The fundamentally anti-women notion at the heart of anti-abortion campaigns laid bare

Content warning:  This is a post about the tactics of an anti-abortion campaign currently underway, the arguments they make, and as such will include some unpleasantness.  I'm just going to turn off comments on my posts about abortion at the moment because I don't have time to monitor a comment thread and some people won't respect the rules.  If you want to tell me something in particular as a result of this post then you can email us or tweet me @juliefairey.

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I blogged last week about the paradox of Choose Life, a new campaign (launched for Lent donchaknow) aimed at pressuring and intimidating people seeking an abortion (but it's your choice, honest), and ultimately wanting to have forced pregnancies, rather than allow anyone to terminate.

Well today we have the people who are supporting this contradiction positively bragging about enabling someone to harass their pregnant partner, who was seeking an abortion at a clinic in Auckland, to the point where the police were called twice.

Let's be clear; this example shows us precisely what the opposition to abortion are all about: denying those with uteruses power over their own bodies, and encouraging those who aren't pregnant to hold sway over those who are.  Most of the time that is going to be a woman disempowered, harassed, upset, abused, and a man taking power, harassing, hectoring, abusing.  And that is fundamentally anti-women.

The 40 Days For Life crew have the gall to argue, in the above linked  post, that:

• Men should step up and speak out about abortion, especially "post-abortive men".  First up you need to understand that "post-abortive men" are not chaps who were going to mail a letter but then decided not to.  Then you need to ignore the fact that the Go To Anti Abortion Media Commentariat in our country are (both) male (Ken Orr and Bob McCroskrie for those following along at home). Finally please do deny the really rather undeniable biological fact that if men get to decide about abortions then that would mean that in most cases the actual pregnant person doesn't get to decide about continuing their own pregnancy.  And I rather suspect that those who are anti-abortion aren't keen on giving men who do get pregnant a say either.
• Abortion allows the objectification of women, and no doubt without it we would all be living in a feminist paradise in which women ate chocolates constantly while men served their every whim, in recognition of their divine role as wombs, or something.  I rather doubt the feminist commitment of a group whose main campaign is in favour of forced pregnancy.
• They helped a "distraught father."  To harass a distraught, and pregnant, mother, if you follow their line of argument.  Oh good, that'll help everybody involved, except that it won't.  How about instead of saying "think about the father, think about the baby!!11!!" it was "think about that pregnant person, that human being who is likely in a tricky spot and deserves some compassion and some respect."

In the specific instance linked we don't know a whole lot about the circumstances, and what we do is based on a rather subjective source.  But statistics tell us that at least half of all terminations each year are the result of contraceptive failure.  Chances are that the harasser in this situation had sex not intending to have a child as a result, and was possibly actively involved in undertaking contraceptive efforts to ensure that.  

Even if that weren't the case he doesn't have a right to force someone else to continue a pregnancy, give birth, become a parent or expand their family further.  The conversation seems to go "If you want to go through with this pregnancy then you can do it yourself" followed by "I would if I could, but I can't, so I won't, but you should".  No one should be able to force someone to continue a pregnancy they don't want to continue; no one.  The only person who can ultimately decide whether or not to continue a pregnancy is the person who is pregnant.  They can seek advice from anyone they like, but it should be their decision.

In a culture that shames women for having sex, having bodies, having abortions, using contraception, being sexy, not being sexy, and much much more, anti-abortion campaigners actively increase the possibility that pregnancy can cause distress and mental ill health.  By praying outside clinics, displaying anti-abortion signs, encouraging people opposed to abortion (either in general or in a specific case) to pressure others, Choose Life and their ilk are intimidating and harming people who are already vulnerable.  It's hateful and cruel and I wish they would stop.

Grrrrrrr!

Anger, oh how often you have visited me lately, let me count some of the ways:

• The frequently women-hating reaction to Labour daring to suggest that they make take some deliberate, transparent and necessary structural steps towards lifting their number of women MPs.  
• Trevor Mallard baiting another MP in the House by calling him "cougar bait."
• People who don't lay out their arguments properly and then don't come to the meeting to discuss the issue so you never really know where they stand before you make the decision.
• Changing a law because some state agencies broke it and the solution to that problem is somehow to make it legal, with the consequence that a whole heap of people who should have privacy no longer will.
• Promulgation by supposed lefties of the antiquated idea that women are precious flowers who should not be sullied by the putrid compost of politics and the stale water of being politicians or something like that, this metaphor is tortured enough already without actually trying to get it to make sense.
• Reflecting on how unfair and wrong and conservative New Zealand's abortion laws and provision actually are, yet again.
• Cancer.  Always.  
• The increasingly dirty SkyCity pokies for convention centre deal.  
• Doctors who want to be GPs but don't want to prescribe contraception.  It's your JOB, yo.

Ok, enough ragey bullet points from me - what's angrifying you?

What about teh menz?

I don't know about other feminists, but I have very little patience with people who want to undermine equity driven responses to women's oppression by insisting instead that we focus on men.

"Why isn't there a men's refuge?"  "Men should be able to go on Take Back the Night too, we experience violence on the street as well."  "Women are just as violent as men."  "Men can be victims too."

My lack of patience is not because I don't care about men.  In fact, paying attention to masculine people's experiences has been and continues to be vital to feminist aims of gender equity.  No, it's more that I believe the vast majority of people who raise these issues are just interested in obscuring gender oppression.

There are women's refuges because in the 1970s and 1980s, women started opening their homes up to other women who were being beaten by their partners.  We took over empty houses, and they were filled with women and children not happy at home.  The state responded, eventually, by providing cheap and mostly nasty state housing for us, and Refuges sprung up all over the country. 

Those Refuges, forty years later, are still busy.  The state's response has improved and women and children are now more able to stay at home - but there are still times when a protection order is just a piece of paper, or the only way to get some sleep is to leave the place he dominates, or there is literally no where else to go, for far, far too many women.

We don't have men's refuges because men have never organised in this way to keep other men safe from violence or the threat of violence.  Of course, in New Zealand, a woman is murdered every four weeks by her male partner or ex-partner.  For men, murders by female partners happen just under once a year, usually in self-defence.  So it's no surprise men have not set up men's refuge - just somewhat surprising we still have to have this conversation.

I could go on about this ad nauseum, but instead I'd rather point to when asking "what about teh menz?" is genuine.  The sexual abuse of boys is heavily under-researched and poorly understood.  When Ken Clearwater started talking about the sexual abuse of boys, it was pretty lonely.

Now, Ken is the "self-appointed National Manager" of the Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse Trust.  He has supported the set up of seven support groups for men around the country, travels regularly to talk about male sexual abuse internationally, and continues to do extraordinary work with male survivors, literally saving lives.  The Male Survivors Trust is linked into national sexual violence networks, and Ken continues to challenge sexual violence understandings by describing the blocks to men talking about sexual abuse and/or being victims.

He is, quite simply, an extraordinary man, who in asking "what about teh menz?" actually meant it.  His advocacy for male survivors extends feminist understandings of sexual violence, because it pushes us to pay attention to power, rather than use gender as shorthand.  The men Ken works with often come to him after experiencing sexual abuse in institutions where as boys, they were targeted because they were vulnerable.  In asking "what about teh menz?" Ken Clearwater pays attention, in vital ways for feminism, to the ways masculinity norms damage men.

So there's my challenge - next time you hear or see this question - tell the person concerned to do a Clearwater.  If their concern is real, we might just see some further exploration of power and gender which is good for all of us.