Again!

Once again, a gut feeling articulated. Not so much what I wish I'd been able to say, with my own attitudes. The stereotype of some skanky woman who puts herself first at the wrong time is, like all stereotypes, very loosely based in truth, if at all. And yet my own discomfort is based on a worst-case-scenario that is extremely unlikely. I have been assuming I know best, when in truth, as a woman whose never been pregnant, I know nothing.

The bottom line about abortion is this. Do you trust women to make their own moral judgments? If you are anti-abortion, then no. You do not. You have an absolute moral position that you don't trust anyone to question, and therefore you think that abortion should be illegal. But the second you start making exceptions for rape or incest, you are indicating that your moral position is not absolute. That moral judgment is involved. And that right there is where I start to get angry and frustrated, because unless you have an absolute position that all human life (arguably, all life period, but that isn't the argument I'm engaging with right now) are equally valuable (in which case, no exceptions for the death penalty, and I expect you to agonize over women who die trying to abort, and I also expect you to work your ass off making this a more just world in which women don't have to choose abortions, but this is also not the argument I'm engaging right now), then there is no ground whatsoever for saying that there should be laws or limitations on abortion other than that you do not trust women. I am completely serious about this.

http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/2005/04/do-you-trust-women.html