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From Pro-Life to Pro-Choice

As someone who was raised within the Christian faith (Church of Christ, to be specific), it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I was also raised to be “pro-life.”

I truly believed that abortion was morally wrong--straight up murder--in every case except to save the life of the mother, and I didn’t think that made me “anti-choice” either. After all, I reasoned, didn’t she make a choice when she had sex? Yet, even in the case of rape, it was clear to me that there was no morally acceptable exception to be made.

That’s because the reasoning behind my pro-life stance was not actually based upon the question of choice and consent, but rather upon the idea of the “right to life,” which is the mantra of the movement.

The fetus needs the mother to survive, and the fetus has the right to life. Therefore, the mother--or the doctor--does not have the right to deny the fetus what it needs to survive.

Indeed, I found the more “compassionate” pro-lifers who allowed for abortions in the case of rape to be baffling for this very reason. Did the fetus suddenly lose its right to life because of the means of its creation?

The rule was “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” There was no ambiguity there, and I found the arguments over whether or not fetuses qualified as “persons” ridiculous and even appalling.

Furthermore, all the arguments about how taxing pregnancy is--mentally and physically--struck me as tremendously selfish. What was nine months compared to the 80+ years of potential life the fetus may have? (Not that I had any first-hand experience with the struggles of pregnancies that I so easily dismissed as trivial.)

Similarly, the fact that women sometimes die during childbirth--even with all the medical care in the world--didn’t seem like a compelling reason to allow women to opt out on the off chance they would meet such a fate. After all, most women come out unscathed, right? Why not wait until there’s reason to believe the pregnancy will result in death? Besides, I reasoned that the response to such risks ought not to be abortions but rather more medical research to eradicate the risks all together.

Even being confronted by the reality of those very risks--when my college professor’s wife died following the birth of their second child, leaving him grief-stricken and scrambling to care for two young children alone--wasn’t enough to shake my convictions. I believed the pro-life argument as deeply as I believed in god.

So, when I ended up in a Bioethics class the next semester and the topic of abortion came up, I braced myself for the bitter and seemingly pointless debate that was bound to come. We all chose sides easily; not a single classmate was on the fence.

How could they see things the way they did, I wondered? How could they hear the same arguments I heard and come to a different conclusion? How could anyone think there was hope of changing anyone’s mind?

Yet, by the end of the semester, at least one mind had been changed. Mine.

In the end, I wasn’t persuaded by what I had heard time and time again about the fetus not being “fully” human yet or other common arguments. Instead, it was a simple and widely accepted ethical standard which opened my eyes to what so many pro-choice advocates had been saying for so long: the question isn’t whether or not the fetus is a person with all the rights that entails (like the right to life), but rather whether or not a pregnant woman is, too--and the pro-life answer, as it turns out, is no.

The ethical standard is the following:

We do not force people--even dead people--to donate blood, plasma, organs or any type of useful material, even to save the life of someone who will definitely die without it. Indeed, even to save the life of someone whose life-or-death situation you are directly responsible for (think a car accident or something similar in which there is always a chance you could injure someone).

Of course, we can squabble over the perfection of organ or blood donation as a “perfect” analogy for pregnancy (as if perfect analogies ever exist), but the underlying principles are truly the same.

We don’t force people to give blood--a very mild procedure in which what is given will soon be replaced--because we, as a society, believe that “the right to life” does not trump “the right to consent and bodily integrity.”

That’s why we don’t harvest organs from dead people who obviously no longer “need” them--even as others languish and die on endless organ wait-lists. We require that all organ donors formally give their consent while alive and of sound mind.

The effect of these long held and revered ethical stances ought to be clear: people die. People with the right to life die, because we choose not to donate. Yet, it is nearly universally acknowledged that we have the right to do just that: to end lives or to fail to preserve them when the cost involves some measure of our own bodies--no matter our reasoning.

Maybe you can’t safely give blood because you’re ill or underweight. Maybe you don’t want to go through the pain and complications of organ donation. Maybe you like the idea of your body remaining fully intact when you’re lowered into your grave.

You have the unequivocal right to control how, when, and if your body is used, even if it means someone else will die.

Because of that, I realized that if I believed in ethics, I had to be pro-choice, because the right to life is not, in fact, absolute.

I hope other pro-life people can come to see that, too.

#prochoice #prolife #abortion #women's rights are human rights

Stop saying social media is “just a tool”

There’s a lot of talk lately about the role the internet played in our latest election--how services like Facebook and Twitter (and Tumblr) were used in an attempt to sway how people would vote through trolls and other means (not to mention the Cambridge Analytica scandal).

There’s also a lot of talk about these mysterious algorithms which, unbeknownst to us, control what we see or don’t see and do not always perform as intended.

Many of the companies implicated are answering the outrage with promises to “fix” their algorithms, to give users more “control” over how their data is collected and used, and to weed out malicious users and content, but a basic assumption underlies all of this.

At core, we still seem to believe YouTube when they us that all they want to do is let people upload videos to share with people who want to watch them. We still seem to believe Facebook when they tell us that all they want to do is bring people together. We still seem to believe Twitter and Instagram when they say versions of the same, too.

Indeed, the basic defense against all complaints of misconduct or shady practices is that these companies are simply trying to give us what we want--that all the data collection and algorithms and tracking across the web without consent was all about serving us and the greater good.

This is utter bullshit.

Even if Facebook went back to showing a truly chronological “timeline” of posts from your friends, ad-tracking went away entirely, trolls were tamed, and no data was ever sold again, it is extremely naive to believe that Facebook and all these other platforms are designed with our “best interests” at heart. Indeed, it’s laughable to even take their mission statements at face value.

It now seems obvious to me that “serving” us is incidental to the true goal of all of these companies, which is to monopolize our time. Simply put, the more time we spend on their sites, the better it is for their business--and these are businesses, after all, not some social service for the public good (though almost every business claims to somehow be both these days).

Whether or not it’s “good” for us to spend so much time this way does not really enter into the equation--or if it does, it’s in the form of fancifully optimistic slogans like “bringing the world closer together” or the amazingly ahistorical idea that a tool like the internet can only lead to better relations between all people.

After all, the internet and websites and social media are just tools, right? It’s all in how you use them; the tool itself is neutral.

Indeed, when problems do arise--like the election fiasco--we’re almost always told it’s an issue of “individual responsibility.” It’s not about the fundamental design of these platforms--no, no, it’s about how stupid and weak people are. The same is said of the increasing number of people who admit that, even though they want to limit or even quit using social media, they feel as if they are battling an addiction.

They’re all blamed for not having more “self-control” or being more “vigilant,” even though practically everything about the internet as we know it is designed to ensure that it is as difficult as possible to do so.

Take something as simple as red-colored notifications. I think we’re all aware that the color red has been used in advertising--and art--practically forever to illicit certain feelings in people. It’s meant to be urgent and eye-catching. Red is not neutral.

Indeed, the notification itself is not neutral either--particularly when you never asked to be notified, and the designers of these very notifications have admitted that the whole system was inspired by casino-style tricks.

Another increasingly common “feature” of many sites is endless scrolling. It’s ridiculous to even suggest this is a neutral function created to “serve” us. What problem could this possibly be solving? Without an “end” to the page, there is no “natural” exit from the site. You’re obviously being encouraged to scroll and scroll and scroll--typically longer than you ever would have had you been faced with the choice to press the “next” button.

Then there’s the “Suggested Profiles” or “You Might Also Like...” sections, which are usually prominently displayed next to the main page--sometimes even scrolling alongside the entire time, pulling your attention away from the original piece of content in favor of moving you onto the next. Of course, no one asked if you wanted to see anything else--it is simply offered up unsolicited in hopes that you will click. So, not neutral either.

Now, Tumblr is an example of a platform that lets you turn some of these functions off--which is good--but that is not the default state. Indeed, as with most sites, you don’t even get to truly decide what your “default” will be when you create an account--certain settings are automatically applied and must be manually turned off. Endless scrolling, notifications, accessing your search history, etc. are the default, and there is no option to remove ads or suggested content. Again, this is not neutral, even if turning off many of these things is relatively easy to do (compared to the labyrinth of Facebook settings, at least).

None of this is to say that social media platforms or blogs or other sites that offer up “content” are evil and can never be used as the “powerful tools” they are advertised as being. It was big, promising news when Facebook was used, in part, to organize the Arab Spring, and I’ve found many lovely people on Tumblr and other online spaces.

It’s not even to say that most of these features are unwanted by most users. Sometimes you want to be notified. Sometimes you want to watch something just like what you just watched. Sometimes you are looking to lose yourself in a rabbit hole.

All I’m really saying is this: stop telling me they’re just tools--as if that even implies neutrality, anyway. You can use a hammer for many things, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t designed with something specific in mind.

These websites are about as neutral as a retail store. Nobody would bat an eye at the claim that Target is trying to get you to do something--to not only come in and buy whatever you need, but also to walk out with 50 other things you never intended to buy when you entered.

They want you to be drawn in as quickly as possible, to stay as long as possible, and to consume as much as possible.

Admittedly, you may never be asked to pay a dime to use Facebook or Tumblr or Twitter, but you are still a consumer and are being treated like one. These platforms are not some sort of altruistic public service; they are well-designed products. It’s time to stop pretending otherwise and, perhaps, time to rethink our relationship with them entirely.

#social media #facebook #tumblr #twitter

myownholybook

Life is political, not because the world cares about how you feel, but because the world reacts to what you do.“

On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder, chapter 4: take responsibility for the face of the world (via myownholybook)

“On Tyranny” by Timothy Snyder

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

I happened upon this slim little book recently (clocking in around 128 pages) and found it very thought provoking.

Timothy Snyder has a background in Eastern European studies, and he’s basically used that knowledge to bring us a brief overview of 20 things other people and countries have learned the hard way over the past century--20 things that heralded the coming of fascism.

In 2016, very few people believed Donald Trump could win the presidential election, so questions and discussions regarding his apparent authoritarian leanings seemed alarmist and unnecessary to most. Yet, even after his surprising victory, people urged those concerned to steady themselves--to take a deep breath and give the man a chance. After all, he doesn’t mean anything he says, right?

I remember people drawing parallels to how many Republicans felt when Obama took office--panic, fear, even a sense of impending doom--suggesting that liberals were falling prey to the same runaway feelings just because they didn’t get their way.

Now, in 2019, I think more and more people are coming to see that it was not alarmist at all to be concerned about not only the direction the country seemed to be headed but also Trump’s unabashed authoritarianism, given that the evidence is all over the place and increasingly difficult to ignore or explain away--his fawning over foreign dictators, his abuse of executive power, his all-out assault on journalism (which is often the only reason we ever hear about abuse of power in the first place), and his shameful refusal to recognize and condemn the growing problem of far-right ideology.

Yet, some people smelled something rotten long before his Muslim ban or “border emergency declaration” or election day victory. Some people had seen and heard and experienced so many of these things before--in the European democracies that gave way to fascism.

During the election, Snyder writes about sharing loads of compelling data on the statistical unlikelihood of Trump’s victory with many of his European friends only to have them insist on the very opposite. Not only could Donald Trump win--he was likely to win.

They were listening to Trump and his supporters, same as we were, but they lacked the American filter which influences our interpretations in nearly every way. Beliefs about America’s exceptionalism and the strength of our institutions and government are seen for what they really are: arrogant myths.

They know that institutions which take years upon years to erect can be reduced to rubble in a matter of days. They know that sacred rights are not guaranteed. They know that democracy can die.

Yet, most Americans would laugh at the idea that any of those things could happen here. Our democracy, our rights, and our institutions are taken for granted. Sure, we squabble over Right and Left ideologies, but certain things are considered to be set in stone. We’re reluctant--if willing at all--to admit that even stone can be ground down into nothing.

Snyder argues, just as his friends warned him, that all things are possible, and that vigilance is required of all those who wish to see democracy live on. Indeed, there is actually nothing natural or inevitable about its continuation; we have to be the force that makes it happen.

His twenty lessons include warnings like “do not obey in advance,” the importance of the words we use, the right to privacy, and the critical need for activism in the street vs. online.

There’s an urgency to his message, but he believes there is still ample time to protect ourselves from the tide of fascism which has drowned so many systems like ours in the past.

The first step is understanding that not only can it happen here, but that a compelling argument can be made that the groundwork is already being laid.

#timothy snyder #on tyranny #trump

Choosing to be Child-free

I always assumed I would have children, but I can't say I ever truly wanted to. I never had a very close relationship with either side of my extended family, but I knew enough about them to know that all the adults had children. As far as I knew, all my teachers at school had children or were actively trying to have children. To choose not to seemed very bizarre and even selfish. At least, that's what I had always been told. It's selfless to raise children--to put their needs before yours, to devote 18+ years to their care and upbringing, to give them a better life than you had. Only selfish people wouldn't want to do that--oh, and also, who will take care of you when you're old??? That last part is important and always seems to come up when people talk about being child-free. Without a single trace of irony, people claim to have children for the pure selfless joy of it and then in the same breath admit to requiring repayment in the form of elder care. The best part is that many of these same people have already dumped their own parents into a nursing home. Another point I hear a lot: "But what is the point of life, then?" Most people's lives--well, especially if you're a woman and saddled with the majority of the childcare--change dramatically after the birth of a child, and many say that part of that change is the addition of a special kind meaning. They feel they have a purpose now--to take care of this child. If not purpose, some talk about the special bond between a parent and child. As a former coworker of mine put it (while staring intensely into my eyes), "There is absolutely nothing in the world like the bond between a mother and her child. Nothing." As if to say, I will have missed out on the most powerful, mystical, and amazing bond two humans can share by not having a child. She was genuinely concerned for me, and she's not alone! A lot of people get really bent out of shape when they I tell them. Without fail, they all say, "Oh, you'll change your mind." When I say, nah, I don't think I will, they double down. It is extremely important to them that I not act so sure. They try so hard to get me to "never say never." I've wondered for a while why these people want me to have kids so bad. I can understand--to an extent--why my family has feelings about me choosing not to have children. My sister with kids would love it if they had familial playmates and perhaps we could bond over parenthood. My mother has an extreme love for babies and would have probably been more thrilled than not if I had become a teen mom. But these are people who would actually have a relationship with my hypothetical children. My coworkers, though? Random people on the internet? What's it to them if I have them or not? I think one of the most obvious explanations is that my firm intention of being child-free reads as an attack on their lifestyle in some way. As if I hate children or think everyone should be child-free and end the human race. I've also heard some people argue that child-free people "are not contributing to society." Apparently having kids is the only real way to contribute! There's also the possibility that they never really wanted to have kids either, but much like me, they were raised to think they had to and are really upset by the idea that things could be different. Sometimes people feel that if they aren't happy, no one should be. If they had to suffer, so must everyone else. Throughout my life, I also picked up the message that if I ever wanted a man to marry me, I would have to be willing to "give him" children. Imagine my surprise when, while we were dating, my husband told me he wasn't sure if he really wanted kids. It was like an entirely new world had been revealed to me. I could get married to an awesome guy AND not have kids! I was free to imagine a life much different than I had ever thought possible, and it felt so right. If I was honest with myself, I knew I never had "the maternal instinct." I never looked forward to kids or pregnancy or any of it. The only thing I was ever sure of was wanting a partner to share life with. I simply felt kids were a package deal, and I'd have to deal with it. My husband and I thought about it for about three years before we decided to go with a vasectomy--though I doubt any length of serious deliberation would be enough to convince some people that we weren't being foolish. There were days when we both wondered if we were making a mistake. Were we just naive like so many people were saying? Would we get ten years down the road and regret this? But every time, we came back to the same conclusion: I'd rather take the chance of waking up one morning and wishing I'd raised a child instead of bringing a child into this world and thinking, "What have I done?" I'm excited and happy about our choice, and I want to leave the child-rearing to people who feel that same excitement and happiness about their choice to do the opposite.

#childfree #feminism