“Pro-life” death threats
Of course. The #ShoutYourAbortion campaign has provided yet another pretext for threateners to threaten.
The goal, according to Amelia Bonow, 30, who posted on Facebook on Sept. 19 that she had had an abortion at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Seattle last year, was to encourage women who have kept their abortions secret to speak up — in an effort to reframe the debate on the subject.
“A shout is not a celebration or a value judgment, it’s the opposite of a whisper, of silence,” Ms. Bonow said in an interview. “Even women who support abortion rights have been silent, and told they were supposed to feel bad about having an abortion.”
But less than two weeks after she and a friend, Lindy West, created the hashtag #ShoutYourAbortion on Twitter, Ms. Bonow’s building name has been made public, and she has temporarily left her apartment, bothered by angry tweets wishing her dead.
Bothered by? No. People don’t leave their apartments because they’re “bothered by” something. Death threats are not just a “bother.” She left her apartment for safety reasons.
The effort went viral and drew more than 150,000 tweets, showing how volatile and emotional an issue abortion still is four decades after the Supreme Court declared it legal.
And while godbotherers and legislators are straining every nerve to make abortion unobtainable.
While the campaign was started in response to the Republicans, the organizers were also challenging the traditional Democratic mantra first articulated by President Bill Clinton, and repeated by Hillary Rodham Clinton and President Obama — that abortion should be safe, legal and rare.
Exactly. So typical of Democrats, to spit on the left and give everything away to the right.
I cracked up at the “bothering” bit. I had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis starting when I was 13, and it presented with flare-ups where my knees would swell up to volleyball size (no exaggeration). It didn’t get diagnosed until the third time though. The first doctor, for some reason I will never understand, seemed sure that I had gonorrhea. My mom and I knew it was ridiculous, but I was still mortified that he just kept pressing for information, like I was about to say, “Oh yeah, I forgot, I have unprotected sex like ALL THE TIME.”
But the best part was that he wouldn’t actually say explicitly what he was talking about. He kept asking if any boys had been “bothering” me. Frustrated and in pain, I finally said, “I didn’t realize you could get that kind of thing from being bothered. Am I going to get it from this conversation?” The doctor turned bright red and stopped pushing the subject. My mom still tells that story.
I’m not surprised! That’s a great story.
Abortions SHOULD be safe, legal, and rare-rare, because women need to have unfettered access to the birth control they need. Sure, I can get the pill for free in California, but things like IUDs, implants, or sterilization-the most effective methods of birth control-are still inaccessible to me because of their cost. I have been on the pill since I was 18, and got pregnant (and had an abortion) while on it in 2014. Even on planned parenthood’s sliding scale, an implant or IUD would cost me $1500-2000 out of pocket, and most doctors simply will not perform tubal ligations on women who don’t already have kids. As though I, a 28-year-old woman, am incapable of knowing that I don’t want children. Regardless of all of that, NO method of birth control, not even sterilization, is 100% effective. No matter how careful someone is, there’s always a chance of pregnancy when having sex. Always.
I tweeted under this hashtag with no mention of my own abortion, simply expressing support for others, and was instantly beset with people calling me a murder and a slut. Several of the responders were men, and I couldn’t help imagining them in a scenario where a woman refused to have sex with them because she didn’t have access to abortion in the event that she got pregnant. Can you imagine the outrage when women started saying “no, I don’t want to have sex with you because I don’t want a baby?”
Claire, wouldn’t Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate cover an IUD for you in California?