Where lavendersparkle lacks a sense of humour

[lavendersparkle]

There's a quotation which pro-abortion choice types like repeating. It's "If men could get pregnant abortion would be a sacrament." It's such a horrible statement when you actually look at what it means. Within Christian theology a sacrament is a religious outward sign of G@d's grace. In Protestant churches it's baptism and the eucharist. In the Roman Catholic Church it also includes confirmation, penance, anointing the sick, ordination and marriage. None of those things seem that comparable to killing your baby.

The other thing which annoys me about it is that if men could get pregnant, there'd be fewer abortions. There'd be easily available contraception that worked with no side effects. There'd be emphasis placed on forms of sex which didn't risk pregnancy. Pregnant men wouldn't get sacked or excluded from education. Men who were pregnant in difficult circumstances would be praised as heroes rather than vilified. Gestating fetuses would be valued as a serious contribution to society and paternity leave and pay would reflect this. In short, all of the patriarchal forces which push women into finding they have no choice better than abortion wouldn't be pushing men in that direction.

Comments

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

If men could get pregnant, they'd be women, and it would all be just the same as it is.

[amyheartssiroc.livejournal.com]

You just articulated all the reasons I hate that statement. Thanks.

[lavendersparkle.livejournal.com]

Well there is one pregnant man (http://www.advocate.com/issue_story.asp?id=52664), but what you've said is interesting and I've wondered about it. Do you think the aspect of physical sex which leads to hierarchical genders is the ability to gestate? It's a problem with counterfactuals about how aspects of female physiology are perceived as flawed due to gender hierarchies. It's difficult to know whether a world in which the sex with gender priviledge also gestated young cold exist.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I don't know what a counterfactual is.

My theory as to why men came out more privileged goes like this. Women have babies, feed babies. Men bugger off to run around and have fun, leaving women to look after babies and make the food and fetch the water, because if nobody does it everybody will die and all that effort having babies was for nothing. Men turn around, look at women doing the important things, establish systems of government for something to do. Women look at men gallivanting about, tell men to get back here and do something useful. Men change systems of government to disenfranchise and subjugate women so they can't make them do actual work. Some men recognise that there are quite a lot of babies now and go back to help provide for tribe, others continue farting around. Women think, oh bugger, now what do we do. Women and sympathetic men do not have time to start to change this until late 19th century, because busy looking after babies and keeping world going. Therefore, by my theory, if men had been the ones having the babies they would have ended up being subjugated, because human beings are such that once one group gets a little bit of power and a couple of arrogant tossers in charge, they will subjugate the disempowered group as much as possible.

[lecabinet.livejournal.com]

I love that picture of the pregnant man, it was on the front of the News of the World, I've never been closer to buying that paper. i was going to frame it.

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

Indeed. It really annoys me for those reasons too.

Most people I know who have had abortions, even the really militantly prochoice ones, wish it hadn't been necessary. Their feelings about it are nothing like the feelings of someone who's just been through a sacrament (even penance, which is sometimes horrible and terrifying!)

[naath.livejournal.com]

I agree with you. I mean abortion isn't *nice*, whether you think it is Evil or not and I don't think more than a tiny handful of people (on the internet there is probably porn of it, no, I'm not looking) ever actually think "I wish I be pregnant so I could have an abortion"; I can't see how abortion would be viewed as wonderful if men could need them... I mean, root canals are needed by both genders and they aren't a "sacrament"; prostrate cancer exams aren't a "sacrament" (and almost everyone getting one is a man).

I do think it is *just about* possible that if you see "sacrament" as "right of passage" (birth, death, marriage, ordination, confirmation - all ritualised to celebrate passing from one life-stage to another) then you *might* view "having an abortion" as a passage from one life-stage to another... but even then, that doesn't really compute for me. Getting your first period is something I can see as something that would be a right of passage if only we weren't so ashamed of everything to do with girl-parts, but not having an abortion.

I also agree about the social circumstances that drive many women to have abortions, social circumstances that men would be less likely to suffer from (ones that I think should GO AWAY, stupid sexist society). I don't think there would be *no* abortions - I'm pretty phobic of pregnancy as well as uninterested in having/caring for a child and being too poor (IMO, I know I'm much richer than many people) to afford to care for a child - but I reckon you'd definately see fewer abortions if there weren't so many ways in which pregnant women and mothers are discriminated against.