There's an absurd amount of dancing around the basic desire to declare that a certain kind of autonomy must not be allowed to women when they get pregnant.
The intention is to reduce autonomy. You may argue it's just. You may argue it's necessary. You may defend your policy advocacy on these grounds. You may not argue that you're all for women's rights and freedoms and not for restricting them.
That is absolutely the intention. And it is absolutely argued as being just and necessary. No dancing around. Because, per the perspective that there is a living human person inside of another, not only is that
person granted zero autonomy in whether they live or die, that person also isn't responsible for the pregnancy of themselves, and shouldn't be the party that suffers for it. Not only that, what happens when a boyfriend/husband objects to their partner getting an abortion, but it's done anyways? The child in that woman's womb is half that person's. What about if a 13 year old gets pregnant in a state that allows parents to make the decision - the 13 year old wants to keep the baby, the parents decide to abort. Just, or no?
There are
all kinds of scenarios where people's autonomy is justifiably and necessarily limited in life, with good cause. The dancing around is on your end, where you paint that desire as automatically and inherently insidious, regressive, and anti-woman.
One perspective is that there is only the woman's autonomy to consider and that it must be left alone. The other's is precisely that sometimes, this autonomy must be proscribed. Not rendered "partial". Removed in its entirety. It can be argued that this restriction is just, logical, or reasonable, but it is what it is.
Yeah,
because that perspective is informed by the belief that the alternative is murdering a human being. Talking with you about this is like when people respond to #BlackLivesMatter with, "Oh yeah, well #AllLivesMater".
"The unborn's lives matter!"
"No, women's lives matter!"
"Right...exactly, right...i'm not disputing that? But unborn babies need to start to matter
more because they don't in our current cultural zietgeist."
"So you want to control women?"
"N-no...I'm trying to point out that the unborn do not matter enough to us."
There are, fair enough, complex and maybe philosophical questions surrounding this debate. But why do the bad outcomes named above occur? Whose direct advocacy is responsible for these effects? Where do those people want to go? There is a simple answer here. It is no mystery.
The biggest reason would be because of conservative/republican powers halting helpful steps like contraceptive access, good healthcare, sex education, and so on.
But another contributing factor is 'the opposition' painting them as unreasonable, backwards idiots with archaic and oppressive ideas and making them dig their heels in even further.
I’m among those who strongly disagree that we can decide what are legitimate reasons and what are not. We’d get into the territory of women having to prove they were legitimately raped, for example, and that isn’t nearly as clear cut as it might seem. And it’s selectively punitive of the decision to have sex, in general. If you aren’t trying to conceive, you’re not consenting to a pregnancy, at least, this mindset should not be mandatory.
Legally I completely agree with this.
