidneys to survive. And bone marrow donation, partial liver donation, and all other organ donation that can be done without killing the donor, this should all be mandatory and enforced, yes?
I mean, for fuck’s sake, the government can’t even force people to GIVE BLOOD involuntarily, but women should be expected to give up 9 months of their lives and suffer all the medical complications involved with childbirth and pregnancy (protip, there are a LOT of those) against their will?
I mean, bloody hell, even CORPSES are provided more respect for their bodily autonomy than women are in anti-choice rhetoric- if someone doesn’t agree to be an organ donor before their death, their organs can’t be used for transplants, even though that would save lives.
@Catalpa
These people believe being forced to carry to term is a woman’s* proper punishment for having sex. Punishing corpses is no fun.
*Or trans man, gender fluid, etc
The debate over whether or not a fetus is a human isn’t even relevant to me. Because nobody gets to live in my body without my permission.
@dhag
Yeah, I know, that’s the sum of it for most/all anti-choicers. But I find that argument to be the most effective against them, because there’s none of this “BUT IT’S A LIFE WE HAVE TO SAVE THE LIFE” weaseling or arguing that can be done against it. Going “Yup, sure, whatever, let’s accept your premise that the fetus is human. There are LOTS of (fully-grown!) humans that need pieces of your body to survive, though. Everyone should be expected to undergo serious and invasive procedures to save THEM too, right?” tends to confuse them.
At least, it was the argument that jarred me out of my stance back when I was antichoice. /feels shame about past me.]
Also, you’re right, I should have clarified that I was speaking of people who posess uteruses, which is not a quality that all women posess or that is limited only to women.
It’s interesting how, if you bring up the “if it’s OK to violate bodily autonomy to save lives, why can’t we do X to save lives?”, 100% of the time the response will be “it’s the consequence of her actions.”
Since that ends up being the sole deciding factor — saving lives doesn’t end up factoring into the decision-making process at all — it becomes apparent that that was the motivation all along and the whole part about fetuses being people was a smokescreen.
Actually, it’s about ethics in shaming people with vaginas for having sex, no matter how safely they had that sex, or if they were assaulted.
DS, I found it strange to read your entire post, only to find out that the reason you spent so much effort expounding your anti-abortion stance was to justify not buying t-shirts that would support Planned Parenthood. (!)
…otherwise known as the organization that prevents more abortions that any other, and provides enormously valuable healthcare to impoverished women who would otherwise not have access?
I will also echo the sentiment: If you believe it is okay for women to be forced to carry pregnancies to term against their wills, then you are not really a feminist.
Mandatory kidney donations have been mentioned, and they are an apt comparison — in the U.S., in 2013, the maternal death rate was about 18.5 per 100,000, while the risk of death for live kidney donors was about 59 per 100,000. However, kidney donations do not require nine months of pregnancy.
It is also important to point out that unsafe abortion is the single leading cause of maternal mortality, at about one woman every eight minutes. If you are in favor of restricting or eliminating access to safe abortion, you have a very high body count of women and orphaned children to account for worldwide.
Access to safe abortion is also the single greatest measure a country can take to reduce poverty and child hunger. Access to safe abortion immensely reduces child suffering, at the expense of the perceived suffering of unborn babies who have never had a single thought, a single memory, or taken a single breath.
I know it can be hard to look at a fetus responding to physical stimuli and not comprehend that those responses are something altogether different from a conscience human being observing, thinking, perceiving, and experiencing the world.
But what is not hard to do is to listen to women when they tell you that they alone should be able to determine whether to continue their own pregnancies.
Your wife might think she is a feminist, but if she believes that she should be allowed to force other women to continue their pregnancies against their wills, then I can assure you, she is not.
This does not make the both of you terrible, horrible people, and I am glad you are pushing for women’s equality in other areas. But on this issue, which globally would do more to empower women, give them agency over their lives, and reduce poverty and child hunger than any other issue, you are decidedly on the wrong side.