Abortion: controversial enough for ya?
I totally shouldn't be on LJ right now, but fuckit. This article has been making quite the rounds lately (though it turned out to be a hoax). Excerpt:
Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself "as often as possible" while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.
I've seen numerous comments along the lines of, "This is sick!! I am pro-choice and blah blah but this is TERRIBLE!". I find this to be a rather interesting point of view.
I am personally pro-choice, but I am extremely sympathetic to those who are not. Here's my perspective. Abortion IS killing a living thing. It is a clump of cells, and it is alive. The debate should not be over whether or not abortion = killing, but whether or not it is an acceptable killing. We call Terminex, we euthanize stray dogs, we slaughter livestock -- where do we draw the line? And the answer to that is far from clear. I think that it is a very personal thing, and I do not fault anyone for disagreeing with my point of view. They believe that it is an unnacceptable killing, I do not, who is anyone to judge?
So when I see pro-choice folks getting up in arms about this, or even say cliche things like, "abortion should be safe, legal, and rare" or "I'm okay with abortion but it shouldn't be used as a form of birth control", it makes me really question their convictions. Mental/reproductive health of the woman aside (I'm excluding that from this discussion, as that's more of a personal thing), if you believe that abortion is sad and terrible and should be limited to "necessary" situations, then do you or do you not believe that it is an acceptable killing? What is the mentality here? "Well abortion is terrible, but it's really inconvenient for person X to have a kid right now/the father is an asshole/she's too young/etc, so it's okay just this once I suppose!".
Choice is choice. No one who lauds the notion of pro-choice is authorized to evaluate the validity of others' reasons.
Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself "as often as possible" while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.
I've seen numerous comments along the lines of, "This is sick!! I am pro-choice and blah blah but this is TERRIBLE!". I find this to be a rather interesting point of view.
I am personally pro-choice, but I am extremely sympathetic to those who are not. Here's my perspective. Abortion IS killing a living thing. It is a clump of cells, and it is alive. The debate should not be over whether or not abortion = killing, but whether or not it is an acceptable killing. We call Terminex, we euthanize stray dogs, we slaughter livestock -- where do we draw the line? And the answer to that is far from clear. I think that it is a very personal thing, and I do not fault anyone for disagreeing with my point of view. They believe that it is an unnacceptable killing, I do not, who is anyone to judge?
So when I see pro-choice folks getting up in arms about this, or even say cliche things like, "abortion should be safe, legal, and rare" or "I'm okay with abortion but it shouldn't be used as a form of birth control", it makes me really question their convictions. Mental/reproductive health of the woman aside (I'm excluding that from this discussion, as that's more of a personal thing), if you believe that abortion is sad and terrible and should be limited to "necessary" situations, then do you or do you not believe that it is an acceptable killing? What is the mentality here? "Well abortion is terrible, but it's really inconvenient for person X to have a kid right now/the father is an asshole/she's too young/etc, so it's okay just this once I suppose!".
Choice is choice. No one who lauds the notion of pro-choice is authorized to evaluate the validity of others' reasons.