This is actually a serious rant.

Even though I know that almost nobody reads my blog (it's okay. I've come to terms with it and prefer to use it as a venting platform for all my rage), this really is a serious topic for me.

And I know that it's a pretty taboo topic, which I find depressing, but I'm going to rant about it anyway, because... well, since when do I care about things being omfg so inappropriate?

I'm pro-choice. Yes, I know that you probably guessed that if you read my rant against internet chauvinism here. And I don't care that people commented or messaged me on my Facebook or talked to me on MSN saying that I'm negative. I mean, really? Look at the top bar of this page. Do you see how the address for this blog is please-stop-breathing? Do you expect me to talk about rainbows and shitting unicorns because of how goddamn happy I am all the time? I started this blog so I could rant about all the things that make me really angry, not so I could present balanced arguments that are unclouded by emotion. I'm perfectly capable of doing that too, but why would I? The comments people make about this blog are faux inspirational quotes that sound like a piss-poor attempt at sounding like some kind of Buddhist. How am I supposed to have any kind of intellectual debate with people who try to hang nifty one-liners on my entries so they don't have to admit that, beneath all the rage, I actually have a point? Particularly about my internet chauvinism rant. I don't think that anybody who considers themselves an "intelligent" human being can come up with arguments for why there's nothing wrong with that garbage that tries to mask itself as "comedy".

Now that that rant is over, don't bother commenting on my blog if you're going to hang those lame one-liners on my entries. You know why? Honestly, it's because I don't particularly care about what anyone thinks about this blog. I'm sure that if more people read it, I would, but for now, it's basically like a less lame livejournal for me to have.

On to the rant of the day: It was started off by this article. I don't even know where to begin, but I'll just jump right into this.

In October, members of Harvard Right to Life (HRL) put up about 400 posters in student housing entitled "Women Deserve Better," one of which featuring a woman identified as "Candice." "I was raped and therefore 'justified' in my abortion, but it didn't change a thing," she said. "I suffered because I was led to believe that taking my child's life was okay. It was not, and I have been living with that for five years." The poster went on to give contact info for a local crisis pregnancy center, reminding readers that "there is help for unplanned pregnancies."

Women don't feel guilt about getting an abortion because they've been told abortions are okay, they feel guilt about getting an abortion because they've been told that abortion is wrong. I don't give a fuck that Harvard is located in one of the less "religious" states (Massachusetts). The source I'm using (it's a Gallup poll) states that 48% of people in Massachusetts say that religion is an important part of their daily lives. I mean, really? That's still nearly half the population that says that religion is important in their daily lives. 48% of the people are religious enough that their religion is present in their every day life in some tangible way. This statistic is not saying that 48% of the population in Massachusetts believes in God. Do you see the problem there? They're trying to play it off like Massachusetts is less religious, when really, it's just that slightly less than half the population there is so religious that their day is pretty filled with things related to religion.

There's no question that discussing a topic like rape calls for great sensitivity. But it's doubtful that the reason for the intense backlash was that victims would be traumatized by the very mention of rape: There's no controversy when sexual-assault centers feature victims in their ads. The real reason for the anger was probably expressed by a Harvard Crimson student columnist, who fumed: "What bothers me is that HRL has taken a feminist idea, that women deserve better, and co-opted it to deny women rights." There you have it: If you're not for "abortion rights," you don't care about women. It's yet another case of the left claiming a sort of moral monopoly.

I realize that looking at such a biased article is bound to make anyone enraged, but seriously? The sanctimonious moral right in America is so infuriating to me. I don't know if it's because I'm not American, but I find that constant little shit-talking that they need to put at the end of everything (and the left is certainly guilty of this too) really irritating. Anyway. The student columnist is absolutely right. I wouldn't necessarily call the idea that women deserve better a "feminist" idea (who doesn't think that everyone should be treated equally, regardless of gender, race, religion or whatever else?), but the whole fight for equality is about the fact that nobody has the right to tell another person what they can or cannot do in their own lives, with their own bodies. The student columnist didn't mention abortion at all. They simply said that refusing a woman's right to choose what is best for her, regardless of whatever moral judgements people want to pile upon her, by putting up signs talking about how guilty "Candace" felt about her abortion is, for lack of a better way of putting it, stupid, ignorant, biased nonsense designed to make women feel badly about the choices they make that go against what men think is best for them.

It's a shame, if not a surprise, that the issue HRL tried to raise largely got lost in the process. Their point, after all, is that abortion is not only morally wrong, but it also harms the women it's allegedly going to help. It's a devil's bargain: It promises relief from a seemingly unbearable burden in return for sin, but it ends up bringing burdens that are truly unbearable.

There's so much wrong with this that I don't even know where to start. First of all, the author of this "article" is a man. How does he know about how "unbearable" the burden of abortion is? How could he possibly know? How could he possibly understand what making the decision between aborting and keeping a fetus is like? He will never be faced with that decision. I don't care if his girlfriend or wife is considering abortion and he feels that he understands it when that happens, because he doesn't. He doesn't understand what being a woman is like, just like a woman doesn't understand what being a man is like. He doesn't understand what carrying a child around for nine months does to women, the joys and the serious health complications that it can bring about, the disgust that rape victims would feel about how their child was conceived - he cannot and will never understand any of this. Yet because he's a man, he feels that he has the right to sit up there on his lofty perch and judge the decision of a woman based on the fact that there are some people who feel guilty about abortions.

I mean, seriously? Was this supposed to be an earth-shattering revelation? How could there be women out there who DON'T feel guilty about getting an abortion, given that the vast majority of what we see on television essentially says that anyone who gets an abortion is basically the worst person alive. Don't believe me? Think about it. How many pro-life advertisements do you see on television? Quite a few, right? Even in Canada, we see quite a few (particularly because most of the television we receive is on American channels). Now tell me, how many pro-choice advertisements do you see on television? How many? Honestly? Because you know that pro-choicers would be having a shitfit if something that "offensive" was allowed on television.

To summarize: Men have no right to pretend to be morally superior to women and to sit around and judge the choices that women may make. They don't have the right to tell me what to do with my body anymore than I have the right to tell them what to do with theirs.

Why is it okay for me to walk past a hospital on days that pro-life people are protesting and to be essentially harassed (and I'm not fucking kidding on this one) by a man (because it is nearly ALWAYS a man) that's trying to make me say that I think people who get abortions are going to hell? Why can I not turn to that man and tell him that he shouldn't be having sex with his wife, because they're not having any children and therefore, their sex is pointless, because having sex for pleasure alone is supposed to be some kind of sin? Why is it not okay for me to tell him that he shouldn't masturbate, because kittens will die, because that's what I believe? Why can I not tell him that he should be castrated, because he's clearly too stupid to be adding his genes to the collective pool?

Okay. In more realistic situation/response examples, when a man tells me that I shouldn't get an abortion because it's a sin, why can I not ask him why he's not harassing the man who impregnated me? If I've been raped, why can't I ask him why he cares so much about a fetus when I've, you know, been RAPED?* Why do the people outside the hospital spend so much time focusing on a fetus that they never even consider the reasons that a woman might get an abortion and the events and circumstances that may lead her to get one?

I know I haven't sworn as much in this post as I usually do, but this is actually how I get when I'm very angry. I hit the point where all that comes out of my mouth is "fucking fucktard fucking fuck" and then I get past that point, to a point where I'm literally still on the outside, but hitting people with scooters across the face inside.

* I have not actually been raped. I know someone who has been, and part of what disturbed me the most about the way people treated her after was that they were more focused on her fetus than on her own well-being. I thought it was really sick.

My body, my choice. I have the mental capacity to make decisions for myself, large and small, without the sanctimonious judgements that people could place on me. It's my life and I'm living it, not anyone else. People need to spend less time being so concerned with what other people are doing and be more concerned about their own mistakes in their own lives.