Kitchen Sink

Abortions are expensive.

For my part, I have insurance that covers the procedure at a facility that I know and trust. Failing that, I could use my credit card, or even dip into my savings. But with the median personal income at something like $32K for adults 25 and over, it's easy to see why women are often screwed when they need to finance abortions. $400 might not seem like a whole lot to me or even my Abortioneering counterparts, who were fortunate enough to go to college or even grad school, who have worked full-time and have had employer-sponsored insurance and could get our acupuncture and zit creams for little more than a $30 copay. At the same time, we are not millionaires. Even though my income exceeds the median it's not by much, and I'd be pretty unhappy to have to shell out that much cash for an abortion. So imagine what it's like for those below the median, or making nothing at all.

NEWSFLASH: This is a reality!

Women DO ask their partners/baby daddies for money. Women DO pawn jewelry bequeathed to them by grandmothers. Women DO sell their hair. Women DO commit petty larceny. Women DO trim down their children's Christmas lists!

I think a lot of antis are antis not because they have a moral or religious opposition to abortion, but because they hold some sort of prejudice against poor people who they likely have never even associated with. This capitalist wasteland that is the United States fosters the ideology that if people have financial troubles they are a) just exaggerating and whining, and b) they must have done something to deserve it. Well, you low-hanging fruit, I am here to shed some light on your egregious misconceptions. Try some compassion-building activities this holiday season:

-Visit a shelter or food kitchen
-Volunteer on a charity drive
-Deliver meals to the elderly
-Volunteer on a hotline (any one) and actually talk to people who are different from you
-Clean up a messy neighborhood
-Take a walk on the other side of the tracks and just observe

I have dealt with so many folks who feign understanding but simply don't know the score. Educate yourselves!

"Why don't you..."

Ensure women are confident in the decisions they make about their problem pregnancies
Help women leave their abusive partners so they can have that baby
Combat domestic violence
Provide women with contraceptive services to avoid unplanned pregnancies
Find a job developing more effective forms of contraception
Prevent rape and sexual violence - so that "the innocent ones" don't have to have abortions, natch
Find counseling for assault victims
Throw them baby showers so they'll have "all the supplies they need"
Offer to adopt her children so she'll have time and energy for one more
Buy her kids the damn Christmas presents so she won't have to have the abortion (What?? Please work on distinguishing between a problem and its symptom, OK?)
Help her with the cost of a new baby
Pay their utility bills
Help them find safe cheap childcare...

*

Dear devoted denialist antis, regular know-it-alls, and well-meaning strangers/friends/family/bloggers who just think abortion "shouldn't be used so thoughtlessly": 


Thank you for your suggestions. We regretfully see that you consider yourselves geniuses for having hit on the one magic solution that no one has tried.


In order to keep this letter brief, I leave to your own heroic efforts the task of identifying which of these things we ALREADY DO that you just assumed we don't do, which of them we would NEVER DO because you are not adequately informed to dream up effective strategies ("tell her to Just Leave him!"), and which ones we would LOVE to do but lack the resources and/or magical patriarchy-busting power to do.


In fact the purpose of our reply is simply to ask you a question, since you brought it up.


Why don't you?


No, seriously. Why don't you do those things? Answer me, each of you, about your individual practices. And society-at-large, you answer me too. And when you've all answered why YOU don't do these things, I'll understand you a little better, and then one day maybe we can "discuss reasonable solutions" as you have proposed but are currently unprepared for.


We regret that we will not be working with you at this time but encourage you to submit future proposals that meet the minimum thoughtfulness standards.


Good luck,


Placenta Sandwich
VP of Irritated Blogging
The Abortioneers

Thou doth protest too much, methinks

While anti-abortion folk toil over abortion on the legislative floor of practically every state in the country and gibber gabber outside your women’s health clinic, I muse over the plentitude of activities one might engage in as valiant demonstration of pro-lifeness far more so than harassing women who are seeking deeply personal health care.

1. Stay home
2. Read Idiot America
3. Distribute food and toiletries to the poverty-stricken, unemployed, and starving
4. Babysit
5. Eat fresh, hulled oats
6. Go jump in a lake
7. Protest heart attacks
8. Unsubscribe from e-mail lists
9. Start a talking circle in the park
10. Hoist blow-ups of Anne Geddes’s photography and pass out champagne at your local maternity ward
11. Keep orchids alive
12. Vacuum your carpet in perfect rows
13. Empty the trash
14. Make turkey ala king with leftovers
15. Host a sex toy party
16. Trade-in the minivan for a hydrid
17. Leave baskets of organic fruits on neighbors’ doorsteps
18. Read The Tao of Health, Sex & Longevity
19. Watch Food Inc
20. Call your mom
21. Wash your hands
22. Jump rope
23. Donate clothes to good will
24. Scrapbook
25. Purchase a star
26. Climb a tree
27. Go camping
28. Roll your own sushi
29. Read poetry
30. Wear skinny jeans
31. Listen to NPR
32. Try applesauce instead of oil
33. Leave quarters in every vending machine at the super market
34. Leave quarters in every washing machine at the laundromat
35. Can vegetables
36. Cut snowflakes out of scrap paper
37. Blow bubbles
38. Take a nap
39. Eat steamed spinach with ghee
40. Cancel your catalogs
41. Tip your barista
42. Tip 25%
43. Order a vodka martini up with olives stuffed with bleu cheese
44. Beat a piñata
45. Don’t mow your grass
46. Replace your light bulbs and seal your window cracks
47. Find a penny and pick it up
48. Ride a horse
49. Move to another planet
50. Be quiet

*Image of Anne Geddes toy