miffed about abortions

Max is angry at the angry anonymous commenter(s) to my most recent post. I'm having a heavy puke day, so I can't get up the energy to be mad. Mostly, it's always exciting to find that anyone not related to me is even reading the blog anymore. Not like we are responsible, mature bloggers who get replacements to blog for us when we can't do it, or have, like, paypal things set up. We don't even have google ads or an Amazon partnership set up. sure, we've toyed with trying to acquire fame and fortune as bloggers, and we've had our moments, but technorati tells me this ain't one of them.

I'm nobody, anonymous. Who are you? are you nobody too?

[oops, while I was helping our son do some coloring, my anonymous commenter outed himself. Hello Miff, I'm flattered you looked us up again! We actually had figured out you were you, but no one likes to be outed by others, so we treated you as anonymous until you suggested otherwise]

It does not bother me, then, to admit that my most recent posting was intemperate. I wasn't trying to convince anyone of anything. In case you missed the last three months of my life, I've had a pisser of a pregnancy. I've been sicker than a dog. We've had to hire babysitters to watch our son, because I've been too busy puking to do so. I can't cook, so our food bill is out-of-control. If I had a paying job, I wouldn't have been able to do it. We suck up the expense, and I suck up the hideousness, of my pregnancy because we really, really want another kid. Hell, I got pregnant even though my last pregnancy caused me to have a nervous breakdown.

So I'll admit it would have been a bit over-the-top to accuse every single person who is not pro-choice with hating women. People's ideas of right and wrong are based on all kinds of motivations, values, and histories. Though, in point of fact, I don't seem to have accused every single person who is not pro-choice with hating women. What I actually said was "the assholes running our country hate women, and think it's okay to enslave us." I also called these same people "crazy will-to-power fucks".

If you or anyone you know is one of the people running the country (and by this, I mean, a member of the Bush administration), then yeah, I'm calling you an asshole, a woman-hater, and a crazy will-to-power fuck, and I stand by those statements. I'm willing to argue with reasonable people, but I'm not alone in believing that this administration sucks ass, so I hardly think that I'm advancing a radical left-wing nutty position by stating that.

I also won't back down on my contention that pregnancy is a type of slavery. And to support the abolition of abortion, whatever your reasons, is to support a policy that enslaves women. The choices you and your loved ones make to deal with pregnancies are entirely your own. The day you come to me and tell me I must endure 9 months of enslavement I do not want, because you value a potential life I carry more than you value my freedom, well, that's the day you've said that my slavery is A-OK with you. Why is the presumed father not sentenced to such slavery? Well, because he's not a woman, and he's not pregnant.

The way I see it, my posting, intemperate as it was, still left a lot of openings for someone to argue that I am full of crap, none of which require that I be dismissed as a crazy left-wing nut. For your convenience, I'll list some below:

1) You could argue that pregnancy is not, in fact, a form of slavery. I'm not at all just blowing off steam when I say I think it is. That is my deeply held belief based on my experiences of 1.4 pregnancies (the .4, by the way, still ongoing) and my observation of pregnancies in other women. But you could certainly argue otherwise.

2) You could argue that even if pregnancy is a form of slavery, the value of an embryo or fetus trumps the rights of humans not to be enslaved. I don't happen to think it does, but, again, people disagree about stuff like that.

3) You could grant that pregnancy is a form of slavery but that women who get pregnant deserve to be enslaved for their stupidity or irresponsibility in getting pregnant in the first place. Pregnancy as a form of punishment. When people ask why they should be sympathetic to irresponsible women who get themselves knocked up, I presume that is their implicit argument. If you make this argument and want to be fair about the punishment, though, you should be prepared to sentence men who knock up women with 9 months of slavery as well. If you aren't, well then, yeah, I'll call you a woman-hater: you think women should be punished for a crime that men should not be punished for.

I'm sure there are plenty of other attacks you could make on my position, but hey, why should I do all the work? I've got a kid to entertain, and more puking to do. And man, will it ever, ever, ever stop raining?