Addressing Trolls and Some “Fun” Facts (Sarcasm Sign Here)

The below post is from the Brass Ovaries LLC Facebook page, where most of these blog posts have also been published.

Thanks for all the comments. I’m going to post this instead of responding to each one because there are some general things I want to address. First of all, please be civil, please be kind. I’ve gotten complaints that not all of the comments are visible, and that’s because I take some of them down. Personal insults, general nastiness, trolling, and false statements have no value other than being offensive, which I do not value, so they go as soon as I see them. The only way I leave them up is if someone else has already responded to them in a rational way. If someone’s dog did its business on my sidewalk, I wouldn’t leave it there for people to step in, I’d clean it up; same thing here.

I know that people who go to the trouble to comment are, by and large, those who either feel strongly one way or the other, or those who get some kind of satisfaction out of nastiness (trolls), but I do find the false equivalencies, false information, and lack of understanding a little disheartening sometimes. Some of the comments are just too fictional or misinformed to waste time on. Those go, too.

So – for the folks claiming you can’t complain about children being murdered in their classrooms if you’re pro-choice: this is a false equivalency and ridiculous on its face. No one’s ability to be appalled and speak out against gun violence of any kind is curtailed by their belief in reproductive rights. The two are simply not related. And shame on you for attempting to exploit visceral reactions to the deaths of children whose bodies were so torn apart by an AR-15 that they had to be identified by their DNA.

“It’s murder!” There is a debate as to when a fertilized egg becomes a person. Until the late 1800s, both society and the law said it was at “quickening”, which is when the woman can feel movement in the womb, at around five or six months. Abortion prior to quickening was both legal and unremarkable. In 1857, Horatio Storer, a self-styled physician (there was no other kind in 1857), launched a campaign to make abortion illegal in order to drum up business by eliminating (mostly black) midwives, who were the primary competition for aspiring ob/gyns like himself, and, specifically, forcing white, Protestant women to have more babies, as their birth rate was declining. He and his compatriots were basically the start of American eugenics, and his goals were both racist and for profit. Roughly 100 years later, Roe v. Wade restored the right to safe, legal abortion as part of the Constitutional Right to Privacy.

In addition, the whole when-does-life-begin argument is a red herring. No one should be able to force you to use your body according to their will. The state can’t force you to donate any of the blood, bone marrow, or organs your body has produced, even if you’re dead, so why should it be able to force a woman to risk life and health to incubate a fertilized egg to birth? It’s Puritanical punishment for women having sex for any reason other than to reproduce.

“Reproductive rights are not in the Constitution” – many Constitutional rights are not in the actual Constitution. The Founding Fathers knew perfectly well that they couldn’t account for everything that would happen and change in the future, and that the Constitution as initially passed in 1787 was deeply flawed, even taking into account the Bill of Rights. Thomas Jefferson, for example, thought the Constitution should be revisited every twenty years. We don’t do that, so it is all the more necessary for the Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution and determine points of federal and Constitutional law. I don’t see why we would need appeals or rulings on points of Constitutional law if the Constitution were crystal clear as written. The reason for the Supreme Court’s Constitutional jurisdiction and the nearly 250 years of Constitutional precedent it has created is that the Constitution has to be interpreted, and changes in society, including recognition of human rights and even technology, must be taken into account. Otherwise, the right to bear arms would be restricted to “a well-armed militia” and we’d still be using muskets because there would be no way to account for modern weapons under the Constitution.

The current Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs is the first time ever that the Court has stripped Americans of a fundamental right. For bonus points, they distorted history and tossed out the principal of stare decisis to support their own political ends. Not what we have come to expect from the Court, and potentially a death knell for it’s credibility.

I also get a lot of people equating mandatory vaccines and reproductive rights, under the rubric of “my body, my choice”. Pregnancy is not contagious. Disease is not a decision. Contagion is not private or limited to those who believe in it. This is another false equivalency.

The only truly distressing comment I’ve seen is from a woman who said she doesn’t “really believe” the story last week about the 10 year old rape victim in Ohio who was denied an abortion because she was six weeks and three days along when her child abuse doctor found out she was pregnant. This seems to me to be a matter of the poster sticking her head in the sand – denial of uncomfortable truths. Even if the story hadn’t been reported in detail by numerous reliable media sources, even if it was only a hypothetical situation, what part is not believable? That a ten year old could get pregnant? The median age of the onset of menstruation, and hence fertility, is 11.9 years in the U.S. That means that half of girls get their cycle before 11.9 years, with the normal age range being between 10 and 16 years, although some girls start earlier due to physical and psychosocial problems such as anxiety and depression. Like you might develop in an abusive situation.

Or does the poster not believe the child was denied an abortion under the law? That no exceptions would be made in such horrific circumstances? All you have to do to believe that could happen is review the completely callous, heartless laws and proposed laws that don’t allow for termination of pregnancy in any circumstances, dooming women and girls without access to suffering and death.

Also, please bear in mind that “six weeks pregnant” means maximum *four* weeks after conception. They start counting at the start of the last menstrual cycle. That’s where obstetricians start counting the 40 weeks of a normal pregnancy, and that is where these laws start the clock ticking. So if your period is irregular, the six weeks to not only confirm pregnancy but to make an appointment and obtain the prescription or have the procedure done could be as soon as 2-3 weeks after conception.

Lastly, the statement “it’s not about abortion, it’s about control” means exactly what it says. Dobbs and it’s soon-to-be progeny are about dismantling the Constitutional right to privacy. It’s about the government being allowed to determine who you can love, when and whether you can (or must) have children, whether the state can sterilize you against your will, where you can educate your children, and a host of other issues. It also tears at the fabric of our democracy by returning the granting or denial of a fundamental right to the states, which potentially paves the way for other “states’ rights”, such as deciding who gets to vote and who wins elections, regardless of the votes. You know. Like in the Confederate South.

Without bodily autonomy, a person is a second class citizen at best. If a woman cannot decide for herself whether or when to reproduce, she has no control over her future or her life.