Beth Presswood came across the most asinine anti-abortion article I’ve ever seen. Go and read her post. I’ll have a little something to say about it when you return. It won’t be nice, it contains quite a bit of foul language, and I’m not shielding anyone from my anger, but if you’re a secular forced-birther, you’d better damned sure show me you read, comprehended, and thought carefully about what I said before you dare to open your mouth in my presence.

Let me be blunt: I can’t stand secular anti-choicers. I get why religious people are so wrongheaded – I despise their dogma, but I can grok why they’re assholes. But the secular fools who think we should outlaw abortion? They disgust me precisely because they should know better. And this bullshit about women not being equal if they have to murder their precious bay-bees: they can fuck right off with that shit.

I do not need to be forced to carry a fetus I absolutely do not want in order to be a whole, complete woman who is equal to men. The idea that I’m somehow a lesser being for choosing never to reproduce is the most asinine fucking thing I have ever heard, and people, I review creationist textbooks for fun and profit.

And look, you little asshats: when you force people to keep pregnancies they don’t want, it’s not like society will suddenly see women and AFAB trans folk as totes equal. We done gone down that route, and it’s what allows the fuckwads to grind women into the dirt. Taking away a person’s power over their reproduction is taking their power, period.

Contrary to what the author of that wretched article thinks, we can have our safe, legal abortion, and work on issues like childcare costs, parental leave, and all the other issues that make having a child in this country so damned hard. Abortion won’t keep people from having children and demanding they not be penalized for doing so. But we can’t have both forced pregnancy and equality. That’s not a possibility.

And that’s not even addressing the fact that you’re willing to subject people who don’t even want to be pregnant to some pretty awful shit. People die carrying pregnancies. They’re maimed. They end up with Postpartum Depression, Postpartum Psychosis, and PTSD. All. The. Time. It takes a hella strong person to take on those risks by choice. It’s a form of torture to force those risks on a person without their consent.

I don’t think pregnancy and childbirth make AFAB people equal. I think the ones who voluntarily endure that should be recognized as fucking superheroes. But it’s not something that should ever be forced.

There’s good reason why we don’t force people to donate blood and organs while they’re alive. Fuck, we don’t even take those things from corpses without consent. And yet, people die because we do not force those things. Tragedy? Yeah. But we know it would be dangerous to allow a world where we could be compelled to give literal pieces of ourselves to save others. We know that it’s horrible to see people as spare parts. We’re very careful to respect the bodily autonomy of everyone except pregnant people.* Yet the “life” they’re carrying is only a potential, not an already-realized human being. Somehow, these baby fetishists think those pre-humans are worth more than the five year-old who need a kidney, or the grandparent who needs a heart. They think that cluster of cells has more right to live than the person who didn’t want it implanted in them. I will never comprehend that.

There’s no secular argument to be made for ending abortion. Not if we truly value fertile cis women and AFAB folk as full human beings.

Want to do something to counter this nonsense? Donate to Planned Parenthood, or help support #ShoutYourAbortion, which is becoming far more than a hashtag.

*Well, and people of color. We white folk regularly seem to see them as spare meatsacks placed here for us to exploit. Thing is, on some level, most of us know that’s wrong – we don’t often parade around thinking we are righteous and good for treating them as something less than fully human. But when it comes to pregnant people, we suddenly think treating a human being as a mobile incubator is noble, and we’re proud enough of our stance to parade it publicly and make it into laws. How the fuck is that possibly equality?

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