Beyond XY

Male Feminist Under Deconstruction

[journolist]

No matter how much you shame and scare them, women will still come for abortions. Pretty recently I had this young woman, 15 maybe, and we did the procedure. I said, ‘Your uterus is empty, the procedure is over. I have to go check to make sure we got everything,’ and I left the room to examine the tissue. Then I came back and told her, ‘Everything’s fine, your uterus is healthy.’ And she said, ‘So … when are you going to use the steel ball?’ I picked my jaw up off the floor and said, ‘Steel ball?’ She said, ‘Well, I went to the crisis pregnancy center and they told me you’re going to put a steel ball that’s covered with sharp blades into my uterus and twirl it around.’ And this kid still came! I was thinking, How did you ever make yourself walk in the office believing I was going to do that?

Dr. Suzanne Poppema, share hear experience of being an abortion provider. Seven abortion providers told their stories to New York Magazine.  (via journolist)

[journolist]

A Network of Lies

Anti-Choice Group Releases Another Heavily Edited Video

The secretive anti-choice organization Center for Medical Progress (CMP) released a second undercover video Tuesday. The group claims that the footage shows a Planned Parenthood official “haggling” over the price of fetal tissue.

The eight minutes of edited footagewas posted on the organization’s YouTube channel Tuesday morning. The video shows hidden camera footage of Dr. Mary Gatter, president of Planned Parenthood’s Medical Directors’ Council, in a conversation with two unidentified people.

The footage appears heavily edited, with sharp jumps in the footage and time stamps appearing in some parts of the video but not others.

Read more here.

Group Behind Planned Parenthood Attack Founded by Radicals

The release of a video produced by anti-choice activists who claim to prove that Planned Parenthood illegally sells fetal organs has ledGOP lawmakers to call for congressional hearings andgovernors to call for investigations.

However, questions have been raised about the claims of alleged illegal activities and about the agenda and connections of the organization that produced the heavily-edited video.

Read more here. 

Is GOP Leadership Coordinating Harassment of Planned Parenthood?

It is not far-fetched that GOP legislators and presidential wannabes appear to have coordinated an attack on Planned Parenthood with a group that may have violated numerous federal and state laws, and used secret video-taping (which is illegal in the State of California, where the taping took place) to surreptitiously record Dr. Deborah Nucatola, later dramatically altering the video to make it seem as though she were saying things she never had.

On the face of it, coordination between these groups and these lawmakers is not far-fetched. Let’s face it: Advocacy groups and congressional representatives work together all the time. I used to work in advocacy so I know this. What is deeply damaging, profoundly different, and of critical note is that the majority of legitimate advocacy groups gather and present facts to make a case, don’t twist facts, and do their best to translate facts into policies that help people.

Read more here. 

[rewiredotnews]

Apart from making unsupported claims about Planned Parenthood as an organization, what these videos also fail to do is shake my fundamental belief that legal abortion care is a necessary social good, and that people who choose abortion can be trusted to make the right decisions about their own reproductive futures.

Abortion Is a Necessary Social Good; Edited Videos and False Accusations Don’t Change That, by Andrea Grimes at RH Reality Check (via rhrealitycheck)

[rewiredotnews]

Click for full infographic: Network of Lies: The Anti-Choice Radicals and Congressional Leaders Manufacturing Attacks on Planned Parenthood

[bootyandbeastnsfw-deactivated20]

To me, saying “no woman deserves to be beaten, not even a porn star” doesn’t reflect how sensitive you are, or that you can somehow tap into the deepest wells of your humanity to find sympathy for a young woman who got the shit beaten out of her by someone she loved. “No woman deserves to be beaten, not even a porn star” says that you consider “porn stars”—or, more broadly, sex workers—as somehow distinct from or inferior to most “normal” women. “Not even a porn star” says you think porn stars are evil and dirty and basically subhuman, but when one of them endures an experience as brutal and terrifying as Christy Mack’s assault must have been—well, you can find it in yourself to summon up the empathy you would’ve otherwise reserved for a “normal” assault survivor.

EJ Dickson (This is how the Internet responds when a porn star is beaten up)

[msnbc]

“Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.” - Hillary Clinton

[guardian]

Gay marriage declared legal across the US in historic supreme court ruling

Read about the ruling in The Guardian

Married Same-Sex Couples: Share your photos from your wedding day!

[micdotcom]

This is what LGBT Pride looks like around the world

[pregnantparentingprochoice]

Jodi Jacobson, President and Editor-in-Chief, RH Reality Check, at her son’s baby shower in 1999

“Being pro-choice is fundamentally about parenting, because it means believing, as the international women’s rights movement has long stated, that every child should be a wanted child.

I’ve had an abortion. And I later had two children, now 16 and 18, and I had them when I was able to give them what they needed to grow into healthy and well-adjusted young adults. And I am still parenting them.”

from Pro-Choice and Pregnant? Yeah, It’s Really Real.

[untamedunwanted]

I hope our daughters grow up in a world where they are allowed to be little girls for as long as they need to be.

Let Little Girls Be | Nikita Gill (via untamedunwanted)

[pregnantparentingprochoice]

“My personal experience and my gratitude and relief in choosing to become a mother and being supported in that just makes me feel so much more strongly that other people should have the same support.” 

Ilyse Hogue, President of NARAL Pro-Choice America, pregnant with twins

[glamazonprincess-deactivated201]

A man’s world. But what did it mean? That men whistled and and stared and yelled things at you, and you had to take it, or you could get raped or beat up. A man’s world meant places men could go but not women. It meant they had more money, and didn’t have kids, not the way women did, to look after every second. And it meant that women loved them more than they loved the women, and they could want something with all their hearts, and then not.

White Oleander, by Janet Fitch (via glamazonprincess)

[pregnantparentingprochoice]

Me with my second son, soon after another powerful healthy homebirth. Pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering have made me more pro-choice than ever– fully 100% no questions asked, keep abortion safe, healthy, non-stigmatized for ALL, access to accurate, positive sexual health education and birth control for ALL. Thanks to my privilege, education, and access to birth control, I was able to plan how and when to start a family, and when to stop. Everyone should have this option.  – Rachel & Leo (photo 2011)

[proudly-pro-choice]

My abortion story

I found out I was pregnant is November. I had nausea for several weeks and migraine headaches (that I get when I don’t feel well). I went to the doctor’s for a routine appointment and they called me back and told me I was pregnant. At first, I was excited. I’ve always wanted to be a mother…then reality set in for me. I was unemployed, mentally ill college student living with my caring, but conservative parents. I was doing so well on school. All As in my classes, my parents were so proud, but my mental health was deteriorating. It wasn’t the right time to have a baby.

I’ve been with my boyfriend for five years. We had a long discussion and he told me he would support me whether I continued my pregnancy or had an abortion. I told him I would sleep on it and then next morning told him I was going to have an abortion.

I contacted a Planned Parenthood quite far from my hometown because my dad is well known and didn’t want to deal with it. My mental health is already talk, don’t want my abortion being talk, too.

The day I went to the clinic, I was greeted with a lovely staff. They took an ultrasound that I avoided looking at. I knew if I saw it, I would change my mind. I was about. My next appointment would be my actual abortion. The abortion itself was relatively short. A little over ten minutes. They propped up my legs like they would when they examine you at the gynecologist. They inserted something into my vagina and cleaned it out (sounds gross, sorry). Then they gave me anesthesia. Then inserted something into my vagina. I started to feel cramps, which made me particularly uncomfortable because I take meds when I’m on my period and don’t have cramps so it surprised me. I felt nauseous too, but I don’t know if it was the actual procedure or my anxiety.

Afterwards, I spent about an hour in the recovery area. The staff was so sweet, even when I started crying. When I thought I was done crying, I met my boyfriend and he took me home. For the first half hour, I cried so hard. I asked him the night before to just be quiet when I started crying. After I was finished, we put on music. I remember we sang “Anaconda”, “Partition”, and even “Blank Space”. We spent the car ride singing songs because music always calmed me down.

We spent a couple of hours together before I asked him to bring me home. I brought my cats into my room and just cried. I cried a lot. It was very overwhelming and to be quite honest, I never thought I would have an abortion. For the first two weeks I was really upset. It was a combination to my already bad mental health and a combination of things (including the abortion) that happened to me.

I do not regret my abortion. I have mixed feelings about it, but I stand by my decision to have one. I do think about how I would’ve been giving birth soon, having a child, but I don’t regret my decision to have one. My negative feelings have been dissipating as time goes on. I’m quite happy with my abortion. It solidified why I was pro-choice.

-Allie

[pregnantparentingprochoice]

“Motherhood has only intensified my knowledge that people MUST have their human rights respected - to determine whether and when they will parent, and to have the love, community, and resources that everyone - and every family - deserves.”

Sara Ainsworth, Director of Legal Advocacy, National Advocates for Pregnant Women

[feimineach]

This might sound like a niche market, but it’s actually everywhere. On PornHub, the titles of videos include “young teen painfully fucked” (500,075 views), “intense anal pain cry” (828,146 views), “crying lil blonde gets destroyed via DP” (1,233,042 views), and “pink ass destroyed by three fat cocks” (1,911,620 views). So yeah, not so niche. When millions of people are getting aroused by sexual violence, we have to look at how we’ve created a culture in which hurting women is desirable. A startling number of young people now expect sex to be painful, and with the pornographic content they’re viewing, it’s hardly surprising. It’s not enough to say that adults know better, and that they’re not affected by the culture that they spend every minute of their lives interacting with, because women’s experiences say otherwise. If we’re really going to address sexual violence, we need to accept that it isn’t just about violence, and it never was.

Rape Isn’t Just About Violence (tokenfeminist)

[pregnantparentingprochoice]

“My wife and I will be welcoming our new baby any day now. We are so grateful to be doing so because we are as ready as we feel we can be for such a life changing event - it’s the way that every baby should be welcomed into the world. 

I’ve been lucky to have a very easy pregnancy, but I still can’t imagine anyone putting their body through the extremes of pregnancy for any reason other than freely choosing to do so. Raising a child is a truly awesome responsibility that should never be something that is a source of shame or punishment for women. It is a choice that should be celebrated and supported by the community, as should all of the choices women make regarding their reproductive lives.”

Robynne Curlee