'Abortion seekers'

[quickkimchi]

Ffs, email below from an American lefty fundraising committee:

"Friend,

We just got news from the U.S. Supreme Court that the court rejected a challenge to a Kentucky law requiring doctors to describe ultrasound images and play fetal heartbeat sounds to abortion seekers.

The state of Ketucky argued that the law is a part of “informed consent process” and "does nothing more than require that women who are considering an abortion be provided with information that is truthful, non-misleading and relevant to their decision of whether to have an abortion."

Kentucky’s law is wrong — but it’s a reality that we’ve lived with in Texas for far too long.

In Texas, the state requires abortion seekers to undergo a sonogram, along with recieving state mandated paperwork about medical risks and adoption options (and some of this information is false) before getting an abortion. Even worse, a person is required to wait 24 hours after receiving the sonogram and paperwork to have the abortion.

Not only are these laws a violation of one’s autonomy to make a personal decision about their lives and their bodies — but today's Supreme Court decision is setting the tone for the fight we’re up against in 2020: Keeping Roe v. Wade upheld and protected.

Donate $20 today so we can give our Changemakers the tools to organize across Texas as they fight to ensure the right and access to have an abortion is protected.

• Andrea"

How hard do you have to work to completely alienate and enrage your actual target audience?! I've written an outraged reply but will sleep on it. I wish I was better at not flipping my lid about this stuff, it means my response is a little too foaming at the mouth to sound credible. But fuck, in one fell swoop they've entirely excised the history of the struggle for women's reproductive rights.

I have no intelligent discouse left.

Progressives behind this destruction of women's language can just fuck off.

I've had abortions, and at no time was my identity (that thing they care so much about!) that of an 'abortion seeker'.

'One's autonomy' - WOMEN and GIRLS' autonomy. Ffs why won't they stop with this utter misoygny ?

The right might be taking away reproductive health rights, but the left are taking away the ability to even speak about women's needs, women's health, women's rights.

The left can fuck right off just as much as the right can.

The regressive, homophobic, racist, anti-semitic left. Same as the right. Anti-women twins.

errr just tell them you're confused about who the people are who are seeking abortions.

Janes yes, I've sought an abortion and at no time did I identify as an abortion seeker.
It's so ahistorical, disrespectful, regressive, sinister and disturbing. When you try to lift this kind of concept out of its history as though it's a matter of some random individuals being restricted for no discernable reason, apologies if I sound like a drooling zealot but book burning comes to mind.
Still I have to get better at coming at my arguments like that instead of my usual shouty way.

Still I have to get better at coming at my arguments like that instead of my usual shouty way

All I can do at the moment is shout and swear, not very helpful to you!

I wonder what approach would have the most chance of being heard.

(Maybe point out that encouraging the right to think of women and girls as 'abortion seekers' isn't really the way to get them to think of us as full human beings with complex lives and histories, who aren't just having abortions for funsies ? I mean, 'abortion seekers' - can't you just hear the right using that term in futue ? 'abortion seekers who murder babies' - I can. It's a win for the right - they can dehumanise women as they canonise the foetus. Put those nasty abortion seekers in jail!)

Abortion seeker also sounds far too much like drug seeker for my liking with the implication that women requesting an abortion are doing something wrong and underhand.

Trump and McConnell have stacked the courts with racist, misogynist, homophobic asshats completely unqualified to decide what to have for dinner.

Women will suffer for generations as a result of what is being done to the courts.

Abortion seeker also sounds far too much like drug seeker for my liking with the implication that women requesting an abortion are doing something wrong and underhand

Is "drug seeker" a standard phrase? It doesn't sound a natural phrase to me. It made me think of "Grail Seeker" from Arthurian legends or "truth seeker" from anything woo and irritating. In any case it's terrible.

And as for this piece of gibberish-what autonomy does the writer have to make decisions about other women's abortions?

Even if the writer really could not bring herself to say "women's autonomy" she could have kept "one's autonomy about "one's life" and "one's body"

Not only are these laws a violation of one’s autonomy to make a personal decision about their lives and their bodies.... —

Yes, the term "drug-seeking" is commonly used in American healthcare settings, most notably in A&E.

"Abortion seekers" should be more properly called "reproductive healthcare patients" but that would point to the fact that only a certain cohort of the population engages in reproductive labour, and heaven forfend that lead to class analysis around such labour and its exploitation.

And if only a certain cohort engages in this class-based exploitable labour, we might need a word to refer to them.

I do think we might need a word to refer to liberal feminists, though, because it's ever more clear that the term is an oxymoron.

I do think we need a word to refer to liberal feminists

I got one

Traitors

I've had an abortion and I was NOT an abortion seeker, I was a woman who didn't want to be pregnant.

No one who has an abortion actually wants to have one they just wish they weren't pregnant in the first place. I had an easy time but many, many don't, it's a huge burden for life and for some it can be very mentally damaging.

Abortion seeker? Fuck off. And the women who support this. Fuck of some more.

The Abortion Seekers were a radical 60s folk group.

As a girl who had to have an abortion, I was nothing other than a girl. Not an it not a they not whatever new term the cultists want to use. My very female body experienced something a male body cannot.

Like the new seekers?
Thrill seekers?

If drug seekers on a common term in USA this is not just ridiculous but also dangerous, its the sort of language anti abortionists will be all over as it ties into a frame of wrongdoing.

Ffs stupid bastards.

Also, defining women and girls by a single act at a single point tied to reproductive system, not as whole people for whom this is one part of a whole life iyswim

All of the language is so dehumanising.

What does it say that a longstanding prochoice feminist feels the language from Kentucky, advocating abortion restriction, is more recognisable, sensible, logical etc than that of my progressive sisters? At least Kentucky's misogyny is out in the open, and however misguided, at least there is an ideology behind it, not just shapeless nonsense, waffle and bullshit.

quickkimchi that's a very good point about language. It's a point the Democrats don't understand and Republicans do.

It's all part and parcel of dismissing Trump voters as ignorant rednecks whilst failing to understand there are complex reasons why voters chose Trump.

No one who has an abortion actually wants to have one they just wish they weren't pregnant in the first place.

This is exactly the problem with the phrase "abortion seekers" it takes away the reality of the women and girls trying to avoid a difficult situation and turns us into deliberate chooses of it.

I thought that Abortion Support Network's "pregnant people"(1) was bad enough, but "abortion seekers" doesn't even have the word "people" in it.

(1) And the use of "terf" by some of their board members. I'm holding my nose and continuing to donate despite you, Mara, not because of you. Women and girls, of the kind who can get pregnant no matter what her gender identity is, still need my cash.

It’s massively insulting to erase women from discussions about abortion.

I couldn’t follow all of the logic behind that position: but a US abortion fund activist has helpfully laid it out here (in a mainstream beauty-focused women’s magazine) if anyone wants to try to follow it.

Why Gender Neutral Language Is Crucial in the Abortion Conversation

www.allure.com/story/abortion-gender-neutral-language-transgender-men-nonbinary

I understand all I need to understand of language that erases females from their own experiences - it's misogyny.

Not interested in redneck excuses for it, not interested in woke excuses for it.

God I hate this century.

Not interested in redneck excuses for it, not interested in woke excuses for it

I used the word "redneck" in my post but it's a term I really dislike. I used it with reference to the patronising attitude that certain parts of the American left have towards people who don't think the way they do.

The article linked to in allure.com is another example of illogical, patronising, ill thought out lefty nonsense.

The "redneck" argument against abortion would be more coherent ("abortion is murdering a baby"). One might disagree vehemently but it's a clear and easy to follow argument. Do the right on lefties who write this sort of garbage have no inkling how it will play out with the anti abortion lobby?

The conservative argument is coherent, so far as it goes. Pity that it stops at birth, and completely fails to consider the wellbeing of the pregnant girl/woman.

"Abortion seekers' reminds me very strongly of 'attention seeker', a slur often hurled at young girls and women whose response to trauma is self-harm.

There is a book

www.audible.co.uk/pd/The-All-New-Dont-Think-of-an-Elephant-Audiobook/B00OBQW61A

Which is enlightening on this point - language and messaging. About USA but applying here now too..

Well worth a read or a listen.

It's about how and why right wing messaging is much more developed and successful. Really good stuff.

By using terms that are apparently used for 'wrongdoers' ( people buying drugs) in USA, this particular message (abortion seekers) is gifting to anti abortion.

I can't believe they have done that tbh.

This quote defining political conservatism really resonated with me.

"There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time."Wilhoit