6.07.2011

More Race-Based Antichoice Propaganda

Remember these?  And these, and these?  Playing on the statistical discrepancy between rates of abortion for white and black women, they set out to demonize black women for making reproductive choices other than giving birth to EVERY PREGNANCY NO MATTER WHAT.  Conveniently, they ignored the part about structural inequality and poverty and other issues which might explain why abortion is much more prevalent among black women than white women.

Welp, they're at it again.  Only now it's Latinas under fire.  Using the same phrase, "The most dangerous place for a Latino is in the womb," in both Spanish and English, with a silhouette of a child and smaller polaroid-style pictures of babies' faces and a pregnant woman's belly (curiously, the woman is headless/faceless; it's almost like they don't want people thinking about the woman, only her body and specifically her uterus), the campaign is unveiling this weekend in Los Angeles, CA. 

The group behind it, as usual, cites statistics, showing that Latinas are 2.7 times more likely to get an abortion than non-Hispanic whites.  And as usual, that's thrown out there without any discussion of racism, systemic inequality, poverty, employment problems, access to contraception, etc which might, just a tiny bit, maybe in some way contribute to a woman's decision to abort rather than carry a pregnancy to term. 

As I said before, if you really want to address this discrepancy, work on the CAUSES of the disproportionate rate of unwanted pregnancy/inability to carry wanted pregnancies to term.  Demonizing Latinas who choose to abort like this is just fucked-up, and it's not going to help*.


*You know who is helping?  Planned Parenthood and all their low-cost/free/sliding-scale contraception and other sexual health services.  Suck on that, anti-choice assholes.

5 comments:

ladyneeva said...

Sometimes I ponder a world in which it was possible, with no increase in either risk or expense (or even a decrease in risk and expense), to transfer a fetus in the first or second trimester to another host body. Would the anti-choice brigade still be against women taking charge of their reproductive life and choosing not to be pregnant?

Given that their standard spiel is that abortion is "murdering a baby", one would think that they would totally be in favor of a process that would allow them to save these "innocent babies" from being "murdered" by taking on all the risk and damage inherent in even a textbook pregnancy themselves.

I suspect though that they would be just as against such a procedure, and almost none of them would volunteer to be the host bodies, because they're not really interested in "saving babies" but rather, interested in punishing "sluts".

And then I think of less benign uses for such technology, and I'm kind of glad that the technology doesn't exist.

Jadelyn said...

I can't make a legit Handmaid's Tale cause I haven't actually read it, but...yeah, that's a really scary thought.  And you're probably absolutely right.  When push came to shove and it was cards on the table time...well it's like undocumented immigrants.  There's this website, I don't remember the name, that is basically a "work an undocumented immigrant's job for a day" exchange program.  And like...only one person has ever taken them up on it.  ONE.  They talk a lot of shit, conservatives do, but they'd never actually submit themselves to what they want other people to do.  They'd never follow through on what their policies would end up doing.  Fucking hypocrites.

ladyneeva said...

Hmm not talking about that one set up by some conservative group that was supposed to prove that they needed to use (exploit to be honest) undocumented workers because they couldn't fill those jobs with citizens?

Because there was a good deal of (cover innocent ears here) fuckwaddery going on with that. My husband and a couple of his friends actually did apply figuring a temporary seasonal job paying minimum wage would be better than nothing. Not one of them were offered jobs anywhere remotely close to where they lived -- at a minimum, it seemed there was some kind of "must be at least 3 states away" rule going on. Why I call it fuckwaddery though -- one of his friends was offered a job in our state. Not only in our state, but within less than a 45 minute drive.

But miraculously, when my husband inquired as to why he wasn't offered the chance to apply for THAT job, it mysteriously disappeared.

So if my husband and his friends' experiences were typical, it doesn't surprise me at all that they couldn't find any takers for those jobs... they weren't offering them to people who lived in the area.

Really the entire incident just reinforced my long held belief that it's not so much that "real Americans" (gag) won't take these jobs so employers are forced to hire undocumented workers, it's that the jobs are only offered to undocumented workers to begin with. Because they know that while they can do anything they want to an undocumented worker and they have no choice but to just take it (because reporting it means getting deported), full citizens can and will protest abusive, unsafe, or illegal working conditions.

But that scam was never really looked into... probably partly because most of the so-called progressive candidates have their undocumented nannies, gardeners and maids, and partly because the conservative party has decided to give the "they're stealin' our JOBS" rhetoric a rest in favor of the "damn wimminz are killin' our BAYBEEZ" rhetoric.

VijiiS said...

I agree with you fully.  Just looking at that ad makes me angry and sad.

Jadelyn said...

There was a conservative group did something like that?  I hadn't heard about that.  Ugh.  The one I'm talking about, I seem to recall was set up by a pro-immigrant's-rights group.  I heard Colbert did something with them?  This is really hazy for me though, more a "heard it in passing" memory, so I may be wrong.  I'm sorry your husband got screwed around with by them.  :-/

Absolutely agreed on businesses outright preferring undocumented workers.  You can get away with a lot more when your employees are afraid to contact any officials.  And if you get found out, hey, you know what happens?  INS deports everyone, you get a slap on the wrist and a little fine, and just hire more undocumented immigrants!  Rinse and repeat as necessary. 

Also unfortunately agreed on "progressive" politicians.  Goddamnit, if non-politicians can adhere to our supposedly-shared principles, why can't they? 

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