Your Abortion Is Slutty, Mine Is Not

Well, not mine, since I’m a cishet male. Anyway, there’s an excellent piece by Leah Hampton that gets at the hypocrisy of anti-legal and safe abortion conservatives (boldface mine):

The crux of my newfound doubt about Roe is the “everyone” part. Because that story about my friend’s wedding is just one of many. Jamie, me, every left-leaning Southern woman I know—we have all been put in the same position many times, often while being insulted by the very person asking us for help. What I am wrestling with in the wake of abortion rights being overturned is the fundamental tension between Southerners like me, and conservative white women like my childhood friend, who quietly take advantage of abortion rights while helping abolish them

Ask any honest Southerner, and she’ll confirm these numbers with stories of her own. The majority of the women I know who’ve had abortions have been white and conservative, and I’ve lost count of how many asked me to help hide the details. They ask me specifically because I am pro-choice and believe in their right to privacy. My childhood friend, for example, implored me not to tell her fiancé about her abortions because I was the only one who knew about them in the first place.

In my late twenties, I had a boss who asked me for help scheduling an elective abortion. She had married into her husband’s family business, and apart from the Mexican workers she refused to speak to, I was the only female-identifying employee who didn’t go to her church or share her last name. She was deeply anxious, so I asked as few questions as possible, called a clinic just over the state line, then covered for her at the office. A few weeks later I made a comment about a local political race, and she shot back, “I’m not voting for anybody who’s pro-Muslim or pro-choice.” I gave her a hard look. “That didn’t count,” she said, waving me off. “I’m not a slut.”

…In her famous article “The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion,” Canadian activist Joyce Arthur documents abortion providers’ experience with anti-choicers seeking abortion care. The abuse these patients heap on healthcare workers is both appalling and illuminating. They believe they are special, an exception to the rule, and more entitled than other pregnant people, whom they believe to be beneath them.

I don’t expect politicians to talk about this: this is a political minefield, and that’s an understatement. But this hypocrisy, and many people who have volunteered to work at reproductive health clinics are very aware of this, needs to be discussed far more often. It probably won’t change very many anti-abortionist minds (especially those who are very committed to the issue), but it makes the case for the rest of us that they lack the moral authority they claim.

They are not better than other, pro-legal and safe abortion women, regardless of what they might believe.

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2 Responses to Your Abortion Is Slutty, Mine Is Not

  1. silverapplequeen – poet. dancer. mother. feminist. kitchen witch. book lover.
    silverapplequeen says:

    Boy, ain’t this the truth.

  2. Pingback: Herschel Walker’s Abortion Was Not Slutty. Yours Still Is Though. | Mike the Mad Biologist

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