Right of Way.

It’s Tuesday morning in downtown Toronto and I have apparently slept through tropical storm Sandy.

The winds were strong enough here yesterday to dislodge a Staples store sign that killed a woman in Toronto’s west end.  It seems that most of the deaths that occurred in the US and Canada were from falling tree limbs and debris.  The shallow, delicate piece of land that is Manhattan bore the brunt of the danger with its flooded tunnels and streets, crumbling facades and power outages. 
Right now as I type, sheets of rain are falling outside.  Hold tight New York.

I wished I had a TV last night so I could have obsessively watched storm coverage from morning until Anderson Cooper.  I’m sure CNN was foaming at the mouth with such a close-hitting and dramatic tragedy to cream over.  I’m sure they stationed foolish weather casters in perilous conditions next to rising flood waters and maybe Coop even got right in there wearing his civilian t-shirt, carrying premature infants down flights of hospital stairs to safety.  I can only conjure these images on the television of my mind, so cut off I am from the media world. 

Sadly, I imagine the storm coverage is a relief from American Election TV which I also miss out on.  I get trickle down info, static news articles and indignant facebook status jabs at the Romneys and Mourdocks of the world.  My online friend base is mostly made up of  leftwing artist/musician types and what I like to call “normals” ie: progressive, open minded, worldly with a sprinkle of high school connections and some militant vegan/ conspiracy theory/ spiritual consciousness astral meme folks.  What are the other facebook realms like, I wonder?  I would just once like to dip a toe in to a web of Mormon/Teaparty/Republican/Bob Larson status hell so I could experience the dark side.  Us and Them, we are on two thinly veiled social networking planets, orbiting around on our high-horses, spreading personal brand wisdom to the converted while never the twain meeting.

What I glean from my casual observance, is that Romney is a Woman Binder business buff lacking in charisma and Obama is a health care-wanting communist albeit a communist with swagger.  Now, I am admittedly on the fringe, and I try to not get too involved anymore because I don’t want to needlessly work myself up over another country's problems even if said country is attached to my country like a less-progressive, chubbier conjoined twin.  The information is barely getting through to me but I still receive the main messages loud and clear, and one issue I hear a lot about is the business of the Woman’s Body.

My ears perk up a little, they are talking about me again.  I have one of those, a woman’s body, so I should listen.  There are grown men, the very pillars of our society, who have education, money, power, stable families and they are on television discussing the ins and outs of my reproductive system.  It’s not just an American thing, they talk about it a lot here in Canada too.  There are men, and some women too, but it’s the men we mostly hear from, who want to impose their moral vision onto my body and have their way with it.  I pause and feel slightly violated.

The gist of the Republican argument against women’s rights as I see it, is that they don’t want “their” taxes to pay for women to have access to free birth control and they most definitely don’t want to fund abortions, especially certain kinds of abortions.

The latest rhetoric centers around the idea that all abortions should be illegal except for pregnancies that are a result of rape or incest or if the mother’s life is in danger.  This is a point I particularly resent, the question of how a woman has been impregnated and why she needs an abortion.  To bring these factors in to the equation implies a host of concerns.  One, being that a rape or incest baby is an especially undesirable form of human that should be aborted.  Two,  that a woman should only be allowed to make a decision whether or not to abort if her life is in danger, which contradicts the extremist notion that the unformed fetus and the full-grown woman have the same rights. Three, that a woman would be forced to lay claim that she has been raped or victimized by incest in order to have an abortion even if she doesn’t want to. Four, that the other reasons for a woman choosing an abortion are less valid and should therefore not be considered.

I’m not American, I’ve never been raped and have never had an abortion but I wish to speak for the pro-choice trees. I do know people, LOVE people who’ve been raped, who’ve had abortions.  I would like to explain to the fanatical pro-lifers that those aborted pregnancies were NOT the result of rapes, but were had for reasons that may never make sense to them.  I have yet to hear an abortion tale that is not riddled with sadness, hard decisions and uncertainty.  An abortion is not had on a whim or with a sense of ease.  They are private solutions to varied personal situations, the very thoughts of which can illicit painful memories and tears.  If a woman is forced to have to “justify” her abortion with claims of rape or incest, imagine the climate of untruths and accusations that could result?

If abortion were to be outlawed with the exception of rape, incest and bodily endangerment, would there be a special task force designated to proving these claims before permission was given to abort?  Imagine, as a woman, you had been raped, a traumatic, life-changing experience in itself, and then thereafter had to prove adamantly that you had been raped in  order to have the unwanted fetus removed.   

Also, I find it tragic that rape and incest victims are being used to further the pro-life agenda whether they like it or not. They are living, breathing pawns set up as examples to show America and beyond the "right" reasons to have an abortion.

From a pro-life abortion statistic study done in 1996, pregnancies resulting from rape only account for 1% of the 1.3 million abortions provided in the US annually.  So what about the other 99%?  What is their story?  Talk to the hand, say pro-lifers, you weren’t raped or your brother didn’t knock you up then they don’t want to hear it.  You will have that baby because it is a gift from God and I am God’s messenger.  Wait a minute, didn’t Richard Mourdock recently say that even rape babies were a gift from God and they shouldn’t be aborted either?  I’m confused, it feels like they are sneakily trying to make the whole shebang illegal, and if 1.3 million babies are aborted every year, that’s going to amount to a lot of outlaw, unsafe procedures.

As the separation of church and state gap closes tighter in American politics,  it should also be noticed that the majority of abortions are not committed by godless heathen females.  In fact, from the same study, 37.4% of abortions were from women identifying as protestant, 23.7% by women of no religious affiliation and 18% identified as Born Again or Evangelical.   Women from all religious walks are aborting babies even if it wholeheartedly conflicts with their beliefs.

Financially, 28.7% of abortions were had by women with incomes of less than $15,0000 while only 13.8% from incomes of $60,0000 and over.

64% of abortions were by never married women

Black women were 3 times as likely as white women to have an abortion.
Hispanics two  times.

As for the Grand Why  which is what the Free World Fathers are fixated on, 1% of abortions are because of rape, 6% are because of potential health problems and 93% are because of SOCIAL reasons ie: None of anyones’s Fucking Business.  Statistically speaking, abortions are more prevalent in the disenfranchised and minority population of America, the most vulnerable and impoverished.  A fight is being had to further strangle their rights, by a privileged segment who couldn’t possibly understand their dilemmas.
 
The fact is, judging by the numbers, abortions are popular with womenfolk and we would be better off talking about free contraception and sexual health education but the Certain Powers that Be bafflingly want to discourage that as well. They are afraid of inadvertently handing out free birth control pills to little teenage sluts who are probably going to go fuck their safe sex brains out all the while not getting pregnant and not having abortions that have to be justified by rape!
I will counter my own argument to say that yes, it is better to not get pregnant if you don't want to and to not have an abortion, but making them harder or illegal to obtain is not the answer.  Statistically, making abortion illegal does not curb the amount of terminated pregnancies worldwide, it just makes them more dangerous.

I will dream up a Bizarro North America right now.  One where, for the last few hundred years, there have been only female Presidents and Prime Ministers. There are some male Senators sure, and there was once a male Canadian PM but it was only blip in a long female dominated history.  On the cut throat and precarious battlefields that are the campaign trails for leadership of the most powerful countries in the world, there will be a few niggling tidbits that will slide in and distract from the real issues.  These concerns will subvert even the more pressing atrocities of war and economy- Men’s Issues.  Issues of the male reproductive system.  Women will stand on podiums in front of the masses and attempt to undermine the man’s right to say, vasectomies.  If a man will not ejaculate to create babies, then the action serves no function.  He may not have control over the one thing that he truly owns, his mind and body. His decades long freedom to control his reproductive organs will again be taken away from him and he will be forced to seek out illegal and dangerous methods of self-sterility. 

If you think it absurd to compare vasectomies to abortions, well I am at a loss for comparisons.  Because you can't compare the ability to grow babies with anything else. 

Those on the side of pro-choice are constantly at battle with the ghosts of legislation past, every time we get ahead, they want to pull us back down. I am not personally campaigning to have abortions, I don’t WANT to have an abortion, I just want the right to have one and I want the right to keep the reasons to myself.

#importanceofvoting