Just...Speechless
Please, please watch this video. As described on Susie Bright's blog:
What Really Goes On In South Dakota
Video sent by susiebright
I haven't been able to fall asleep since I watched this, I am so angry.
There are those out there who think sex bloggers are sick and twisted. Please. This guy, and the people who voted for him, are what the world needs to worry about, not us. Can humans really think this way? Can they be that misguided, ignorant, and hateful?
This is a quick but revealing TV spot on what the climate is in South Dakota that created the abortion ban. The highlight is about halfway through, when State Senator Bill Napoli describes in pornographic, sadistic detail how "bad" a virgin would have to be raped in order for him to "make an exception."
What Really Goes On In South Dakota
Video sent by susiebright
There are those out there who think sex bloggers are sick and twisted. Please. This guy, and the people who voted for him, are what the world needs to worry about, not us. Can humans really think this way? Can they be that misguided, ignorant, and hateful?
posted by Miss Syl at 3:17 AM
13 Comments:
It angers me so much that (no offence out there to males) male politicans are the one's who make abortion into a gigantic issue. In Australia our Health Minister, Tony Abbott, is in a tizz over RU486 and tried to retain control of its legislation (to ban it) but the power was stripped away from him, but that still means that the drug may take 'years' to be legal here in Australia even though it's been used in Europe for close to twenty years now.
What pisses me off about the furor about abortion is the drama, and the notion (that is passed on by certain politicians, not to mention Right to Life groups - who never discuss the fact that millions of fully formed babies die in Third World countries) of women using abortion 'willy nilly',you know, like women are 'thrilled' with the idea of abortion.
Now this, understandably, is based on the fact of them having little idea of the process, not to mention the 'after' and I get so irate about these people simply because I, like many other women, 'know' about it.
It's like, 'just because a person is female, and pregnant, then they have a duty to carry on just so they can donate the baby to some poor hapless couple' - that is the guilt factor. It's like 'your body isn't your own, it's belongs to the collective'.
Then the infertile women get involved and it gets out of hand and people don't realise that it's an individual choice, that a woman's body is her own body and not 'society's' body.
The comments of the senator show a severe sick mind.
Virginity, Religiosity, the brutality of the rape are not the questions at stake! What kind of a difference does it make whether she was a virgin before. As if a woman who is not a virgin, does not deserve protection. As if a woman, who is not a virgin, does agree to sexual acts with whoever wants and however this person wants sex! As if she wanted to be raped.
The fact that the senator thinks only the very brutal rape qualifies a woman for the right to an abortion shows that he thinks other sorts of rape, like the regular rape with a few scratches of the body and very deep ones on the personality are ok.
Any rape is a crime, Mr. Senator. In your state, in your country and internationally. Learn that!
I strongly beleive that a woman must have the right to an abortion in any case whether raped or not.
I think that a right to life of an unborn child is not absolute. All human rights must be weighed against the rights of others. Thus, the rights of women to life, mental and physical health, and privacy would all need to be taken into account in determining, in a situation involving a conflict of rights, which should prevail.
I see two scenarios for the U.S. if the Xian right's political influence increases to grow:
A brain drain to the coasts, which will become tiny liberal enclaves, or a brain drain to other countries and the subsequent decline of American power (which may not be a bad thing).
They not only stifle gender and reproductive rights, but intellectual ones as well. Look to history for an example of this: why did China decline? Largely because of their increased conservatism and inability to look outward.
Apparently the fellow answers his email. A friend of mine sent him a note and got a personal response.
Extremely personal.
So yeah, people can really be that scary.
Ana: Yeah, the whole "abortion of convenience" thing--if there was EVER a greater contradiction of terms, I don't know what it is.
I'm really kind of lukewarm on the author Barbara Kingsolver, but I remember reading a novel of hers years ago and she had this stunningly powerful line in it about how when a woman has an abortion, yes, she does move on with her life, but she never forgets the date that would have been the baby's birthday, and every year on that day, she thinks about how old the baby would have been, if.
To have an abortion is never, ever a convenient or easy choice. Neither is keeping an baby you are financially or emotionally unprepared for. And I have friends who got pregnant young and were forced to have the baby and then give it up for adoption--and I can tell you the after-effects of THAT were at LEAST as brutal on them (and probably moreso) as having an abortion would have been.
Anonymous: I'm with you. The senator's speech just proves his complete and utter ignorance about women, pregnancy, and sexual assault. In a VAST majority of rapes and sexual assaults, the woman has NO physical evidence of "brutal sodomizing" or whatever the lovely term he chose to use was. This doesn't make the assault on them any less brutal. And there is certainly no call for saying only virgins have a right to have their rape "count."
Of course, all this clouds the point that there should not even be ANY discussion of what counts as an "okay" reason to have an abortion and what doesn't. We have a legal right to have one, and to decide if we should based on our own lives and reasoning. And, though I know this next statement is the type that ends up weakening your power of debate on an issue, I just don't care: As far as I'm concerned, he can take his "Wild West" theory and "brutally sodomize" himself with it.
Hiromi: So right. I'm already racking my brains for every single male friend I know in other countries. Overstating the case for the time being, perhaps, but one thing that's been drummed into my head since childhood is you never know when the shit's gonna go down, so you have to be prepared for all your options.
But overall, my instinct is to go out pagan style--fight to the finish. The thing is, the left needs to get off their sorry little passive-agressive asses and get those asses in gear in a major way, NOW or we're going to be in the situation you describe far sooner than we know it. Scientific discovery is going down the tubes, individual rights are being trampled...the signs are very bad.
We are not so outnumbered. In the first election, at least half (though I say more) people were against Bush. It's just getting past all this damned apathy.
Darkhawk: Really? What did the response say?
She sent him a very firmly worded and literate email pointing out that rape trauma does not depend on religious status and virginity, that the rapists would have father's rights for children thus borne, and that he hadn't thought things through.
He responded with, paraphrasing somewhat: you're judgemental, too arrogant to talk to, so sorry we couldn't have a civil conversation, you should be glad your mother didn't murder you before you were born. (That last in all caps.)
Darkhawk: Again...I'm speechless. So very professional of him. Yes, clearly it's your FRIEND who's too arrogant to talk to. Ha!
How do people choose this sort of person to represent them to the rest of the country, and the world?
"when a woman has an abortion, yes, she does move on with her life, but she never forgets the date that would have been the baby's birthday, and every year on that day, she thinks about how old the baby would have been, if."
It's true, I'm not sure how many clinics divulge a due date (it depends on the individual situation).
I think the one thing that I'll never forget is the conveyor belt image: girls or women being wheeled in and out of the actual theater. Just when they move you onto a 'recovery' gurney, there's always another person to take your place on the 'table', then there are the teenagers, who are terrified, and then there are women, who for various reasons (married with many children, those who can't risk a pregnancy due to age - where contraception has failed - etc) sit with their partners..No one smiles in an abortion clinic. Many times a woman goes in, no one smiles 'at her', from the doctor to the counsellor to the receptionist, so you go in, undergo the procedure and you walk out feeling, not just emptied of a foetus, but completely 'ignored' in some way and it's something you never forget. I suppose that can work as a deterrant, because there are many situations where people use contraception incorrectly, or some cases where women think 'just this once, no contraception', or they're pressured into not using any (condoms for example) and then they have to make a decision they won't forget for the rest of their lives. It's not just the regret, or what has been lost, because at the time it's the 'better' choice (because one knows one can't give 100% to a new life, and adopting a person out isn't any 'better', for a child to grow up finding out one day they weren't wanted) but having to tolerate the religious rightousness, the scapegoating, the narrowmindedness that continues over abortion.
I'm quite horrified that a leading nation, the United States, is seeing a closure of abortion clinics, has seen the violation/murder of doctors working at abortion clinics and the politicians using it as a meal ticket to power. I expected it fourteen years ago when I experienced it first hand, but not in 2006.
If fundamentalism (both Christian and Islamic -even though abortion is more a 'Christian' issue than Islamic, but fundamentalism is the same) isn't stopped or doesn't reach a hiatus, then what next?
She sent the messages to a columnist. We'll see if anything comes of that -- I'll keep you posted.
Darkwing: Good for her; and please do. Send me the link if it gets published. I hope it is, and he's humiliated.
Tell her to send it to Harper's. Sounds like perfect fodder for their front section.
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