Pro-Choice? Quit Crying About Your Miscarriage

Pro-Choice? Quit Crying About Your Miscarriage

Thursday, February 5, 2009

filed under: health logic

Editor's note: momlogic values the right of every woman to have -- and express -- their opinion, and this post is no exception. For those who have a strong reaction to the sentiments expressed below, we encourage you to make your voice heard in our community.

Guest blogger Gina: I respect women's right to choose, but I have little tolerance for pro-choicers who expect sympathy when they have a miscarriage.

These are women who put pro-choice buttons on their backpacks in college and ridiculed pro-lifers for being backward, repressive religious freaks who want to control the world's uteruses.

Ten years have passed and lo and behold, these women have grown up, gotten married, and now have the itch to have a baby of their own. Suddenly the monthly visitor that they were relieved to get when they were 20, now, at 32, plunges them into the depths of depression.

Like vegetarians who eat chicken but not beef, many pro-choice advocates want it both ways. It's a baby when they want it to be, it's a bundle of cells when they don't.

If you believe that pregnancy doesn't produce a baby until some magic number (13 weeks? 20 weeks? 40?), then you must also agree that it's ridiculous to break down in hysterics, set up a memorial website for your "angel," and seek out a grief counselor when you start bleeding in your first trimester. After all, you're simply talking about the loss of a conglomeration of microscopic cells, right?! That's hardly something to cry about.

Advocate all you want, but don't come crying to me when your hypocrisy hits you like a ton of bricks. If you are going to defend the right to abort babies, you don't have the right to be upset when yours dies.

306 comments so far | Post a comment now >>

Masterful trolling.

- Anonymous

Posted 02/06/09 12:08 AM

How. Dare. You?

- Dr. Psycho

Posted 02/06/09 12:32 AM

I’m not sure I would have put this the way Gina did, but I think her underlying point has been proved to a significant degree by the comments. It seems to me her point was - if I’m getting it - that reality is reality. If at 20 weeks post-conception it’s a baby, worth naming and mourning if it dies, then choosing to kill it (even if for overwhelming reasons) can’t logically be something neutral about which we “can’t pass judgment.” Whether a baby dies doesn’t depend on whether the mother WANTED it to be a baby. (That logic wouldn’t work well for children out of the womb either.) I think comments 10:23 and 10:36 (2/4) sort of make clear the disconnect Gina is observing (i.e., they disagree on the fundamental point though they both support abortion). Here’s how I look at it. People who were pro-choice and never had abortions never had to come to grips with what it REALLY meant to ask someone to kill their own babies. Those who did, however, understood the truth a lot better - they had to. There’s a reason that pro-choice people insist that post-abortive women be treated sensitively in a way they don’t require for, say, appendectomy patients. There’s a real loss - the loss of a child, not just of tissue. I think pro-choice people who grow older and miscarry or are infertile start to see the same thing that abortive women saw (and that pro-life people may not have seen directly but understood). That’s REALLY A BABY. Of course that’s not to say that pro-choice people who miscarry become pro-life. They probably maintain their convictions, though I have to suppose that these are made increasingly complicated by a (painfully) broadening window on reality. And I have a thought that the suffering will eventually convince us all that new life is precious and should be protected. At the end, anyway, all things will be clear to all of us.

- the misfit

Posted 02/06/09 02:56 AM

your a bad person

- draffish

Posted 02/06/09 04:23 AM

Um, has the lovely Gina ever had a miscarriage? We can talk about the crying then.

- Ruby

Posted 02/06/09 05:01 AM

Karma, that’s all I can say; It’ll bite you in the arse and make YOU cry like a baby and since you wrote this, you don’t have any right to cry either!

- Unbelievable!

Posted 02/06/09 06:16 AM

wow.. did you lose your compassion down the back of the lounge or something? I wonder if you would ever say this to friend who had a miscarriage and had also had an abortion at some time? Losing a child is a tragedy no matter what choices you have made in the past.

- Julie

Posted 02/06/09 07:42 AM

LOL anti-Choicers are such stupid morons. I wonder if they have idea how truly stupid they sound?

- LOLOLOL

Posted 02/06/09 08:22 AM

This blog is pretty disgusting in its misunderstanding of the pro-choice cause and its coldheartedness. People are pro-choice for many reasons, one because keeping abortion legal keeps it safe. Abortions have been around forever - before it was legal with “herbal” remedies and coat hangers…these result in deaths of the MOTHER too. Is that what you want?

- B

Posted 02/06/09 09:03 AM

yes, except no. not every pro-choice woman will go out of her way to get an abortion if she gets pregnant when she didn’t want to be pregnant. some believe in having the right to choose, but would personally choose not to abort. ever think about that? obviously not. you, momlogic (/sarcasm), are an incredibly insensitive and cold-hearted person. I pity you.

- CRB

Posted 02/06/09 09:22 AM

It just tells me this woman is pretty ignorant. Her words are meant for shock value, I am sure. It’s too bad that it came across in such a hurtful way. Ladies- Pay no mind to her. It’s not worth the effort. This is what you get when you cross stupidity with “a cause.”

- Lisa DG

Posted 02/06/09 09:27 AM

Oh FFS this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever read. So does Mom Logic = Narrow Minded Stupidity then? “Pro-Choice” does NOT mean “woman who has abortions all the time” OR “woman who never wants to have children” or even “woman who thinks abortions are no big deal.” “Pro-Choice” simply means believing that abortion shouldn’t be illegal. Many, many pro-choice women would never actually have an abortion themselves, but just don’t believe making abortions illegal, or punishing those who have an abortion, will help society. Feeling smug and lacking empathy for somebody who has had a miscarriage just because they have a different political belief to you makes you a very bitter and narrow-minded person indeed, Gina. The world is a worse place for having someone like you in it, let alone someone like you having children.

- Kathleen

Posted 02/06/09 09:27 AM

You know what? I had a miscarriage at 12 weeks but I am pro choice. F**k you. Even though you disgust me, I wouldn’t wish a child’s death on you, or anyone. I could go on and on, but you don’t deserve any more of my time or effort.

- angelais

Posted 02/06/09 09:44 AM

I think this article, which is cruel in my opinion, fails to take into account several important factors. First of all, I don’t believe anyone has the right to make a judgment call about someone else’s grief. Whether you believe this to be true or not, it is nothing but spiteful to come out and tell a woman who was hoping for a baby that she should get over the loss of her hope. Secondly, this is yet another person assuming that being pro-choice means you have no respect for the potential for life. Many pro-choicers, like myself, are not making calls as to when the “clump of cells” is or is not a life. In fact, I don’t believe we can find an answer to exactly when life begins, and I don’t think it matters. More simply, I am pro-choice because I don’t assume the right to make a decision about another woman’s body for her. It isn’t about when life begins, it is about personal freedoms and the right to make your own medical decisions.

- Heather

Posted 02/06/09 09:59 AM

This one dimensional post is not credible, it has no personal, anecdotal, or clinical research or discussion. It negates the complex and heartwrenching issues associated with reproduction and pregnancy loss. It’s one poorly informed and immature person’s opinion. It’s great to see the responses of folks who recognize the shallowness and poor judgement of this post.

- Martha

Posted 02/06/09 10:05 AM

I get the point of this article. It seems to have hit a nerve though. Maybe I would have written it a little more gingerly. It does boil down to when you call it a baby, and not just in the circumstances that it was conceived or where the mom’s mind was at the time. If you are pregnant and want to be, then it is a baby. My own battle with infertility and miscarriage completely changed my heart on the issue of Pro-Choice/Pro-Life. I saw it from a new point of view. Unfortunately, too many people have bought into the lies and don’t know how to resolve it or receive forgiveness.

- Anonymous

Posted 02/06/09 10:15 AM

I am a mother of two. I have never had an abortion and I would never have an abortion unless things got really extreme (like, we would both die). That said, I am pro-choice, and THE EXPERIENCE OF HAVING A MISCARRIAGE MADE ME THAT WAY. You see, I was faced with a pregnancy that I was not prepared for and I was not sure what I was going to do when I had a miscarriage. I then realized that had abortion been illegal, I might have been prosecuted (after all, I have the scientific knowledge …). Since then, I have known women whose lives were saved by abortion. I have sat with friends after they have lost very much wanted children and had to have the dead baby removed from their bodies using procedures the anti-woman movement wants to keep doctors from using to help them suffer less. That, is the REALITY of life that the anti-woman movement loves to ignore. The inexperienced and naieve and self centered little girl that wrote this needs to get herself some real life on. Srsly.

- Dr Kate

Posted 02/06/09 10:41 AM

someone should have aborted you or let you run down your mother’s leg!!!

- Anonymous

Posted 02/06/09 11:05 AM

I am a conservative who is technically pro-choice, only because I believe the government should mind their own business. I am very anti-abortion. I think that if a woman chooses to have an abortion, then she loses the right to mourn a miscarriage. Not just because she is pro-choice.

- Rachel

Posted 02/06/09 11:08 AM

Bible humpers sure are intolerant assholes.

- Brittnee

Posted 02/06/09 11:27 AM