Why Abortion is Patriarchal Oppression

Cis men often pressure, force, or coerce women and pregnant people into abortions. They threaten us into it or otherwise try and manipulate us. Men (not all but too many to not talk about) use abortion as a way to use women as reusable and disposable sex objects so that they can have sex with them all they want without having to take care of their responsibilities. There are even movements called "bro-choice" and “men for choice” that ironically point this out, with "bros" talking about how abortion is good for them specifically because of that reasoning....and somehow the “no uterus no opinion” idea conveniently doesn’t apply to “pro-choice” men. It treats our bodies as garbage disposals; as in, what you put into us can just be chopped up into little bits and the bloody mess taken out so that you can use us over and over again. Abortion is a deadbeat dad's favorite thing.

Rapists use it to continue to rape and control their victims, as it gets rid of the “evidence” (not only DNA evidence to prove he was the rapist on trial, but suddenly having a child is evidence that she is being raped to everyone around her as well) and thus they can get away with raping her for longer, and pressuring her to abort is another way to control her too. This happens with standard rape and statutory rape as well, and some abortion clinics have even lied about the age of statutory rape victims or didn’t contact social services when she comes in with an older man, so that they can give underage girls abortions. Alice Paul, the feminist who created the Equal Rights Amendment act (ERA) has stated, “Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women.” There are so many ways in which that rings true.

Men also have killed many women and pregnant people for not aborting, or otherwise harmed them by throwing them down stairs etc. to try and cause a miscarriage, or slipped them the abortion pill without them knowing it. Without men and the patriarchy, abortion wouldn't exist. Not only that but it was the men of NARAL who sold abortion to feminists and the world in the late 1960s by making up lies. One of those men, the abortion doctor Bernard Nathanson, flat-out admitted that they lied. And it was men who were the ones to vote on Roe V Wade and men have always been the abortion doctors, and prey on women by telling them that their children are not children but clumps of cells etc., so that they can get their abortion dollars. Some of them have admitted they make lots of money from abortion.

Also, male bosses make women feel like they can't be mothers while working and that abortion is what they should choose, which is just another way to coerce. Same with being single or poor or going to school or what have you. Women get abortions because of the mother shaming society we live in making them feel like they have no other choice. If men could get pregnant, abortion wouldn't exist, because people don't tell men that they can't be career men and fathers at the same time yet women get constantly told that we can't be career women and mothers at the same time so abortion is necessary for our success. This is one of those tactics that those men from NARAL used to get support for abortion. It's just sad that it worked.

The abortion-and-pro-choice-industry tells us that the wombless male body is normative and that in order to have equal rights to men and compete in a male-dominated world, we need have abortion so that we aren't "bothered" and "bothering them" with the concept of having children. Instead of raising women to the equal rights level of men as we are, we are taught to get rid of what makes us uniquely female because it is a "burden", and that we should lower ourselves to what we deem as the worst kind of men--deadbeat dads. Instead, we should be empowering pregnant and parenting women, and telling them we CAN do it. You CAN be pregnant or a mother while going to school, you CAN be pregnant or a mother while working, you CAN be pregnant or a mother while a teenager, you CAN be pregnant or a mother while single, and you CAN be pregnant or a mother while poor. Rosie the riveter is a great example of the "yes we can" concept yet somehow when it comes to pregnancy we have turned it into "No you can't, have an abortion." Having kids does not mean you have to give up a life worth living, yet that is what the abortion industry wants us to believe, but it goes against everything feminism stands for.

There are many women who regret their abortions, and have depression from it, PTSD from it, suicidal tendencies from it, or have actually killed themselves from it. You can find their videos on youtube or their stories in writing, just by looking up "I regret my abortion" or "abortion regret" on google or youtube. Because women are basically told in various ways that we have no other choice to abort yet people turn around and say it is somehow “our choice” when debating abortion, we are the ones who end up as the scapegoats and thus have to deal with all the heaviest feelings from it. We are told we can’t regret it because it was “our choice” despite the fact that we choose it because we are told we have no choice. The men who pressure us into it get out without having to deal with it because it reinforces old-fashioned stereotypes that anything having to do with babies is “women’s work.”

There are so many women who feel this way that there are endless amounts of organizations around to help women with post-abortive regret, which wouldn't be able to be around if women never regretted it, yet these women constantly get ignored so that the abortion industry can act like women rarely regret it to keep women supporting pro-choice politicians and coming into the abortion clinics and giving them their hundreds of dollars for each abortion. Women's voices of regret are being swept under the rug like crazy. That is what misogyny looks like. Although not all men do the things I am describing in this article, and in fact abortion can hurt men and make them regret lost fatherhood just like many women regret their abortions as well, it still happens far too much.

Also, it truly shows we are oppressed when people act like somehow we need to have a right to treat our children the way we have been treated by men, by oppressing them and treating them as our property to be disposed of as we see fit, and instead of giving us actual help for our situations. Offering abortion is an easy way for people to blow off our problems and act like they helped us. An abortion doesn't make a poor woman not poor or a raped woman un-raped or an abused woman not abused etc., it just throws women right back into these situations after she leaves the clinic. All it gives her is a dead child on top of the problems she has, it doesn't help the problem at all. It doesn't solve the root problem.

On top of all of that, sex selective abortion kills females in the womb just for being females because people want sons. This happens in various countries including our own but in the ones where it is most prevalent, there is a gap between the amount of men and women, as a decent chunk of women were killed in the womb. This has led to young women being kidnapped, raped, trafficked, and forced into marriages because the men of the population have a lack of women to choose from in terms of coupling. Pro-lifers believe in women's rights, we just go one step further and say that ALL women should have rights, not just the born ones, for we truly don't have rights if they don't start when we first exist. Women deserve better than all of this. We deserve better than being given a bad choice that no one really wants and we basically just choose because we are told we need to choose it. No woman walks into an abortion clinic happy to do it. This is something that both pro-choicers and pro-lifers agree on. We just need to understand that that horrible choice that no one likes or really wants shouldn't be held up as an example of wonderful women's rights. It's something that comes from our oppression and is something we should always be fighting to end, because it hurts us too.

All of these things are why when I was 14 and found out what abortion was, I was pro-life *on the specific basis* that I am a leftist feminist. I started off by having many feminist reasons to be against abortion before I could even know the politicizing strategies of each side. And when I started to hear the stereotypes that abortion was supported by feminists and opposed by those who aren't, I automatically assumed people were joking, because that would never make any sense. Abortion is pure violence, on our children and us. It would never fit in with feminism. It is just more evidence that we are oppressed.

For more information on Pro-Life feminism, google or facebook search (or enter in the websites of) out the organizations
Feminists for Life : http://www.feministsforlife.org/
Feminists for Nonviolent Choices : http://www.ffnvc.org/
New Wave Feminists: https://www.newwavefeminists.com/
Feminists Choosing Life of New York Action: https://www.fclnyact.org/
and Pro-Life Feminists: https://prolifefeminists.wordpress.com/
These are the organizations that have helped me realize that I am not alone and that Pro-Life feminism has existed since feminism began, as it started off Pro-Life to begin with. All the early feminists, such as Susan B Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul, Victoria Woodhull, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, Mary Wollstonecraft etc. etc. and even Margaret Sanger (the founder of Planned Parenthood) were pro-life. It was the men from NARAL who made up lies that turned some of the feminists pro-choice. Let's not let men get the better of us, and return to understanding that the violence of abortion is not fit for feminism and a world where we champion peace and equal rights. It is the destruction of everything we stand for. It is the destruction of us.

Margaret Sanger (Planned Parenthood founder) was pro-life

Likewise, so was Marie Stopes (the namesake of the UK version of Planned Parenthood) which I will talk about after Margaret)

So I heard about this from one of the people who posted on my Riot Grrrls For Life Pro-Life facebook page when I first started it. She mentioned that Margaret Sanger was pro-life and she really liked her, and so at first I was shocked, as I had assumed that she was the queen of abortion, as that's what everyone, pro-lifers and pro-choicers alike, make it seem like, and what with her being the founder of the main voice for pro-choice, I guess I assumed it like everyone else does. So I start to look it up, not knowing what to expect, and it turns out, she was right. She hated abortion for several reasons and has a lot of good pro-life quotes. I found this link talking about how that one infanticide quote was totally taken out of context, and what she really said about abortion and infanticide, and how she often linked abortion, infanticide, and child abandonment together, calling them all "horrors" and the like, and other things like that, and this link that said the same stuff and gave more quotes. You can actually go to her book Woman and the New Race from there as it links it, or hey I'll just give it to you here, and it is written all over how much she hates abortion and infanticide and other things like that. Also, you can look at her wikipedia page. Some pro-choicers will try to brush it off like it doesn't matter or she was only against abortion because of how dangerous it is to pregnant women, but she clearly has said at least a few times that it was because it was the taking of a life, so I'm sure it was for both reasons.

In fact, Planned Parenthood pamphlets used to advocate against abortion, saying "An abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun. It is dangerous to your life and health. It may make you sterile so that if you want a child you cannot have it. Birth control merely postpones the beginning of life." I guess the phrase "every child a wanted child" was first only meant in reference to birth control as well, since it says that on there too. Here are links I found for that.

I'm not saying she was a good person, and I'm not saying she wasn't racist or for eugenics (though honestly I don't know), but I am saying that everything like that she was for, was only with wanting to prevent them before conception so that no one was killing any human beings. She worked to secure birth control in part to get rid of abortions and infanticide. She knew that it was the taking of a life, so she wanted to take care of the situation before that happened. She seems like one of those people who is both good and bad. Some things about them you love, and others you hate. It did at least give me more respect for her, because in researching this, I found that I liked a lot of what she wrote.

They added abortion to Planned Parenthood after her death, and I'm sure that's why everyone assumes it, and no one corrects people. I'm sure if more people knew their founder worked to get rid of abortion, less people would support PP, or there would be some sort of outrage, and so they probably keep it under wraps. Also, the more conservative and religious pro-lifers really like to paint her as the queen of abortion and infanticide, and I have even posted that she was pro-life on a few pro-life pages, and they argued with me and tried to act like it wasn't true, and one even blocked me, even though I didn't do anything other than simply state that and post those links. So, funny enough the pro-life side is also fueling this false info, when really they could be using the fact that she was pro-life to say it's disrespectful that Planned Parenthood have abortion services. Or like that first link from the livelydust blog states, "And anyway, why would pro-lifers want to base a campaign against abortion on misinformation? Why not just sweetly point out that Planned Parenthood's founder called abortion a horror and devoted her life to making it unnecessary?"

We really should be doing that. Why bother to keep pushing a lie just because it makes someone look like they support abortion, when the people who support her already do, when you could be telling the truth and saying that even the woman pro-choicers love and celebrate as the leader of women owning their bodies and reproductive rights, was against this?

Here are some of her quotes:

"Although abortion may be resorted to in order to save the life of the mother, the practice of it merely for limitation of offspring is dangerous and vicious. I bring up the subject here only because some ill-informed persons have the notion that when we speak of birth control we include abortion as a method. We certainly do not. Abortion destroys the already fertilized ovum or the embryo; contraception, as I have carefully explained, prevents the fertilizing of the ovum by keeping the male cells away. Thus it prevents the beginning of life."
- In her paper "Birth Control Advances: A Reply to the Pope"

"To each group we explained simply what contraception was; that abortion was the wrong way—no matter how early it was performed it was taking life; that contraception was the better way, the safer way—it took a little time, a little trouble, but was well worth while in the long run, because life had not begun."
- In her autobiography

"Human society must protect its children–yes, but prenatal care is most essential! The child-to-be, as yet not called into being, has rights no less imperative."
- In her paper "The Children's Era"

"While there are cases where even the law recognizes an abortion as justifiable if recommended by a physician, I assert that the hundreds of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a disgrace to civilization."
- In her paper "Birth Control or Abortion?"

""It is apparent that nothing short of contraceptives can put an end to the horrors of abortion and infanticide"
 - In her book "Woman and the New Race" page 25

"[It is] the most barbaric method [of family planning], the killing of babies — infanticide — abortion."
- In her paper "My Fight for Birth Control

"Usually this desire [for family limitation] has been laid to economic pressure... It has asserted itself among the rich and among the poor, among the intelligent and the unintelligent. It has been manifested in such horrors as infanticide, child abandonment and abortion."
- In her book "Woman and the New Race" 

"When motherhood becomes the fruit of a deep yearning, not the result of ignorance or accident, its children will become the foundation of a new race. There will be no killing of babies in the womb by abortion, nor through neglect in foundling homes, nor will there be infanticide."
- In her book "Woman and the New Race" page 232

It makes sense that Margaret Sanger was pro-life as all the feminists of the time were.

Marie Stopes was likewise one of these pro-life feminists who worked to further birth control yet had the biggest abortion facility named after her after her death. From her wikipedia,
"Stopes was strongly against the termination of a pregnancy once it had started: her clinics did not offer abortions during her life. She saw birth control as the only way families should limit their size.

The nurses at her clinic had to sign a declaration in which they swore not to "impart any information or lend any assistance whatsoever to any person calculated to lead to the destruction in uteroof the products of conception."^[50]

When she learned that one of Avro Manhattan's woman friends had had an abortion, Stopes accused him of "murdering" the unborn child.^[51]

http://www.lifenews.com/2013/06/22/there-is-no-doubt-the-early-feminists-were-pro-life-on-abortion/
"‘I was glad you gave space to the fact that the Queensland Medical Association is planning an extensive educational campaign against the evil of abortion.’ – Marie Stopes. (When Stopes found out that her contemporary Avro Manhattan had pressured one of his lovers into having an abortion, she called him a murderer to his face. And when William Carpenter named his abortion shop after her, she took legal action against him. But today, the largest abortion business in the UK bears her name since it was founded in 1976, eighteen years after her death.)"

This is my story

I have always been very liberal (that's the American Liberal. I have heard that in other countries it means the opposite of what it means here). I realized I was when I was about 13 and started asking what words like "democrat" and "republican" meant, so from then on I realized my ideals fully fit on the liberal/left/whatever you want to call it side. I always thought the fact that we have parties, and especially the two party system, was stupid though but I always knew I did have values that fully fit in with liberal. When I say very liberal, I mean a mixture of all the liberals, like a full on mix of Communist, Socialist, Anarchist, Hippie, Green, Peace and Love, Democrat, with punk rock ethics as well and whatever else there is that is left. It's hard for me to choose just one since I fit in with all, so I usually just say liberal. If it weren't for the fact that I'm really into grunge and totally want to live in Seattle (the grunge holy-land), I would probably find a Hippie commune to live on.

I have always been very Feminist. I have always known I was a Feminist. I remember reading that Kathleen Hanna got into feminism when she was 9 or something, and thinking that was odd because I seemed to have always been into it, though of course we come from different times, so maybe I lucked out by growing up in the post-riot grrrl 90s, but then again the 70s was very Feminist as well. I think my first feminist memory was when I was 3 and I hated that people apparently can hit boys but not girls, because that isn't equal. I knew it was silly to say women couldn't take it, and it was silly to say men could. Those are just old-fashioned gender ideals that say that women are fragile and men are tough, and both are wrong. It goes by a human by human basis. We really shouldn't be hitting anyone, and it should be equal. When I said very Feminist, I mean I call myself a radical feminist because I know that feminism can't have anything to do with being a man hater so those who say that's what that means are wrong, and anything radical just means you support it more than just having a general sense that it is right and want to actually figure it out and fix it. You can't have radical equality that leans on one side. There is a difference between women's rights and feminism. Feminism incorporates women's rights but is about equality of the sexes. You can be for women's rights and not a feminist though, if you don't want equality of the sexes, and only care about women's rights. Those are more like the man-hater radicals that people confuse with feminists. Another misconception of feminism is that you have to be an activist and protesting all the time. You can sit on your lazy but and have a general sense that the sexes should be treated equally without picketing. That's a regular feminist. Those of us that actually want to see social change in the world are radicals.

I am very Atheist. I would say that even though I was never raised as an Atheist, I was always an Atheist. I realized I was one around 7th grade. My whole mom's side of the family is Mormon, and we did go to Mormon church when I was young, but luckily we stopped either when I was 6 or 7 (I don't remember exactly, but I know this because in the Mormon faith, you get baptized when you turn 8, and my brother is a little over 2 years older than me, and he was baptized, so we were attending church then, so I would have been almost 6, and then we stopped by the time I was 8, so I wasn't baptized (thank goodness)) My mother say she wishes she would have kept religion in our lives longer for the family type of stuff and that we missed out on some things, but I am so thankful for the fact that she didn't, as it would be SO much harder to come out as an Atheist. I'm SO glad she stopped taking us to church when I was still young enough to not know what was going on. I never bought the stuff at all, though when I was in my trying to find myself period, I did perhaps pray to god, like "help me find (whatever item I had lost) and I'll do whatever" and I think once I said I was a Christian when someone asked because I didn't know what else to say, but I honestly never believed any of it. It was just me playing monkey see monkey do and being afraid to come out in a world that looks down upon Atheist people. For that I say I was always an Atheist. Also, when I say very Atheist, I mean I don't think there ever is a possibility that there ever is, was, or will be a god or gods, so in other words, I'd probably be considered a Gnostic Atheist, and I think most Atheists are Agnostic Atheists. I don't bash people for their beliefs though. I think religion is an evil and definitely want it to go away, but the people aren't necessarily and I know what it's like to have them push their beliefs on me so I try not to stoop to that level.

I have always been very Pro-Life. Well, as long as I knew what abortion was. When I say very pro-life, I mean I have always been iffy on the life of the mother exception, but I have never accepted any other exception. I think I was 14 when I asked my mom what abortion meant because I had heard the word a few times, and didn't know. Right away I knew I was against it, and this wasn't so long after finding out how very Liberal I am, so since it seems like it was right up the Conservative side's alley, I assumed it was something conservative deadbeat dads created so that they wouldn't have to take care of their responsibilities and to keep women down. Being the feminist I am, and being a woman myself, I assumed it was something only ever used against women and women would never choose to do it, though now I know even more of how it's bad to assume women would never do anything bad to their children, I mean you even have women drowning their infants, but coming from a woman's perspective, I can't imagine any woman ever being ok with this. I also can't imagine parents ever being ok with this. Chalk it up to me never imagining that I could do it as a female, so being naive to the fact that other women could do it.

I knew being fine with people choosing to kill, dehumanizing, and denying rights was totally a conservative thing. I created all these liberal and feminist ideals against abortion, and then I started hearing my mom and brother and others say that pro-life was a conservative thing and pro-choice was a liberal thing, so naturally I thought they were joking because it makes absolutely no sense. Then as time went on, I started to realize that there was that stereotype that conservative religious types were pro-life and liberal feminist types were pro-choice, and perhaps the majorities may be like this currently, but that makes no sense, and I never let the stereotypes stop me from being who I am and believing what I believe. I always knew that it's just as hypocritical to be for animal rights/vegetarian/vegan, pro-peace/anti-war, pro-universal healthcare, anti-gun, environmentalist/tree-hugger type etc. and to be for people choosing to kill their offspring as it is to be a pro-war, gun-toting, animal hunting, anti-universal healthcare type who actually cares about life and rights with the unborn.

I knew it was something to use womanhood and women's bodies and so men could back out of actually taking care of their children, and so they could use them for sex and then get rid of the problem if they got pregnant so they could just do it all over again. Though now I know women choose it because they feel like they have no other choice, yet men do do that all the time and also pressure them into it and make them feel like it's their responsibility because they are the mothers, but then other men are wronged and regret lost fatherhood like the women who regret their abortions. The pro-choice side lets bad guys get away with it and good guys hurt from it. I knew that the whole "it's the woman's choice" thing was old-fashioned gender stereotypes that say that the woman has to choose and it has to be all on the woman, the one who is the mother, the one who gets pregnant, so everything about babies has to be on her because that's women's work. That is OBVIOUSLY sexist and leads to the world we have now where men think that they have to say that the woman should deal with it because she is the woman and they will support whatever choice because it's her choice because she is the mother, and the women think that they have to deal with all of this and decide all these things because they are the women, the ones who get pregnant, the mothers who have to deal with baby stuff because that's a woman's job. I don't necessarily blame them though, because they have been wronged by society. Tons of really sweet guys are tricked into thinking they are great feminist men by telling the woman it's her choice and she has to deal with it. Tons of really great girls are tricked into thinking they have to carry the whole world on their shoulders just because they are women, or have to be pro-choice because their fellow feminist friends tell them they have to. I actually wrote a bunch of liberal, feminist, pro-life lyrics not long after finding out about abortion, and stuck them in a book of other lyrics, hidden, because I didn't want to admit that there was such a thing. I think I'll turn them into pro-life riot grrrl songs.

I have always been these things because I am not the type to go through phases or change that much. Really you should only change if you come across info that proves you were wrong, or if your tastes honestly change, like if you suddenly like one flavor of icecream more than your previous favorite. Neither of those things tend to happen to me. My beliefs have stayed the same, though perhaps a few tweaks here and there with new information, but essentially I'm the same person I always was, though actually my beliefs are stronger than they ever were. I have always been more strong-willed and don't tend to give in to peer pressure. I was always one to think rebellion and conformity are stupid and you should always just be yourself. It may be and has been a long and hard road finding out that what makes sense isn't in the norm right now, but I never let that stop me. I hate it when people choose sides based on what other people who also happen to be like that think or say or do (I hate that so many pro-choicers are pro-choice or at least don't like pro-lifers or the pro-life thing because of the crazy radical conservative religious types saying stupid things or bombing abortion clinics. Trust us, they are only a fringe group, much like how everyone labels feminists as man-haters yet only a small percentage of people who consider themselves feminist actually are, or like how the WBC is only made up of 40 members yet they get all the attention and give Christianity a really bad name), or just because it is labelled as what people of your side are supposed to think. Everyone should realize that this issue is switched on all sides.

Oh and I'm really, really in love with music, especially rock and roll, especially all that is Grunge, Alternative rock, Riot Grrrl, the 90s, Seattle, and Generation X. I tend to say that a lot. I say "all that is" because not only do I love the music, but also all the stylistic things, and the vibes of it. I love tattoos, piercings, log hair (I LOOOVE long haired dudes!), goatees, loose-fitting clothing, crazy colored hair, flannel shirts, band shirts, ripped jeans, Doc Martens boots, or really all dirty boots, Converse All Stars, shorts with longjohns, the whole entire Kinderwhore look, those cool black rayon mini dresses with the little flowers on them that you can usually find by typing in 90s grunge on ebay, and the whole entire laidback, down to earth, let your hair down vibe of the 90s. All of that, but especially the music, is my main stuff. My life, my love, my passion. I even have another blog on here called The Grunge Pit. So yeah, I'm always saying I'm like the alternative feminist punk type who usually gets pigeonholed as working the front desk at Planned Parenthood or something, yet pro-life, because sometimes stereotypes are false. I'm hoping that with this blog, I can help people realize the side of the liberal, feminist, atheist, cool pro-lifer. Usually you have pro-life organizations that cater to only liberals, only feminists, or only atheists, but I'm always thinking there should be something to tie in all of that, because since they tend to only do one of those, they are non-denominational with the other things and let everyone join in as long as they are pro-life and that one thing, and thus you might have people on pages for Feminists For Life who may be conservative or religious, or people on pages for Democrats For Life of America who may be religious or not Feminist, or people on pages for Secular Pro-Life who may be conservative or not Feminist, so why not make my own blog talking about all of these things? I hope I can connect this world too and give people resources for their needs within these types of things.