Taking Back Bodily Autonomy

I have always been SUPER pro-bodily-autonomy/integrity and freedom of choice. My main philosophy in life has always been that you should be able to do whatever you want, whatsoever, as long as it doesn't hurt another body besides your own. This is exactly why I am against abortion. Bodily autonomy/integrity is why most pro-lifers are against abortion. If there wasn't another body that was being threatened or we didn't care about the body being threatened, we wouldn't be pro-life and there wouldn't be a problem. We'd say "Yeah sure violate and kill the unborn's body, it's not like I care what others do to bodies that aren't their own!" Get a hysterectomy, sure, but there is no greater threat to bodily autonomy than abortion. The right to bodily autonomy fits so much better with the pro-life side.

The thing about pro-choicers is that they don't really understand bodily autonomy. They think it's absolute (they seem to forget the "as long as you don't hurt another body" part of it, and there are many situations in which it is not absolute, such as helmet or other safety laws, drugs being illegal, or illegal in certain circumstances such as for those under a certain age, being taken away on a 5150 and forced in a mental hospital and watched to make sure you don't kill yourself, someone can't neglect their child and refuse to feed it because they don't want to use their arms to give it food (Refusing your child nutrients and survival because you don't want your uterus to go to this is basically the same. Children also have the right to not be neglected, and depriving the child of resources it needs to live, even if it wasn't wanted or planned or is an "inconvenience", is still neglect and still wrong) or kill or hurt their child if they wrapped themselves around your leg for instance and you can't get them off without doing so, and various other circumstances (regardless of whether or not you agree with them, they exist legally)), they think right to life can never come before it (right to life comes before at least most things as it is the ultimate threat against someone (and if you're an Atheist like me, you should really believe in it, as life is ALL we have, and without life, all other rights are meaningless as we wouldn't be alive to be able to use them, and this is why they put life first in "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness", and it's almost like a lot of them don't even think right to life is a thing, because if bodily autonomy always exists in the context of "even if someone dies" as so many of them like to argue, then you can go around killing people an excuse it by saying "Well it was my body doing the killing so you can't do anything about it because bodily autonomy" ), when talking about abortion, they act like the only thing to bodily autonomy is whether or not you allow someone to use your organs (there's much more which I'll explain), and they think forget about the unborn's bodily autonomy because the woman's autonomy is the only thing we should really care about etc.

Now essentially bodily autonomy has a few different things to it (and no not all of them are legal.) It means you can do whatever you want to or with your body (get tattoos or piercings or body mods, take drugs, be a stripper or prostitute, have sex whatever way you want it however much you want it with whomever you want (unless they are underage or someone else non-consenting) refuse to shave or wear makeup etc.), no one can do anything to your body without consent or invade the personal space of your body (think of rape, molestation, inflicting pain or injury, even just touching someone without them wanting you to etc.), and yeah having control over your organs is part of it, but the main thing is that no one can hurt or kill your body without consent (this is actually sort of related to right to life as someone being killed means their body was killed and hurt to the utmost extreme, so they aren't even mutually exclusive in the first place). You get to be in charge of your body, and no one else can ever hurt it (unless you're into that sort of thing and it's completely consensual ).

Of course according to science, the unborn is another individual living human being and different body than the mother. The unborn's bodily autonomy is the one being threatened here as the act in question is abortion and the unborn is the one being aborted, not the woman. Abortion is forcing death (and various things with the various types, such as dismemberment which is also obviously a great threat to bodily autonomy) on it without it consenting and having a choice in the matter. That is the biggest threat to bodily autonomy.

Now trust me, I get that the woman has autonomy too and she might not want to be pregnant and share her body with the unborn. Talking about the unborn's right to bodily autonomy and right to life DOES NOT mean we think little of the woman's right to bodily autonomy (remember I'm a super liberal and radical feminist, super pro-bodily rights type, so don't use that stupid "they all just hate women and want to take away their bodily autonomy" misconception on me). I am female, I live with thinking about what it is like to be pregnant all the time, BUT abortion is still a greater threat to bodily autonomy. Someone hurting or killing someone else's body is obviously a greater threat than someone using someone else's organ to stay alive. Also the unborn has two violations pushed on them (right to life and bodily autonomy) vs. the woman's one.

Abortion being the greater threat to bodily autonomy is true even more so for various reasons. It is completely innocent in the matter, it could not have consented or chosen to be there, and it is already there before a woman can find out she is pregnant or an abortion can take place. It did not "take over the woman's uterus without consent" as it could never have consented to that, and comparisons like that imply intent, but it never could have made a conscious decision to do something like that or even be aware of what it was doing. Just like newborns and toddlers can't be held responsible for certain actions because they couldn't have consented to it or realized what they were doing (from needing to be fed down to more serious things like accidentally hurting someone) the unborn is purely innocent. It can't consent to being killed either, just like infants outside of the womb couldn't consent to being killed so since it's not legal to do that, it doesn't make sense to allow someone to do it to the unborn (other examples of how bodily autonomy still applies to those who aren't aware to be able to consent either way is how women who have passed out can't consent to having sex, so doing that to her is rape, or sleepwalkers can't consent to sleepwalking, yet they also can't consent to being killed). Usually people know that things like circumcision or piercing a baby's ears are against it's bodily autonomy, yet some of them do a 180 when it comes to abortion. Those aborting specifically decide to do so and DID consent and make a conscious decision. The abortion is a direct an conscious action on someone. The unborn being there was there by the actions of the woman and man, or in case of rape man and woman's body. It happens to be using her uterus because that is how science works and the only home it has. Once again, it didn't "force itself into her and take her uterus hostage." Other analogies I've heard are ones like you can't drag an unconscious person into your home and then shoot them because you want them to leave *or something like that*, and extensions of that.

Want of womb empty is definitely not an adequate excuse to literally, purposefully, consciously, and actively kill someone who already happens to be there and by natural circumstances made by other people/bodies, especially those who are the ones wanting to kill them, and without their own consent to be there or a conscious choice made, who is the most innocent out of anyone innocent ever. Anyone for bodily autonomy should be pro-life above all else. No one is saying they should get more rights, we're just saying give them actual equal rights, which pro-choicers don't seem to understand. Someone's rights to their own body stops where another's begins, and we know that that is at conception.

Also I never liked the "kidney transplant" type of analogies. Abortion is different than refusing to give someone an organ or something like that as that hasn't already happened and when someone gives an organ, part of them is gone forever and put into someone else, whereas with the unborn, it is only using the woman's uterus and only for 9 months and she gets to keep it in her, and it is already there and happening by the time she finds out, and she will have it back to herself in months. Also, one might say that if a parent were the one to make their child's organ non-functioning, they should be obligated to give them theirs, or if someone already had an organ transplant, they shouldn't be allowed to take it back (which is actually an actual thing. You can't take it back once they are already using the organ, let alone take tools to dismember and kill them, and the unborn is already using the organ) and anyone can also refuse to take an organ, and if they don't they agree and make a conscious decision to take someone's organ, but the unborn can't refuse to use the uterus, and like I said before didn't make the choice to use it in the first place, and then there is the difference between actively killing and letting die, but even beyond all of that, I'm sure even the most pro-choice people still think very poorly of those who just flat out refuse to give someone an organ if they really need it.

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.