To think that people like anti-abortionist Kristan Hawkins are the enemy of women and feminism everywhere

[Purplefoxes]

Maybe extreme but..I was just reading this BBC article (link below) on Kristan Hawkins and it made my blood boil as I am pro choice. She is the woman from the US organisation Students for Life of America and has been instrumental in over turning Roe v Wade. She is now on the back of this 'success' campaigning for total abortion ban across America . The overturning of Roe V Wade is a decision which will likely result in the death or debilitation of many pregnant women who either cannot access much needed abortions for health reasons or try to access back street illegal abortions or could even commit suicide as a result. Not to mention there could be many unwanted children dumped into the care system or brought up in abusive environments. I just cannot fathom why anyone, let alone a woman would do this. I'm sure if it was one of her kids who was pregnant and needed a medical abortion to save their life she'd change her tune! How blinkered does a person have to be to not think of the impact of banning abortion on both women and children! And how has such medieval policy been allowed to happen in modern day America..could this happen in the UK?! Are we losing our rights as women? When did the life of a fetus become more important than the life of its mother?

BBC article

I definitely don't agree that wanting abortion to be decriminilised and treated as healthcare is an extremist position. And she seems to think that the father should have some say in whether a woman can have an abortion?

@ShodanLives agreed. Taking abortion fully out of criminal justice isn't extreme. It just puts it in the hands of experts and doesn't mean 100% abortion on demand at all stages.

Giving men a voice is outright dangerous- you have but to look at that abusive man in Texas who is suing his ex for having an abortion. It's an abusers wet dream to go down that path.

Otherwise she makes some good points about black and white thinking. However, I would say it's mostly the forced birthers who think in such absolutes. It isn't as if those who favour choice cheer on every abortion and want more and more; we just acknowledge it as the least worst option in most cases.

I completely agree. Unfortunately other women tend to be vessels to them and nothing more - hence the handmaiden comment!

What if the woman has therapy and still feels the same? Then what?

What if the woman has therapy and still feels the same? Then what?
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I wouldn't even entertain going that far. It is based on the premise that a woman who doesn't want to keep a pregnancy must be mentally unwell. That's the kind of patronising bullshit that the handmaidens so love to come out with - the little woman doesn't know her own mind. It is underpinned by the absolute belief that women are unable to make sound decisions for themselves. There are no words for how unacceptable that POV is.

If you read the article it seems she’s not really on board with contraception either.

Hawkins is also more outspoken, more outwardly conservative, on other abortion-related issues. She opposes exceptions for rape and incest. And she opposes several forms of birth control, including oral contraceptives, a position another anti-abortion leader privately called "unhelpful"

You can only sideline these people by mobilising the silent majority. You can't argue them out of their belief system.

Wholeheartedly agree. And people like Hawkins with such extreme, rigid beliefs tend to encourage the more moderate to get involved and pick a side which is what seems to be happening in several states.

I can see where you’re coming from. You believe that abortion is murder and you think it’s abhorrent.

I love babies and I don’t necessarily like the idea of having an abortion. I can understand why it seems wrong to you because sometimes it seems almost wrong to me. But then I read something like this and I think of the poor living child and what she has been forced to endure to save the life of something that doesn’t actually exist yet.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/03/01/an-year-old-pleaded-an-abortion-after-she-was-raped-she-was-forced-give-birth/

This cannot be right. No woman should be forced to carry a child against her will. Women and girls are not receptacles or incubators, they are living, breathing human beings. They deserve care that puts them first, before the life of their unborn child. They deserve compassion. Their wants and needs cannot be sidelined.

No I agree - just interested what the answer would be, from a poster who thinks women can be counselled to accept having a pregnancy, birth and child they don't want.

If you think thats a good solution, what if it doesn't work? And that's leaving aside how hard it is to access timely therapy; that the point of therapy is to help the client come to their own decisions, not steer them into a predetermined one; and that a pregnant woman by definition hasn't got all the time in the world to work through her dilemma in therapy, being very much under a ticking clock. How is 'support and counselling' a viable alternative to abortion? It isn't.

She's a bit racist too going by recent tweets. Hardly surprising.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/jaci-statton-oklahoma-abortion-ban-pregnancy-b2333380.html

Another woman people like Kristan Hawkins, @eggsbenedict23 and @dacadactyl think should be left to die.

@Anthillveggie to be fair even those two posters would probably not be happy with what happened here. However, they lack the will or the ability to understand that banning abortion means these kinds of events are inevitable and that women will die, because when you ban abortion even with guidelines for saving a woman's life, there will always be practitioners who take the most restrictive interpretation of those guidelines either through fear or through genuine belief that they are protecting a baby. You cannot legislate to offer safety to women with these kinds of complications.

And that means people like the posters you mention are complicit with the deaths of women, and happy to be so.

Dacadactyl said on another thread that she thinks abortion should be illegal even when the woman's (or girl's) life is at risk.

@bananasun thanks for the heads up, I shall stop giving that poster any credit for human decency or compassion.

And the other poster mentioned suggested smacking a child with autism as a way of "sorting out" their autism

Apparently its okay to only give a shit about a child's rights up to birth, after that it's fine to hit them if you don't like the way they behave

The people who passed those laws have blood on their hands.

Yes but it's only women's blood so it doesn't really matter. They're not saving babies, they're just controlling and punishing women

The psycho is on twitter right now praising a woman who had a baby despite there being a high risk of it killing her. If anything had gone wrong presumably she would rather the woman was left to be crushed from the inside out.

https://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/national/106218/woman_denied_immediate_treatment_to_end_lifethreatening_ectopic_pregnancy_until_board_decision

This happened in Malta which has a total ban on abortion. Normally, treatment for an ectopic pregnancy shouldn't be considered an abortion as the pregnancy isn't in utero but there's no limit to misogynistic attitudes to women's lives it seems.

I had emergency, life saving surgery last year for a ruptured tubal ectopic pregnancy. Fortunately that was in GB in 2022 and doctors could treat me safely, without risk of prosecution.

https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/opinions/2013/6/9/a-peek-into-a-pro-life-paradise

People who hold these misogynistic attitudes to women's health and lives make me incandescent with rage.

Extreme pro-lifers don't tend to be experts in biology.

They don't tend to be experts in anything, or even have the most basic understanding of anything. Not science, not morals, not basic decency either.