A Quick Link

From NARAL's website comes the scary discovery that abortion-wise, my state SUCKS.

Find out how much your state does/doesn't suck here.

P.S. Sam's post on why she is pro-life is coming, I promise.

Reasons I am Pro-Choice

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.” - Alice Walker


1). Back-alley abortions.
Yes, it's a trite, overused expression. No, I don't give a fuck. It's a legit term for a legit worry. I'll be the first to admit that people turn to abortions way too readily, but I'll also be the first to tell you that the trule desperate women will go to any means necessary, and that includes unsanitary, unprofessional abortions that killed and maimed thousands of women before it was legalized, and they all were forced to act like criminals. No good, y'all. How the hell can we call ourselves the greatest country in the world if we don't even allow access to safe, clean medical care? Seriously, folks. This is kinda a no-brainer.
2). Big government.
Excuse me, but aren't the Republicans for SMALL government? LESS governement interference? They're already telling us government helathcare is "socialism" (and if you think I'm getting into that, you're nuts). And yet they want the government to be allowed to have control over the bodies and healthcare of literally half the American population- the women. Excuse you? You can't get much more invasive than having Uncle Sam telling you what you can and can't do with your uterus.
3). Women's rights.
You wouldn't think this would need explanation, but it does. My body. MINE. Not yours. That's as simple as I can make it.
What is a fetus? At a few weeks? It's a mass of cells. Admittedly, it's a mass of cells with a potential to become so much more than just that. But so is a tumor. No one's marching in the streets of the capitol for tumors' rights. No one's trying to pass personhood amendments for your lung cancer. I mean, I can't even write that with a straight face.
Think back to your ninth-grade health class. Remember what happened? This little thing that looked weirdly like the pictures of worms they have on the posters at the vet's office stuck itself to a blob that looked like a golf ball.
Seriously. You're gonna tell me that's a person? It's two cells. (Although my brother, who is much more a science nerd than I am, informs me that they're tehnically each half of a cell, called haploid cells? Or possibly diploid cells, I wasn't really lsitening.) If you take those two cells out of a woman's body, what are they? Nothing. They're an egg, and a sperm. Nobody's doing protest marches for the rights of all the poor little sperms who die every time a teenage boy jacks off. Nobody's screaming that I'm killing a person every time I have my period. But it's eggs and sperms dying! Cells with the potential to become a human life are being destroyed!
...Right.
Take those cells out of the body, and no one gives a fuck about them. They're two cells. But in a woman's body, they're precious! You can't get rid of them! You have to keep them, no matter what the cost!
Sure is convenient that saving human life means someone else gets to control what happens to my body, dontcha think?
4). The irony is just too much to handle otherwise
"Land of the free! We're the best in the world! Liberty! Awesomeness! Et cetera! Oh, except you're not free to make choices considering your own body. But we're still Number One, right?"
Too much irony.
Anti-choice laws are not compatible with free society. Ever. (This is another one of those "Shouldn't need explanation, but apparently does")
5). Outlawing abortion is forcing women to have children
Um, what the fuck? Seriously, what the fuck? The day a government forces women to bear children against their will is the day women have become nothing more than slaves. Outlawing abortion again is as much as telling women that they're only good for making babies. If I can't decide what to do with my own body, then essentially, I'm being told that I don't matter, at all, except as a little baby factory. Thanks, guys. That's sweet.
6). Health
Women with certain medical conditions (cancers, heart disease, blood disorders) can be endangered by a pregnancy. Delivering a child could kill them. If abortions were made illegal, women would die when it could have been preventable, because the government would force them to have children. A woman's options would be illegal abortion (risking her own death) or childbirth (risking her own death).
Fuck that.
7). America is still not a theocratic government.
"America's founders were Christian, though!" Yeah, and my Mom's friend believes in the Moon Goddess. What does any of that have to do with anything?
America's CHRISTIAN founders wanted people to have a place where they felt safe, where thye felt they had a voice in the ruling of their home country, where they could feel they were not simply ignored. America's founders gave us a country with FREEDOM OF RELIGION. You're free to practice your religion. I'm free to not have one. Stop putting your religion's laws in my country's laws. Seriously. It's rude. Not to mention destructive, ineffective, and wrong.
8). A woman is more than just a body
If fetuses are granted "personhood", then that means they become more important than I am. Their rights come before mine. They have equal rights, too- more equal, in fact than mine.
What the fucking fuck???
9). Women can and should make decisions on their own.
Thank you, America, for trying to make my decisions out of my hands. Thank you, America, for telling me that I am incapable of making the right decision. You trust me enough to have and raise a baby, but not enough to deicde if I want it? Well, that clears that right up. OBVIOUSLY, being but a poor, pitiful woman, I can't possibly make my own decisions. That would be crazy! Where would society be if you let me think for myself? Chaos.
10). WE CAN'T ALL AFFORD ANY FUCKING BABIES
Hell-O??? I'm seventeen. I'm unemployed. How the fuck am I supposed to raise a kid?
What about the single moms working fourteen and sixteen and eighteen hours a day to afford electricity? Yeah, I'll bet they really want a kid right now. Raising a baby is totally in their budget. *sarcasm hand raised We should just leave them in the lurch, right? Because all life is sacred to God, after all. (But only as long as it's a cute li'l baby, we don't actually care so much once they grow up. They can fend for themselves. *sarcams shoulder popping from raising sarcasm hand so high)
11). Overpopulation.
Seriously? There aren't enough starving and dying and unwanted children out there? There aren't enough mommies in Africa dying in childbirth, while their kids die of starvation and disease and lack of fresh water? You don't see enough kids in the streets, running drugs for money? Not enough child prostitues earning money for food?
If every life is sacred, buy some fucking condoms, and adopt. Don't just talk about the world's fucking problems and then ignore them the rest of the time.
12). Women are not just mothers
Without a kid, or several kids, there are so many more options for me. Right now, I'm set to go off to the Navy in August. If I have a kid, that's not happening. Babies are wonderful and awesome and miraculous- when they're planned for, or if you have the means of taking care of them, or if you want one. For someone who doesn't like kids, who's trying to finish school, who wants to be able to get and keep a job, who doesn't want her life interrupted for something she never wanted in the first place? That's not a miracle, folks, that's a damned pain in the ass (literally and figuratively)
Telling me I have to have a kid is telling me I'm not good for being anything except a mother. Forcing a woman to have a child devaules her. All the political and economic and social gains women have made aren't going to be worth much if we aren't even allowed control over our bodies.
13). Teen pregnancies
Yeah, I really want to scew up my entire teenage life by having a baby at the age of, oh, fourteen, or fifteen, or hell, THIRTEEN, for Christ's sake...what's that you say? I should have used protection? Well, maybe instead of forcing abstinence-only sex ed on me you should have GIVEN ME SOMETHING USEFUL TO WORK WITH HERE before you also force me to HAVE A BABY!
Seriously, right-wingers. What the fuck? Don't teach kids how to avoid pregnancies, then don't let them out of it when-shocker!!!-they get pregnant anyways...
Yeah, that's a great idea.
*sarcasm hand raised really high so everyone can see me flipping them the bird
14) Child abuse
Yeah, child abuse. Child abuse sucks. And it ends when parents actually want their kids, when they treat them the way they should-like something precious, and miraculous, and wonderful. When parents love thir kids, child abuse ends.
When parents look at their kids and think, "I never wanted you. I dropped out of high school because of you. Dad disowned me when he found out about you. I can't afford you. I lost my job over you. You're just a burden to me," that's where child abuse starts.
And you're going to tell me that you're "pro-life" because you believe every life is sacred?

Whew, longest post ever. And you know the worst part? That's nowhere near everything I could've said.

Next up: My friend Sam's pro-life perspective.

You Had To See This Coming

Roe v. Wade:
Argued December 13, 1973
Reargued October 11, 1972
Decided January 22, 1973

Seriously, you had to know I wasn't going to leave this alone.

First things first: I will probably never have an abortion. I don't believe for a second that a fetus is a person from the word go (i.e, sperm meets egg), but on the other hand, I have no idea when it DOES count as a person. My youth group leader is pregnant right now (due to give birth any day now, actually) and for the past 37 weeks, she's been putting up pics on Facebook of the baby bump; her statuses have been all about how she saw the baby's heartbeat on the ultrasound, et cetera. It's really quite sweet. (I keep telling her she should name it after me. Except it's a boy. But I still think she could give him my name, and maybe just call him by his first name instead? What do you think?) And at some point, you have to realize it IS another person. You can't fairly call it "a mass of tissue" at, say, nineteen weeks. I mean, by then, it not only looks like a person, it's moving around, its brain is starting to do fancy stuff that I just looked up and forgot- it's a bit iffier at, like, four weeks or something. Rather than make the call, I would probably have the baby, and then put it up for adoption (No way I'm keeping it. Ick. I really don't like kids.)
But the thing is, I've made a CHOICE here. I have a choice. How wonderful is that? Forty years ago, if I got pregnant, I was fucked (metaphorically. Well, literally, too, I suppose). I'd be stuck with it. And I'd probably hate that kid every bloody day of my life. I can hold a grudge for a really long time. My family would be stuck with the burden of another kid (seriously, we've got enough issues just affording the six of us already in this family) that no one wants, I'd be jobless in a heartbeat, I wouldn't have been able to join the Navy, I'd have to take time out of school, probaly wind up repeating a year- to which I say HELL NAW. SO not worth it.
There's a lot to be said on this subject, and rather than making this post even longer than it already is (I'm going to change the format so that it makes it look like a shorter post, jsut to satisfy my OCD), I'm going to split everything (most) of what I have to say on it into several posts over the course of this coming week.
'Cause, seriously, if you thought I was gonna leave this one alone, you're NUTS.
UPDATE: am fully aware this post is going up the day after the anniversary. Mom confiscated my computer yesterday before I could get this posted. Long story there, but I'm still close enough, right?

Bedtime Stories for the Little Kiddies

Once upon a time, there was happy Republican family. There was a happy Republican mommy. She was the president of the PTA at her 2.5 children's school, she wore business suits and skirts to her thriving law practice, and she personally checked the immigration papers of her children's Hispanic nanny before hiring her. There was a happy Republican daddy. He owned his wife's thriving law practice, and always wore an American flag pin on his business suit's lapels.
Every night when she tucked them into bed, the happy Republican mommy would tell her children a bedtime story.
"Tell us a scary story, Mommy!" they begged. So she told them a story about the most horrible scary monsters she could think of.
She told them all about the hippie, communist liberals, the Muslim, morally bankrupt president, and the baby-killing, corrupting feminists. The little kiddies listened with wide eyes and blankets clutched to their chins as she described in great detail their evil schemes. The liberals wanted to destroy America! The crazy left-wingers were allowing the breakdown of everything good in the world, by letting Mexicans take American jobs and American money. The feminists didn't want mommies and daddies to get married. In fact, if they had their way, mommies would only be allowed to marry mommies, and daddies could only marry daddies! And they would kill sweet little children like them! And worst of all, they would take Mommy and Daddy's money and give it to- poor people! People who had never done an honest day's work in their lives!
"This is a scary story, Mommy," they whimpered.
"But there's a happy ending," their mommy told them. She told them all about how now there was a Republican majority in the government, so little kiddies could be safe from all the Mexiacans, and the Muslims, and the communists, and the baby-killers. They would never have to worry about learning about sex in school, until the happy Republican daughter got pregnant, anyways, and they would never have to worry about the gay kids at school staring at them in the locker room like filthy perverts.
"Mommy, will you check under the bed before you turn out the lights?" her 2.5 children asked her, when she finished her story. She smiled indulgently and asked, "For what?"
"For-" They looked scared to say the word. "-Liberals," they whispered.
So the happy Republican mommy checked under the bed for the scary monsters, and there weren't any Democrats or gay people or atheists under the bed, and they all lived happily ever after and weren't eaten by monsters in their sleep.
The End.

Veteran's Day

I figured it was about time I start posting more frequently than once a month, so here's a little Veteran's Day post, all about: Women in the Armed Forces. Yes, there are women in the Armed Forces, so stop asking me, when I wear a Navy T-shirt to school, if my uncle or brother or father served.

Veterans are brave, they're tough, they're patriotic, they love their country. They deserve respect and gratitude, and better treatment than they get. They have earned the right to sit back in retired bliss, sleep in, drink beer, and watch TV all day if they feel like it (at least, I imagine that's what I'll be doing years from now, when I'm all done with four A.M. wake-up calls and drill instructors.) I don't care that a lot of them were drafted, or that a lot of them just signed up because they wanted the military to pay for their college or they jsut needed a job. They still served, and that's a lost more than millions of Americans can say.

Now, how in the hell does that have anything to do with feminism?

You read the news articles from today, and you see servicemen hugging their relatives, saluting the flag, leading ceremonies all across America. The women? You see them in the background, smiling at their husbands. the captions of their photos say "A veteran's wife applauds in such and such city..." A veteran's wife. A veteran's sister, or niece, or cousin. 'Scuse me? Where the fuck are the ladies?

But, wait! you say. Veterans' Day is for celebrating the veterans of WWI and WWII, right?

Get your history right, ladies and gentlemen.

Woodrow Wilson, waaaay back in 1919, declared Nov. 11th to be Armistice Day, when Americans would remember WWI veterans. But then came 1954. After both WWII and the Korean War, Armistice Day became a day to commemmorate ALL American veterans of ALL wars.

So, where are the ladies? We're honoring all vets, right? Women today make up about 14% of America's military, and about fifteen percent of the reserve and guard. So why aren't we seeing them in the headlines? Why are women background photos, supporting roles to husbands and sons, or only present when someone adds "and women" to "servicemen." Why are women an afterthought? I know it's not because we're quiet and easily forgotten. It's simply because people still aren't quite used to the concept of "women" and "military" in the same sentence. It just seems odd to a lot of people. I heard on NPR in the car a story from a woman who said she'd earned a Purple Heart. People would see her Purple Heart license plate, though, and jump straight to the "obvious" line of reasoning: "Oh, did your husband serve?"

The defense to this is obvious. "Well, most people are honoring the older veterans, you know, the ones from WWI and the Korean War and such. Women weren't allowed to serve then!" (not that I heard this from several people at school today or anything). Well, that makes it all better, then, you're not being sexist, you're just ignoring millions of people's contributions to their country! Carry on!

Shut the fuck up, folks. Women have served in militaries for thousands of years, and in America, they've been serving since before this country was even a country. If you would direct your attention here for a moment, and over here, and over here, hither and maybe a little bit of yonder... Why, looky there! Women! Serving! Since the freaking seventeen hundreds, folks! And those are the ones who've served openly. The number of women who disguised themselves as men and fought can't even be estimated.

I'll save the "Sexism in the Military" bit for another day; that's not the point today. The point is, don't forget the chicks. 'Cause they know how to use guns.

Happy Veteran's Day!

Spirit Day

(This was originally going to be posted on Oct. 20th. People wore purple to show their support for the LGBTQ community, in light of all the recent suicides. Unfortunately, my Internet connection's been weird on me for a couple weeks. On the plus side, I got this and three other blog posts written while waiting for the wireless to stop sucking.)

Purple= Spirit.

Spirit.

Spirit is pride, strength, courage. Spirit is when someone at school calls you a faggot, and the teacher doesn't do anything about it, and you stay tough anyways. Spirit is when that jackass in the locker room calls you a gayfer, and you laugh, because you're proud to be yourself. On the rainbow flag, the purple stripe at the bottom stands for spirit. For some people, that means that we're shameless sinners, that we're corrupting traditional values and destoryiong everything America stands for with a smile on our lips and a twinkle in our eye.

At least seven gay, American teens could tell them otherwise- that is, if they weren't dead.

Any suicide is a tragedy. An epidemic of suicides, all preventable, in one month, is appalling. Teenagers, with their whole lives ahead of them, killed themselves, because they couldn't stand the intolerance anymore. I've got my dad, my sister's ex-boyfriend who's still my Facebook friend for some reason, kids at school telling me that they're not gonig to wear purple, that we shouldn't remember kids killing themselves just because they're gay; that if I want to do something useful, stop sticking up for gay kiods and do something about suicides that "actually matter".

Fuck you, with a shovel, in the ass.

There's been a lot of debate as to who is and isn't killing themselves because of gay-bashing, a lot of dispute over statistics like "1 in 3 gay teens will commit suicide", a lot of nitpicking, in other words, over things that don't matter. These kids are still dead. Their families, whether the news is making a big deal out of it anymore or not, are still grieving, every single day. I hardly think "Well, we can't be CERTAIN his death was realted to homophobia..." is going to help anything. The point remains, a lot of kids have killed themselves, and we've got nothing better to do than bicker like five-year-olds.

That means we, as a nation, have failed this generation. Again.

The numbers vary. Some people say it was eleven gay teens, some still stand by the original number, five or six. It doesn't matter, y'all. One is more than enough. One is too much. And everyone can agree, there are at least five. And, as if that weren't bad enough, there is still gay-bashing. There are still kids who don't know anything except hate, and abuse, because of who they are or what other people say they are. for some people, it doesn't even stop when they go home. It HAS to stop. The entire point of Spirit Day, which many people seemed to miss out on, was to remember these kids, and to show support for all the LGBTQ folks out there, and I promise you, it makes a difference to somebody out there. I won't lie, it's a lot easier for me to be bisexual than it is for a lot of folks- it's just more socially acceptable where I live. But even for me, to walk into school and see so much purple was such a lift. Knowing that that many people supported me, and were proud to do it, was one of the best feelings of my life, and I know it was for a lot of other people, too.

This post is shamlesssly late, since October 20th was, you know, two freaking weeks ago. But I just want to say thank you, to everyone out there who wore purple, and to everyone who meant to and forgot, and everyone who would've if they'd gotten the Facebook memo, et cetera. I know a lot of kids out there think suicide is the only way to escape the bullying, and the only way to stop people from giving in to thinking like that is to show them how many people actually do care about them. And THAT, dear sister's ex-boyfriend who was convinced that the point was "showing off how faggoty you are", is the point of Spirit Day.

http://www.thetrevorproject.org/ - LGBTQ suicide prevention hotline
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYLs4NCgvNU - Gay, trans, et cetera Google employees telling us it gets better.

God, I am so lazy...

Second-ever post! Yay me. I couldn't pick what to write a post about, so I kept putting it off and putting it off. But in the past ten minutes alone I found this article concering the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy, this piece on the Priests For Life website, which is always good for a good, hearty laugh, and this video from the Girl Scouts of America, who, for all their faults, are still pretty damn cool. (No, I couldn't figure out how to do the thing where it just shows the video, and not the whole webpage. I'm not too great with computers.) So I figure I've got enough to go on for now, before I get too far behind.
DADT first.
All I can say is, about damned time! No, that's a lie, that's not all I can say. That policy has been around since the year I was born, for Christ's sake. I've been planning on joining the Navy for a while, and I won't lie- I'm used to pretending I'm not bi. I made it months before my mom found out, I actually did what she told me for a few months and pretended to be straight at church, around her friends, at summer camp, when I was sharing a cabin with seven straight Christian girls...Finally gave it up as one of the most idiotic things I'd ever wasted my time doing. Everyone at church who knows me now knows I'm bi (dropped that bombshell on the new youth group leader the other day. I think she's in shock.) And let me tell you, I was not looking forward to entire years of pretending, not to mention a dishonorable discharge if I ever got found out. If you think about it, though, it's ridiculous how long it's lasted. People complain about it all the time, most of us agree that gay-bashing-punishing people for being who they're born to be- is a bad idea, especially in light of all the recent suicides that came as a result of intolerance. And yet we've allowed a policy like this to stand for seventeen years? It's about time we woke up and realized that we're not going to go away just because we pretend we aren't there. And sure, the Justice Department can still repeal it, the federal government can still decide Judge Phillips is overstepping her boundaries, but it's at least a step in the right direction. Personally, I'm holding out hope. Fingers crossed, everyone! (all five of you who read this, anyways)
On to the priests.
I could say a lot about religion, priests, Catholicism....but I won't. Not yet, anyways. But how's this for a laugh, folks?

 "One of the more outrageous things radical pro-abortion feminists say is, "If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament."

...Has this author ever heard of "extremists"? People who say things like that are either nuts, or they hate the church without any sort of understanding what the church is about. In one sentence, that manages to cast a bad light on not only men and the church, but on women as well. By this line of thought, women are the only ones who can take abortion as seriously as it should be taken; men and the church would treat it like some kind of child-sacrifice ritual. So...only women are capable of rational thought concerning pregnancy? The author goes on to make a lot of other points- some of which are reasonable, some of which, sadly, are true, and very unflattering to some kinds of feminists, and some of which I just found downright funny. I mgith come back to this article later, but for now, I'll leave you with the part I liked best: part of his (I'm assuming the author is male, since it's on a priests' webite) theory on what life would be like if men could give birth:

"Childbirth would probably be a competitive sport. Childbirth instructors would be paid like sports coaches. A third of the evening news broadcast would be devoted to childbirth commentary. Who was in labor the longest? Who got through the quickest? Who had the biggest baby? The biggest multiple birth? We would look at local, state, regional, national, and world birthing records."

He's got a point.

And last, but not least, the Girl Scouts. I've seen a few of these sorts of videos now. Apparently, they're doing a sort of campaign about body image, and how girls want too much to be what they see on TV. And if you'r thinking, well, I won't watch this, I'll just read the summary, I say to you in all sincerity- Seth Green is in it. Watch it. If you don't like Seth Green- fuck you. With a rusty shovel.

The link, again. Essentially, a whole lot of celebrities (some of whom I actually recognized- go me!) ask if you would do anything they say to, dress like them, trust anything they said, just because they're famous. And, wow, I am impressed. Like I said, I've seen several videos like this recently. Apparently, instead of just telling girls that they don't need to try to be like the Airbrushed Ones, we're actually doing something about it now. You have no idea how freaking happy this makes me.

So there you go, a little bit of warm fuzzies and a little bit of a laugh. What more can they ask of me?