The War on Women's Rights and My Rebuke of the Anti-Choice Movement

A woman's right to make their own decisions has fallen under attack:

2011 marked a monumental year for the war on women's control over their reproductive choices. Anti-choice politicians passed more restrictions on abortions in 2011 than any other year in this millennium (a total of 68).

The U.S. House of Representatives voted 8 times on choice related issues in 2011. Compared to two times in 2006, two times in 2007, zero times in 2008, three times in 2009 and one time in 2010. Among the choice-related issues being voted on was a bill titled H.R.358.

This bill is titled the "Protect Life Act" and it allows hospitals the legal right to refuse giving a patient an emergency abortion when their life is in danger by "exercising their conscience". Yes, it literally means that even if the female is going to die without the abortion, the act places the fetus' well-being before that of the parent, allowing the hospital to let the female die. This law would be more aptly named the "Let Women Die Act".

Despite the fact that abortion has been legal in the United States of America for 39 years, there were twenty-six states to pass anti-choice measures in 2011. Anti-choice politicians understand that abortion will never be made illegal within the U.S. (despite what some congressmen would have you think), so rather than waste time trying to make abortion a criminal act, they pass measures that make it nearly impossible for women to actually receive an abortion. This is dangerous because if a female is going to choose abortion, she is going to find the means to have one done. What this means is that if there is no safe place provided for her to receive the procedure, she will seek other means such as home-abortions or unregistered facilities -- both options could mean death or permanent and unfixable mutilation. Abandoning our women is primitive and disgusting; the utter disdain I have for the individuals who are not only okay with the abandonment of women in need, but are trying to make it normal practice, is immense and unrelenting.

What anti-choice means and the measures they've put in place:

Anti-choice means exactly what it sounds like; people who are against women having control over their reproductive choices. They declare that human life begins at conception and that it is murder to take a human life; therefore abortion is murder. These "pro-life" advocates have passed some heinous bills such as the one mentioned above as well as South Dakota's law that legally demands every single person undergoing an abortion to sit down for an in-person lecture by an anti-choice counsellor at a "crisis pregnancy center". A judge is currently blocking this law but the state's own governor is demanding $750,000 in taxpayer funds to defend the law in court.

Interesting enough, the same congressmen who call themselves "pro-life" and anti-choice are restricting women's rights to lead their lives and are placing them at risk for severe health complications in the process.

The abortion debate ended:

Yet there are still those who oppose the legal rights of women choosing abortion. Abortion needs to be legal, and here's why:

1) Rape victims who would be forced to carry a fetus inside of them from a crime so terrible would cause extreme emotional pain constituting cruel and unusual torture and punishment. Punished by a "pro-life" government stance meant to "protect" life, tortured by a nagging reminder of the worst experience of their lives.

2) Females who become pregnant before their bodies are capable of carrying and properly adapting to a 9-month gestation period are put at risk for serious and life-threatening health complications.


3) A "baby" does not occur at point of conception, think of it as a spectrum of colours: Blue is not green, yellow is not red. A baby ready to be born has 1,000,000,000,000 cells. At the point of conception, there is a single cell. Even after several days, there are so few cells that they are literally invisible and hold no ability to think, see, feel, taste, touch, or hear. I am not an expert on babies, I've never even held one; but I am capable of identifying one and a few microscopic droplets of goo does not constitute a baby.


When PETA says "a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy" they mean that vermin is the same as livestock, which means that vermin can be the same as a pet, or a human boy -- they are wrong. Red is not yellow, blue is not green, a rat is not a boy and a single cell is not a living, breathing, feeling, thinking human being.


4) Anti-choice and "pro-lifers" claim to be celebrating life by staking the claim that life begins at the point of conception. Well I'm sorry, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that comparing a human baby with arms, legs, a brain, and a nervous system to that of a single-celled fertilized egg doesn't celebrate life, it denigrates it.


5) Most importantly, taking away women's rights over their own reproductive cycles is incredibly damaging to the progress we have made here in North America on the topic of equality. If we take away a female's reproductive choices, we have then shackled them to the suppression they were victims of for so long.


Do not forget that in dictatorships all over the modern world women are chained to the wishes of the men in charge. Religious thought and backwards thinking tell women what they can eat, when they can talk, whether or not they are allowed to reproduce; this is suppression in the most abysmal sense. We mustn't allow this to happen here in North America and it is happening more and more each time one of the 68 anti-choice measures was passed last year.


Congressmen have no right to tell a woman what she can or can not do with her own body. After all, how much depth can us men truly have when trying to understand the struggles of a female facing such an important choice?


When people say that "the bible says abortion is wrong" and therefore we must honour what the bible says I remind them that A) no it doesn't, anywhere, ever in the bible say that abortion is wrong (check it out for yourself); and B) the bible does condone killing children on more than one occasion.


"Pro-lifers" often argue that abortion is dangerous and that it tinkers with the natural order of life. Well first of all, abortions are one of the safest major medical procedures an individual can undergo and a huge majority of abortions that have been done have actually saved the life of the person who needed it. As far as tinkering with the natural order of life goes...So you've never used anti-biotics, vaccines, anaesthesia? We have quite happily adopted Germ Theory and a vast array of other medical advancements in order to defy the natural order of life and stay alive much longer, while staying much healthier than ever before. Tinkering with the natural order is not a real argument, it would be like saying "abortions were Hitler's favourite pass-time" in order to make abortions appear bad by equating them to something a bad person did. Again, I'm sorry; but no intelligent adult would ever make such a stunned, immature argument.

In closing: 

It is absolutely okay to feel that you yourself would not condone an abortion for yourself, or in the case of the male population, approve of a female getting one. Of course you can personally feel like it is not the best course of action -- but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be legal! Restrictions being placed on women's right to choose abortion is indeed irrefutable evidence of a war against women; there is no denying it. It was stated above and must be stated again: remember that men have no right, ever, to stop a female from making a private, medical choice, or refuse her emergency life-saving medical treatments, or control what she can or can not do with her own body. We have long surpassed our ancestors primitive ways of suppressing women's rights; let's not reopen the floor to even entertain idea's that would allow us to move backwards in time to a place where women lose equality and the right to choose.

Stand together against the war on women's rights. Abortion must remain legal and accessible; the future of free society depends on it.


Agree? Disagree? I'd love to hear why! Leave a comment below or head on over to my Twitter account right here @ChrispyPaul