What do you do when no one wants to fuck you? Join the American Life League!
The Pill kills? Really? Really?!
When my eyeballs were first raped by that giant green “The Pill Kills” sign, I assumed the goal of the campaign was to discourage women from taking the Pill by highlighting all of its fake/misrepresented health risks. Silly Kendall, antis don’t care about women! This campaign is all about how the Pill kills babies. BABIES! Um, unless toddlers are finding their moms’ pill packs and choking to death on them, these people are totally full of shit.
You’re probably thinking “where the mothercrap are they getting this stuff?” I know, right? So basically these batshit crazy fundies are claiming that the Pill kills real, live, actual babies who can do calculus and play the violin and cure cancer because they say various forms of birth control prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the mother’s uterus. Tap tap…uh, guys, that’s not how it works. Birth control pills, as well as Emergency Contraception (EC/the morning after pill, which is nothing more than a concentrated dose of the hormones found in birth control pills) work by preventing OVULATION, not implantation. They keep your ovaries from releasing an egg – no egg means nothing to fertilize which means no zygote. The progestin found in birth control pills also thickens cervical mucus, which prevents sperm from reaching an egg if one happens to be present. The idea that these forms of contraception work by preventing a fertilized egg from implanting is complete and total horseshit, and is not substantiated by any scientific research. It hasn’t been disproved, but it certainly hasn’t been proven either. Those wacky fundies are simply fucking guessing and then trying to enact legislation based on an unvalidated hypothesis. When does that shit ever fly? When it’s oppressing women, that’s when.
The good news is, when the antis have to pull stuff directly from the deepest, darkest corners of their asses to prove a point, it means they don’t have a legitimate one. They’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel here. The bad news is, people believe them.
And you know what? Let’s give ‘em the benefit of the doubt. Let’s say for the sake of argument that the Pill does prevent implantation on occasion. Guess what…that doesn’t make it an abortifacient. The medical community officially defines pregnancy as beginning once a fertilized egg implants in the uterus, prompting a woman’s body to release pregnancy-beginning hormones. Preventing implantation is still PREVENTING pregnancy, not terminating it. It’s also important to note that 30-60% of all pregnancies are spontaneously and naturally lost in the first three months (half of them so early that they are unrecognizable as pregnancies), and there’s no way to know if a fertilized egg was expelled naturally or as a result of taking birth control.
Now I understand that certain fundies believe that life begins at conception, the second the sperm hits the egg, which is the whole foundation for their “birth control is murder” trip. That’s fine – idiots people have every right to subscribe to these ideas. But they’re completely and totally religious and ideological theories (not medical facts), and subjecting the entire country to your science-hatin’ belief system by basing legislation on said theories is a VIOLATION OF THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE. It’s anti-American and their neighbors should turn ‘em in to Homeland Security. It’s also just a dick thing to do.
Oh, and even if birth control was an abortifacient, it would still be LEGAL LEGAL LEGAL. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you have a problem with safe n’ legal abortion, why don’t you move to a country where said freedoms don’t exist?
So, uh, question…if contraceptives are indeed criminalized, is someone going to hunt me down and yank the Paraguard IUD out of me? I still have a good 8 years left on this baby, and you can pry it from my cold, dead, uterus. Also, let me know where to send the period blood collected in my Diva Cup for analysis every month to make sure I haven’t accidentally and unwittingly expelled any fertilized eggs killed any babies with my whoring, murdering, menstrual cycle, which happens, oh…like 50% of the time. Should my tampons be given birth and death certificates? Do we need to be having monthly pad funerals?
Listen…I don’t have a problem with people hating abortion, or even birth control, as long as they keep their unenlightened opinions and shitty, uptight, baby-makin’ sex in their own bedrooms. I have a problem with people hating sex. I have a problem with people hating women. I have a problem with people hating sexual women. I have a problem with people legislating religious belief. And I have a problem with cocksuckers like the American Life League shitting out bullshit campaigns based on complete and total lies, aimed at preventing women from controlling THEIR OWN FUCKING INTERNAL ORGANS. This is my, MY uterus you’re messing with. These are MY ovaries, this is MY cervix, this is MY vagina. Mine mine mine. I bet if we tried to make public ball scratching illegal (which would make my rides on the subway a lot more pleasant), men everywhere would take to the streets, chanting “my body, my choice!”
The one thing we should be thankful for is that they’re starting to show their true batshit colors. I’ve been saying for a while now that the real goal of the pro-”life” movement is actually to ban contraception and anything that removes the potential and/or unwanted consequences of sex because they hate women being able to have it without getting AIDS or cancer or pregnant, which are God’s punishments for being filthy man-eating sluts. And nobody listens because it’s so much cooler to freak out about the environment and reducing your carbon footprint (even though the best way to do that is stop eating eat meat and not reproduce, but whateves). Because caring about reproductive rights, women’s sexual autonomy, and feminism is, like, so 1970s and we’re all equal now and everything is chillz so I can totally vote for McCain because Hillary and her icky vagina and the thought of women in power are so, like, unpleasant.
Well, don’t come crying to me for a handout of smuggled pill packs from Sweden when your gyno pulls her head out of your vag and tells you that your Ortho Tri Cyclen prescription is now illegal. I ain’t Margaret Sanger. This is what happens when you ignore your (reproductive) rights: they go away. Have fun with your acne and irregular periods and mind numbing cramps and potentially-conceiving sex and trying to jimmy rig a diaphragm out of half an orange peel. And if you think you’re gonna have that abortion or EC safety net, you really haven’t been paying attention.
So are you listening yet? Sinking in? THIS IS THE NEXT WAVE OF THE ANTI-CHOICE MOVEMENT. Sure, right now it’s just a bunch of delusional homeschooling quiverfull housewives and patriarchal asshats with nothing better to do, but next it’s the politicians, legislators, laws…and then us.
Seriously, why are we letting them get away with this shit? Why isn’t anybody calling them on this? Why isn’t this a priority in the election? Why are we letting them lie, straight up LIE to the American people?! What was that about bearing false witness again? Haven’t we realized that allowing them to spread these dangerous mistruths without consequences only encourages more crazy bullshit? Why can’t we get it through our thick American skulls that IT’S NOT ABOUT THE FUCKING BABIES and these people are pure, unrelenting evil? Oh, right. Because legislation like this primarily affects poor women, who have no power, status, or voice, so nobody gives a flying fucking turd. Duh.
Honestly, I feel like it’s just a matter of time before they try to legalize rape and bring Female Genital Mutilation to the US. Nothing prevents abortions like a sewn-up vagina.
Barf.
4 Comments
June 10. 2008 at 4:34 pm
This is an awesome post, AWESOME!
August 12. 2008 at 10:23 pm
Bloody brilliant, as per usual. Margaret Cho made a similar point in her “Assassin” routine, and I cheered loudly. I did the same thing when I read your post.
Yes, Fundies, I’m talking to you–get your head out of my vag. KTHNXBAI.
February 1. 2009 at 9:48 pm
I almost threw up when I read that Quiverfull article. Seriously, chunks in my mouth. Their belief system reminds me of the Church of Latter Day Saints, to whom my parents are currently being recruited. They are over at our house all the fucking time, put up our Christmas lights (without our permission, might I add) and bought us a slider burger maker and a fondue pot. The whole xmas lights thing was a bummer, I WAS going to erect a giant nativity scene with huge wooden penguins playing the part of Mary, Joseph and the Baby Jesus.
I’m happy about the Fondue part though.
February 10. 2009 at 3:17 pm
Man, you got it spot-on. I do not, nor will I ever, understand why politicans are trying to take away my god-given right: the choice I make for my own body and survival. I mean, I can understand why it is illegal to participate in supported suicide (even though when a person dies should be his/her own choice, entirely) but when it comes to MY uterus? What, do they want me to rip it out and hand it to them on a silver platter just so they are reassured that I will never kill a non-zygote? C’mon.. Insanity, I say!