Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

The hypocrisy of “pro-life” views

Wednesday evening VOX UMass hosted a candlelight Vigil in Solidarity With Planned Parenthood Colorado Springs.  (Judith Gibson-Okunieff/Daily Collegian)
Wednesday evening VOX UMass hosted a candlelight Vigil in Solidarity With Planned Parenthood Colorado Springs. (Judith Gibson-Okunieff/Daily Collegian)

When I say that I don’t want any children, my grandparents often laugh, saying that you’re supposed to have children when you’re married. My aunt says I have “no business not having kids.” My other aunt says she doesn’t support “baby-killers,” meaning Planned Parenthood to her. My grandmother is also against Planned Parenthood, and this is no surprise due to my Christian upbringing.

But now that Donald Trump is on his way to the Oval Office, the debate on children, marriage and women’s rights seems like it’s about to start a party war in Washington. Trump’s position has apparently been wishy-washy. He said that he supports some of Planned Parenthood’s services, but not abortion. Though this may seem like a compromise, the part where Republicans and Democrats shake hands because everybody’s happy, this is far from an acceptable alternative.

Other health rights besides abortion are about to be under attack, as are women’s very lives. There are women who will need abortions for potentially fatal health reasons . For example, when an ectopic pregnancy occurs, the fertilized egg settles somewhere outside of the uterus, the part where a baby has to grow. And there’s no other place a baby can develop, so ectopic fetuses have to be removed. If they’re not, they put women at risk for fallopian tube damage, complete rupture and life-threatening internal bleeding.

And yes, I know about the move Obama recently made to make Planned Parenthood funding permanent, but anything is reversible with the law, anything. All a president really needs to turn something around are supporters who are noisy enough and some Supreme Court justices who are as passionate as the president is concerning a certain viewpoint.

Also, what does this mean for women who need reproductive organ removal for reasons such as cancer?

I get the feeling that many anti-Planned Parenthood people are ridiculously uninformed about these types of problems. Many of them think all women who use these services are rolling into these clinics to run away from some child-raising responsibility, when that’s simply a lie.

A recent study found that, in 2013, over half of women who underwent abortions were what author Amanda Marcotte calls “economically disadvantaged.” Most patients were women of color. And in 2015, Black women still had a higher rate of abortions than any other racial group above the poverty line. A young Black teen interviewed by The Atlantic said she was afraid of becoming the stereotypical single Black mother.

That’s another thing that infuriates me about all of this. Women like me are deemed sexually loose “welfare queens,” when only a little over 25 percent of SNAP (food stamp) recipients are Black. And with people like Bill O’Reilly depicting us as women with baby fever who have forehead tattoos  (I live in a predominantly Black community and have yet to see someone with such a tattoo) and suggesting that Obama should advertise how not to get pregnant to young Black girls (What’s Bill’s plan for white women with children born outside of marriage? They do exist), I’m left confused as how so many anti-Planned Parenthood aficionados call themselves “pro-life.”  You can’t shame single Black women for having children, then deny them to right to terminate the children you made it so clear they shouldn’t have conceived at all. That makes no logical sense.

I’m pro-life, meaning that I don’t think women or children should have to suffer further poverty and discrimination (in our case) when it can be prevented. For us Black women, our sons are likelier to die by homicide between ages 15 and 34 than the sons of other ethnic groups. Our daughters are six times likelier to be punished in schools than white girls, and that’s higher than the Black-to-white boy ratio. Our infant mortality rate is nearly twice that of white women’s. The list of all the reasons for why we should be kicking Planned Parenthood’s doors down to get any contraceptives we can, while they’re legal, literally has taken up entire books and museums. Even history itself has shown that it’s sensible.

I’m considering going all the way and getting a tubal ligation. And though there’s recently been cries about doctors not performing ligation for oppressive paternalistic reasons, I’m not worried. Based off of this country’s history of forced sterilization of people of color in places such as California, Mississippi, Texas, Puerto Rico, and more, I should undoubtedly get a yes.

You can lynch me, tell me I’m nothing and try to shame me all because of my color.  But what you can’t do is try to terminate my offspring, then get mad at me for beating you to the punch.

Elisheva Azarael is a Collegian columnist and can be reached at [email protected].

 

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  • D

    David Hunt 1990Dec 12, 2016 at 7:17 pm

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  • D

    David Hunt 1990Dec 12, 2016 at 5:56 pm

    @Lucky Louie:

    When I saw my daughter in the ultrasound, a few grains of the image pulsing in her heartbeat, I lost it. I – a person who does not cry – wept openly.

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  • L

    Lucky LouieDec 12, 2016 at 3:13 pm

    Let me get this straight: More than 25% of SNAP recipients are black, but only 13% or so of the ENTIRE US population is black? So how does that math work? It seems that pro-lifers aren’t so uninformed, it’s the group you complain of having a birth out of wedlock rate of astronomical proportions. It doesn’t take much education to know how to use a condom and take birth control. And, since I see plenty of SNAP recipients with iPhone 7’s, I am quite sure they can afford birth control.

    So, what you really are advocating is sex without consequence. Or, African American sex without consequence…as if there is a difference. You are lying about the real issues in the black community as it relates to having children: absentee parents (often due to drug addiction), of a violent male culture that promotes conceiving many children with different partners with no consequences; with black females complicit in being shackled by this type of self-induced bondage. Most single black women, especially the very young ones, have children quite by choice. They are quite open about it and made this decision far sooner than they have the maturity to understand its consequences. I have seen this in the urban school systems that I have visited throughout the Eastern seaboard in recent decades. It is not a new problem. Blaming it on the incoming president or a misplaced fear on the state of Planned Parenthood is crazy.

    As a parent myself, and also a parent of two adopted children (of color, as if it matters), I will NEVER be able to understand how someone can make the (non-medical) decision to terminate a life. I used to actually be quite the pro-choice advocate, until I went to my first ultrasound with my wife and realized that there was an actual person inside of her….far sooner than what I would have thought plausible. I learned that it is EASY to have a stance on an issue when never confronted with the real life consequences of those decisions. Not so easy when you’ve lived a little and really understand.

    I could write a novel about what is wrong with Black America in terms of how it conceives and raises children. The court, foster and adoption system is also a money-grubbing scam which continues to harm innocent children of color and enable a sick population of African Americans and drug addled rural whites to keep doing what they do no matter how harmful to their offspring and the people who take them in. I love my adopted, non-white children just the same as the ones we conceived together. There are a lot of issues that we have to work through to try to make them into healthy, happy, well-adjusted adults. We won’t have any idea if we are doing it right for another 20 years or so.

    So, to the author, please don’t have children. They are not a political statement nor a burden. They are the most wonderful, precious beings that enrich your life in myriad ways. They take you out of the selfish state of “me” and firmly into the world of what is good for others. That doesn’t mean a college student should rush it or even think of it. But in the normal course of evolution, there will come a time when it is appropriate to think about having children. Just don’t blame your selfishness and lack of discretion on politicians and their support of Planned Parenthood.

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  • N

    NateDec 12, 2016 at 1:53 pm

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    David Hunt 1990Dec 12, 2016 at 10:52 am

    Your black children are, in some cities, most likely to die from being killed by their own mother than ANY OTHER CAUSE. IIRC, in Harlem, more than 50% of pregnancies end because the women killed their own children.

    As to homicides; over 90% of blacks are killed BY OTHER BLACKS.

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  • D

    David Hunt 1990Dec 12, 2016 at 10:48 am

    Remember, it was LIBERAL PROGRESSIVES who founded the eugenics movement and did the forced sterilizations. It was a virulent racist, Margaret Sanger, who founded Planned Parenthood.

    Reply