A new anti-abortion website that posts short anti-abortion messages, Checkmake Pro-Choicers, is getting attention from progressive bloggers. According to its creator, Rebecca, Checkmate Pro-Choicers was created "to point out the stupid things that anti-lifers (or pro-deathers) have to say about abortion!" The Tumblr site states that abortion is "murder" and that the goal of the website is to dismantle the allegedly flawed logic of pro-choice people. (See checkmateprochoicers[dot]tumblr[dot]com/aboutme)
To be honest, the website is so over-the-top that I seriously wondered if it was a Poe at first. For example, in the "About Me" section, Rebecca writes, "Even though many girls who have abortions may be sluts, this blog is not about calling them sluts. It is about stopping the new holocaust!" My doubts were strengthened by several of the website's statements about abortion:
"Baby eagles are protected so why not baby people?"
"If everyone had abortions, there would be no more people."
"Being pregnant means no periods for nine months! How could you say no to that?"
"If most people getting abortions are poor, why don't they just get welfare? More babies = more money. Everyone wins."
Whether the website is genuine or a parody, some statements were just plain insensitive to women and girls facing unwanted pregnancy, including pregnancy due to rape.
"Mary was a 12-year-old single mother who didn't decide to have sex. She chose life."
"If your dad raped someone, do YOU deserve to be executed for his crimes?"
"Where is the movement to make rape, bank robbery, and murder of adult people safer for the criminal?"
The website also features common stereotypes about abortion, such as the discredited claim that abortion raises a woman's breast cancer risk.
"Which would you rather have? Motherhood or BREAST CANCER?"
Other statements blame pregnant women seeking abortions for having sex.
"If you don't want a baby, Don't spread your legs. It's 100% effective in not making babies."
"Didn't you CHOOSE to have sex?"
Statements such as "Didn't you CHOOSE to have sex?" ignore the fact that some women and girls seeking abortion had sex forced upon them, To boot, pregnancy women and girls do not choose to have gestational diabetes, dangerous blood pressure spikes, eclampsia, and other pregnancy complications that can endanger their health. Behind "Didn't you CHOOSE to have sex?" is the assumption that pregnancy is somehow a punishment for being sexual, and that women have no right to be sexual while exerting reproductive autonomy. Sadly, it's par for the course with many anti-abortion activists.
And, of course, I'd be remiss if I neglected the religious angle.
"Thou Shalt Not Kill" --God
Did someone bother to remind Rebecca that the Bible is not anti-abortion? Is she familiar with passages such as Numbers 5:11-31 (which forces a woman accused of adultery to drink an abortion-inducing substance) and 2 Kings 15:16 (in which the Assyrians, as tools of God, rip open pregnant women)?
Checkmate Pro-Choicers's reasoning is so facile that it's easy to assume that it's a scathing parody of anti-abortion rhetoric. However, because actual anti-abortion rhetoric is this absurd and insensitive in real life, Checkmate Pro-Choicers may be genuine. Whether the website is real or satire, it can nevertheless give us insight into the strange reasoning and lack of empathy among some anti-abortion activists.
To learn more, visit the Checkmate Pro-Choicers website at checkmateprochoicers[dot]tumblr[dot]com
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That crap makes me sick! My body, my health, my choice.
ReplyDeleteLeft Leaning Lady -- It makes me angry too!
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