We need to frame forced pregnancy as enslavement of women

[Arazi]

I listened to an interview with Carol Tobias, the national President of the Right to Life organization. The journalist actually framed the question that way - “aren’t you enslaving girls and women into forced pregnancy”?

Tobias had zero answer. Actually spluttered. After decades of pat and trite responses she was flustered. Finally spit out that THATS the wrong framing.

Which means it’s exactly the RIGHT framing.

Forced pregnancy also happens to be a crime against humanity in the UN charter.

Take the gloves off people. Don’t let them frame this their way

[SheltieLover]

1. Absolutely!

[bucolic_frolic]

2. Yeah. Theft by deception, forced taking, grand larceny too.

Loss of freedom, pain and suffering, monetary damages. Some lawyers must be plumbing the depths of the issue.

[Tumbulu]

3. Yes, it is a war crime

And we need to continue to bring this up.

In every one of their faces. Make them sputter!

[purr-rat beauty]

4. Sadly, if you do this from a Constitutional standpoint...

They really only care about the 2nd.

At this point I'm not even sure they can count to 13

[Arazi]

5. We need to peel off waffling white suburban moms

Make the loss of abortion services sting, regardless if their pro-choice or not

November is going to be a squeaker. We need those voters

[CousinIT]

6. That's what it IS: reproductive slavery

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/reproductive-rights-and-long-hand-slave-breeding/

[Hortensis]

7. But what would we call slavery-slavery? It's real and dreadful,

too dreadful to belittle, and women are major victims. Right now. Lots of places. And is it really in the interest of free CITIZENS to encourage them to regard themselves as helpless, abused slaves?

And there's the hyperbole problem. Hyperbole tends to draw attention away from the core issue, to "developing" it for maximum emotional impact. For everyone who thinks that's the way to get people to care as much as they do are a lot who are made uncomfortable by it and feel sticking to clear, solid truths does the job better.

Does having RW extremists take away the national right to abortion before age of viability really have to be emoted to the max to be a really serious problem?

[Arazi]

8. I believe forced pregnancy and birth is "real and dreadful"

For those who wanted otherwise.

Is a lifetime of enforced servitude to a child anything less than slavery if you didn’t want that?

[Hortensis]

10. :) If you don't like that, for heavens' sake don't look at being supposed

to carry your own weight and support yourself. No need to add a child to support to the miserable imaginings of personal responsibility -- the potatoes you eat don't grow themselves, after all. All of us born into slavery escapable only through death. Oh, the humanity.

My response to your suggestion that we change our rhetoric is actually just a suggestion that to influence people we need to speak their language and not repel them by wandering off where they won't follow. Just the prosaic details of having to raise and/or pay for their children (two decades of their lives and over $200K for an average job) is more than frightening enough for people of any gender who don't want (more) children. Paternity testing and nowhere to run!

[CottonBear]

9. The lack of bodily autonomy & privacy IS slavery.

I say this as a woman who has had both an abortion and a wanted child.

[Hortensis]

12. Well,...poor you. I've skipped the abortion but had children.

Once we're in, we do have to take care of them or abandon them. Or stay but not take decent care of them.

Last Mother's Day, our daughter, whose boys are now in their teens, sent me a card thanking me for not running away when she was. Very belated but appreciated.

[CottonBear]

13. My life is good, not "poor." You didn't "skip" abortion, you made a choice.

[CottonBear]

16. Women, especially Democratic women, should support the choices that other women make. NT

[Hortensis]

18. :) I'm a strong lifelong liberal believer in equality, CottonBear.

I wouldn't have to be, though, to know that both sexes are fully capable of stupid, hurtfully selfish, and even depraved choices.

This is continuing discussion about how to resolve and best protect conflicting rights of humans to "life, liberty, individual pursuit of happiness." Recognizing we're individuals and should have individual rights was a great advance for humanity, but that can't mean society should agree that only the rights of the stronger individual in conflicts should be allowed to prevail.

So we "discuss," and hopefully use this opportunity to further advance civilization. No one thought Roe etc didn't need improvement in a number of ways. Just the age of fetal viability its compromises were developed around has dropped by more than a month over 50 years.

No point in claiming no issue except a woman's right to absolute control should matter when they do to at least 150 million Americans. Whatever is done will also be rechallenged in future on a variety of fronts. People who can't accept that should try to conserve their screaming voices; they'll always be needed.

[musette_sf]

11. I've been calling it gestational slavery

for years.

[Novara]

14. I've been calling it reproductive slavery

I am considered a vessel for the government. That is reproductive slavery.

[Novara]

15. Wait - are some arguing that harsh language is a problem?

Honey, it's not the language that's the problem. It's consigning every woman's uterus to be property of the government.

It is reproductive slavery. I don't own my own body. Slaves don't own their own bodies. It is not the same thing but both are forms of slavery. I hope we're intelligent enough to understand that.

[lindysalsagal]

17. Unable to reply for fear of being ejected.

But I wish I could support your post.