We knew it all along. The motive force behind the campaign to get rid of abortion rights is hatred of women as women, women separate from babies, women as people.
Alexandra Petri in the Washington Post:
…just last week, Virginia State Senator Steve Martin posted on his Facebook wall, in response to a Valentine from a pro-choice group, that “Once a child does exist in your womb, I’m not going to assume a right to kill it just because the child’s host (some refer to them as mothers) doesn’t want it.” (He updated the post on Monday afternoon to change the language from “host” to “bearer of the child” because THAT fixes it.)
The fetus is a child, while the woman is a host. The fetus is a full person, while the woman is a mere incubator.
Women are expendable. They’re interchangeable. They’re basically just machines. They don’t matter, except for their machine-function. That’s why they’re the ones who gestate the babies, while the important people who really are fully people, men, get on with the important work that only people can do. Like stand-up comedy for instance.
Now Martin claims he was joking. Really? Look, when you support a fetal personhood bill and vote for the Virginia bill that mandated ultrasounds, it seems safe to assume that literally nothing you say calling women Baby-Hosts is a joke.
Precisely.
Daringly, still others refer to them as “women” or “people.”
It has been clear from the beginning that what is behind the anti-abortion movement is the desire to punish women for having sex. You see this in all discussions of contraception, too – “The stupid sluts should learn to keep their legs together. Maybe being saddled with a few kids to support will teach them that lesson.” It has often been observed that the “pro-life” movement’s concern for the baby stops as soon as the baby is no longer within its mother’s body – these same advocates for ever more births are the same ones who scream the loudest about how public assistance programs are a waste of money and that everyone should pull himself up by his bootstraps. Even infants. To defend slashing funding for school lunches for poor children, Texas Republican Rep. Joe Barton thought he was quoting scripture when he said, “God helps those who help themselves.” Except that isn’t found anywhere in the Bible. Even if it were, how does a toddler or 1st grader “help himself”? Quote here: http://www.readingisforsnobs.com/2012/05/idiot-congressman-quotes-scripture.html
If people truly wanted to minimize abortion, they would promote proper sex education and widespread access to and availability to contraceptives, to the point of making them free of charge. But we see the opposite, so we can conclude there is some other purpose. And it is pure misogyny.
“Claims he was joking”
Don’t they all claim that when they realize they stepped over the line. Yet when a comedian (someone PAID to make jokes) talks about how Cheney should have a heart attack, those same people saying liberals “need to get a sense of humor” are howling in anger.
There is a reason that women as a group were the last, dead last, to get the right to vote. Even freed slaves – black men, who at that time had fewer rights within society than any white person, including females – got the right to vote, and a full 50 YEARS before women did.
The problem with the “conservative” mindset is that it seeks a return to an earlier, simpler time. What makes this a problem in the US is that our past includes the most severe human rights abuses possible – slavery. It also includes a past in which women had no rights – could not own property, could not represent themselves in court, could not take anything from a divorce, could not expect equal pay for equal work, etc. etc. So we women, as a previously rights-denied group, should be extremely suspicious and vigilant around those who identify themselves as “conservatives”, because you can bet your bottom dollar these are the people who want to return us to a lower position within society, a society in which only rich white men will have any rights.
“Now (Virginia State Senator Steve Martin) claims he was joking.”
That Steve Martin is no Steve Martin! Just sayin’…
Yeah, but this one is a real jerk.
By Martin’s own argument, he’s not a man, he’s a certain male body part. (Choose your own euphemism for it.)
And to jagwired:
http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/19gqgdsxyy1gqjpg/ku-medium.jpg
“host”
That makes it sound like we got infected like the eggs from ALien.
It does, doesn’t it. Or like some creepy kind of supernatural injection type thing.
“Yeah, but this one is a real jerk.”
ZING!!
…and the flip side is that he’s admitted the fetus is a parasite. Which in some respects it acts like, for those who know the biology beyond the shallow “Ooh, unique DNA, ergo unique human person!” high school level understanding of anti-choicers.
Hm, according to him, evidently, humans enjoy personhood before birth and loose personhood at birth. –Any abortion ban means that the fetus has more rights than a born person, since after birth no one is entitled to use the body of an other person without their consent…