It’s not just a choice, it’s a question of freedom — Liberal Street Fighter.
In some of the good news that came out of Tuesday’s election, one of the more heartening was the rejection by California voters of Arnold’s parental notification ballot initiative, though I suspect that the rejection was as much or more a reflection of the rising unpopularity of the Governor. In fact, something that Arnold said about the initiative before the election underlines the true reason that such laws are on the books in forty-four states. As quoted in the Village Voice — Roe v. No, Arnold said:
“I wouldn’t want to have someone take my daughter to a hospital for an abortion or something and not tell me. I would kill him if they do that.”
There it is, the ugly little core at the heart of such policies: control and the threat of violence.
The illustration above is from a webpage available at Info for Health dot org, published online by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. While the Theofascists wax poetic about how precious pre-sentient potential humans are, worldwide women go unprotected from the one thing most likely to kill them and their fetuses: violence, usually by their partner:
Around the world, as many as one woman in every four is physically or sexually abused during pregnancy, usually by her partner. Estimates vary widely, however. Within the US, for example, estimates of abuse during pregnancy range from 3% to 11% among adult women and up to 38% among teenage mothers. Some of this variation is likely due to differences in how the questions were asked, how often, and by whom.
The terrible biproduct of this sad fact of many women’s lives is the real reason that TRAP laws and measures such as Parental Notification and Spousal Notification are so repressive and dangerous. The very people who may most need discreet, private and prompt medical care are the very ones most damaged by these patriarchical control measures.
These are the true stakes that women, and we men who truly support them, face in the growing atmosphere of repression in this country. Many men who support restrictions on abortion are quick to ask, “what about MY rights? It’s my child too.” In other words, they want to maintain some type of control of a situation over which they, as a condition of the raw facts of human reproduction, have none.
It’s time to be blunt about this. Everytime a man chooses to have sex with a woman, protected or not, he’s choosing the possibility of being a father. That’s when you have control gentlemen. That’s it, that moment. I don’t care if you’re drunk, in love or horny. That’s when you exercise control over your destiny. If you are an honorable man, you’ll face the consequences of an unwanted pregnancy, and her choices about what to do with her body, with support and humility. It’s not about you anymore after you make that choice. That’s a fact of life that men have tried to avoid since time immemorial, and they’ve tried to suppress that fact with religious dogma, laws, societal pressures and even their fists. It doesn’t make it less so because it seems unfair. This is how we’re built as a species.
In fact, if fetuses were truly so precious, we’d actually do things to protect them and the women who carry them inside until they enter the world and begin the long, slow process of becoming independent human beings. We’d enforce support decrees brought against dishonorable men who don’t fulfill their obligations. Every woman would have access to reproductive healthcare, and every pregnant woman would have access to pre-natal care if she chooses to carry to term. Safe and discreet abortion services should be provided for those who choose not to, and it’s nobody else’s business why they make that choice. To do otherwise is to render women less free, and many of the tactics used to restrict her freedom result in health problems, financial ruin for her and her children and even to her death.
“I wouldn’t want to have someone take my daughter to a hospital for an abortion or something and not tell me. I would kill him if they do that.”
Is that the kind of thinking we want determining the healthcare policies of this country? A truly civilized country wouldn’t fall back on archaic calls for control and violence, a truly civilized society would actually take active measures to protect the health and safety of our fellow citizens and their children.
Plainly, we’ve got a long way to go before we can call ourselves a civilized country.
I find it deeply ironic that the same people who rant and rave about keeping the government out of private family matters — how dare the government tell ME I can’t spank my child — expect that same government to prop up family cohesion. If your daughter isn’t coming to you to tell you she is pregnant and wants an abortion, who’s fault is that? It’s the government’s fault that your children don’t trust you enough to share serious problems in their lives with you? If that’s not asking for a “nanny state” I don’t know what is.
Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you, thank-you!
Great one Madman. Recommended.
Republicans love preaching responsibility but the time for men to be responsible is at the time of sexual intercourse and then again when it’s time to pay for an abortion or child support. Sadly, men don’t take responsibility in either instance too much of the time.
There were five teenaged girls who lived on the same block in our smalltown who got pregnant within 5 months of each other. One went to an unwed mothers home, one went to Reno and had an illegal abortion and three got married to teenaged boys.
My sister’s husband started beating her the day after their wedding. She finally left him when he threw her through a plate glass sliding door. Her baby son was 8 months old.
My best friend married when she was 15 and the boy who impregnated her was 16. She left him after three weeks of marriage when hit her hard enough to fall down a flight of stairs. Her baby girl was born five months later and has only seen her biological father once.
The teenaged boy I married because I was pregnant started going out a week after we wed. He would come home drunk smelling of sex and would hit me if I said one word. I left him when MY son was one. On his first birthday the sorry son of a bitch hit that precious baby knocking him down a step. His lip was so bruised and swollen he couldn’t blow out the candle on his birthday cake. The pictures of that day show my son with frosting all over his face with his fat bruised lip showing. The sorry ass son of a bitch also backhanded MY son while he was in the bathtub because he was playing with his little penis. MY son banged his head and went under water as a result of the blow. He could have drowned. We left immediately and never looked back.
The great part of this story is that all the girls are still friends, the best of friends, some 50+ years later. Our sons and daughters all were born within days or months of each other, they are all very close, they are all like siblings to one another. None of them have any connection to their fathers and never have. As an addendum, Sister passed away but we all feel her presence with us everyday. That’s why I referred to her in the present tense, because for us she lives on in her son.
Three out of five were severely beaten during our pregnancies. The question still haunts me to this day, why doesn’t our party do one fucking thing to stop this madness? Why is it still as prevelant or even more so 40+ years later? Why do we live in a country where 400 women are beaten by their spouses and/or the father of their children every single hour?
They say we lost the last election because of national security. Women’s lives are in danger much more so because of who they share their bedrooms with than any extremist terrorist. The national security issue that matters the most to women is why the violence against them every nine seconds of every day is never addressed let alone legislated against. Why aren’t the spouses of those 400 women who are beaten every fucking hour put into prison and then put into a national database so their history of violence can be found by any woman, anytime, anywhere?
That’s the real question every woman deserves an answer to. WHY?
Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less. Susan B. Anthony
Wonderful diary. I will save a copy for all those times I’m pulling my hair out screaming, “They just don’t GET it because they don’t WANT to !” Thank you, Madman. You remind me of all the thoughtful, intelligent men I have known and loved who DO get it. You are the more precious for being rare.
caliberal, how many years, how many times can we hear these stories, tell these stories, live these stories ? You and I are about the same age. We have studied and marched and worked and written. We’ve railed and cried and bled and begged for the lives of our sisters. We can’t do it alone. More men like Madman have to find the courage to repudiate predation on women. That is if they’re not too busy with “important issues.”
Oh my God. I’m so sorry that was the memory for the 1st birthday.
But we weep for Laci Peterson, right? No we don’t. Like our soldiers in the war, we seem to want them dead than to keep them out of harm’s way.
That goes double for those who don’t look like her.
I think you could write a phone book and make it an emotionally and intellectually engaging experience.
Thanks for writing this comment.
Thank you for your wonderfully generous thoughts. I fear sometimes that I make my point by being too personal too much of the time. My hope is always that people see themselves somehow in the stories they read and hear because it’s like what Dorothy Allison once wrote, “stories are the one sure way to touch the heart and change the world.”
I think it’s often the best of what we have to give, our stories. It’s what connects us all to each other no matter where we live in this world. The stories may be in different languages, from different cultures but they are all, in magical ways, the same.
Well fortunately not my story, but that of a friend. And maybe a good night to hang this here in Madman’s diary, what with viciousness masking as “masculinism” floating about and smarmy passes for “Joey” (who worked against Anita Hill and refused to meet with Lani Guiner and worked to defeat her nomination, worked as hard as any shiftless Republican in heat to do in a woman’s chance) on the FP:
A friend had three small sons, one a baby in arms and was just newly pregnant again. A wastral husband, a drunk too. She had all the children clean and presentable and dinner made one night when he came home… she was seated with the baby and the other two near the chair she sat in… he walked over and hit her so hard they all flew.
She picked up the children and calmed everyone down… he got drunker and she waited til he passed out in the bed. She wrapped a sheet around him and with the babies asleep beat him with a big bottle of frozen Coca-cola.
Then after she and the children left the house she called his mother.
Apparently he was never the same after that.
to admit I like the guy?
Geez.
Great diary, Madman.
This may be a good time to mention the effects of Republican budget cuts on parents entitled to child support.
In Maryland, the House budget would dock Maryland’s allocation of federal child support funding by $94 million over the next 5 years, and $299 million over the next decade. The estimated decrease in child support collections by our state agency would be $149 million over the next five years and $454 million over the next decade.
Cutting assistance for child support enforcement — all part of a “Culture of Life”.
I have always wished I could sue the damned state of Texas for child support, since the were UTTERLY incompentent in helping me to locate the biological father of my eldest son.
I handed them the address, cell phone number and NAME and they took 6 1/2 months, multiple follow-up phone calls, letters, etc. and then them requiring ME TO SHOW UP IN COURT with a 3 month old baby to tell me that they had not been able to serve him to come in for the paternity test. What utter bullshit.
That was back when Cornyn was out “esteemed” AG — fucking worthless piles of shit, all.
My worst nightmare is that at some point before he is 18, said sperm donor will come back and cause trouble for my son. It’s been 6 years and I don’t need his fucking child support, unfortunately, in a legal sense the motherfucker still has “standing”.
Sorry for all of the explitives, but it still makes me angier than angry when I think about it.