![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Rights and privileges
Oct. 25th, 2012 09:37 pmWhen libertarians talk about drug policy, they tend to talk about the damage done to people who did nothing wrong. The wrong house raids are especially for this, because everyone can imagine themselves sitting at home not using drugs, but you can also get a lot of mileage out of pretty, well-employed white people who smoke pot, or poor POC suffering for family members' crimes. We use these because it's easier to see the damage done by the drug war without the compounding variables. But that doesn't make it right to use those weapons against mediocre human beings. Petty thieves, deadbeat dads, people who hurt people all deserve to be punished for their specific crimes. It is still morally wrong and damaging to society to execute a no-knock warrants, use flash grenades, and kill pets in search of their drugs.
Similarly, I think when abortion access advocates say "but rape victims", what they mean is "here is the case with the fewest compounding variables. Surely, after stripping out the variable of sex, you can see that forcing someone to undergo a pregnancy and then either raise a child or leave them to be raised by someone else is wrong. And once we've established that, you can see that sex really has nothing to do with it." But what anti-abortion advocates hear is "we're conceding that not carrying a pregnancy is a privilege to be earned through good behavior. Let's debate what you have to do to earn it."
This is what I think about when I read articles like this and this. Pregnancy and childbirth are not just uncomfortable and painful, they are not just risky in some abstract sense of the word. The carry with them the serious chance of permanent damage to a woman's body. And not just "ha ha, women care about being fat" consequences either.* Painful sex for the rest of her life is the least of consequences mentioned in that NYT blog post (read the comments). This is why I was most disturbed not by Todd Akin's ignorance of basic biology, but by the sentence
*Although, I think it is 1. legitimate to wrestle with a fundamental change in your body and the lack of control it implies, 2. naive to think that women who become less conventionally hot don't suffer for it, and 3. misogynistic to shame women for noticing that.
Similarly, I think when abortion access advocates say "but rape victims", what they mean is "here is the case with the fewest compounding variables. Surely, after stripping out the variable of sex, you can see that forcing someone to undergo a pregnancy and then either raise a child or leave them to be raised by someone else is wrong. And once we've established that, you can see that sex really has nothing to do with it." But what anti-abortion advocates hear is "we're conceding that not carrying a pregnancy is a privilege to be earned through good behavior. Let's debate what you have to do to earn it."
This is what I think about when I read articles like this and this. Pregnancy and childbirth are not just uncomfortable and painful, they are not just risky in some abstract sense of the word. The carry with them the serious chance of permanent damage to a woman's body. And not just "ha ha, women care about being fat" consequences either.* Painful sex for the rest of her life is the least of consequences mentioned in that NYT blog post (read the comments). This is why I was most disturbed not by Todd Akin's ignorance of basic biology, but by the sentence
“But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.”because it completely ignored the existence of the woman who wanted the abortion. She just wasn't there.
*Although, I think it is 1. legitimate to wrestle with a fundamental change in your body and the lack of control it implies, 2. naive to think that women who become less conventionally hot don't suffer for it, and 3. misogynistic to shame women for noticing that.
