Enemies of Civilization

I have personal feelings about abortion that I don’t want to say reflect the feelings of other bloggers on DoaW. They are my own. Other members of this blog can and may disagree, and that is entirely valid. Don’t presume I speak for anybody but myself, please. Here’s what it comes down to for me:

I think the world would be a better place if more people chose to use contraceptives and get abortions when necessary, and preferentially became foster or adoptive parents as a way to scratch that “I absolutely must be a parent” itch. I actually find it truly puzzling and a little disturbing that there are so many people who view adoption as a last resort or rule it out entirely, like for some reason they couldn’t love a child as much if they didn’t contribute genetic material.

However, I would never force anyone to get an abortion, nor would I advocate limiting access to fertility treatments or other resources for people who are pregnant or parents. Other people do not need to be living my choices; that’s what having separate lives is all about. I may disagree with a lot of people’s reproductive choices, but when it comes to someone else’s body I feel morally required to agree to disagree rather than impose my preferences. I will even protect people I disagree with from the impositions of those I agree with, because allowing others reproductive autonomy is more important to me than my evaluation of how others use it.

No forced sterilization or abortion. No limiting access to medical support for people who wish to get pregnant, continue a pregnancy, or have lots and lots of babies. However, by the same token, no forced conception or maternity. No limiting access to medical support for people who do not wish to get pregnant, continue a pregnancy, or have lots and lots of babies.

Given the state of the US foster system (and how little reason I have to believe other countries do it much better), I know for a fact that some truly disgusting people can nonetheless qualify as foster parents. The bar is very very low when it comes to who’s good enough for children who’ve already been discarded in states that are eager to pawn them off on someone in their turn.

I also know people who’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars on fertility treatments. Tens of thousands of dollars. For context, that would’ve paid for a couple of years of my college at an expensive private university even in the USA where education is a costly commodity often preserved for the wealthy and white.

The contrast of these things makes me very uncomfortable and more than a little angry. I understated this as best I could in general because I don’t want other people to feel condemned for disagreeing with me, but I’ve given it some thought and I think it might actually do some good if I articulate as clearly as possible how against deliberate conception and how for widespread abortion I am, while remaining pro-choice.

In my heart I do feel that every deliberate conception thanks to the wonders of modern medicine is a theft of food and safety from a foster child who could have not only lived in that home but could have benefited from the dollars spent on fertility treatments, either for their health care or to buy them access to one of the last tools for upward mobility we still have left in the USA. People who spend thousands of dollars ensuring their personal genetic legacy are making a choice with an opportunity cost, and that cost will be paid by the children who are already here and in many cases already suffering.

That.

is.

vile.

When I hear that someone I know is trying to have a kid, these are the thoughts that go through my mind. This is the shadow on my heart, the judgment inside me on behalf of the children they’re leaving by the wayside because they don’t want to “settle” for an adoptee. I don’t believe in the soul. I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe in karma. I don’t believe in the supernatural at all. I believe in compassion, and while I can think of many failures of compassion greater than robbing a child of safety and love because someone else contributed genetic material, I still find the decision extremely upsetting.

What I do not do is say this shit to people. What I do not do is say to my friends or to strangers, “I am disappointed in you as a morally-mature fellow inhabitant of the universe.” I do not say it in words and I would not try to say it with legislation either. Their body, their choice. Their body does not exist to please me in any way. This is why you will not see me outside of fertility clinics holding signs with pictures of miserable foster children, or trying to pressure legislators to curtail anybody’s freedom to reproduce as they see fit.

I use contraceptives and if I get pregnant, I will seek an abortion. If I decide to become a parent, I will seek to become a foster parent. Abortion for me is the compassionate choice, and I hope that I’ve made it clear just how strongly I feel morally compelled toward it. Having an abortion will be my way of being the best human being I can be, of leaving the world a little better than I found it. If I can feel this strongly and still want others to be able to follow their own conscience, those who are pro-life owe me the same.

I have no problem with pro-lifers. They are following their conscience and I can ask no more of any person. It’s only anti-choicers who wish to prevent me from following mine, and they are a moral disease that eats at the heart of any society which harbors and heeds them. In trying to prevent me from having an abortion I feel they are trying to prevent me from allocating my personal resources to the children who need them most, and it is no overstatement to say that as a result I consider them an enemy of civilization itself.

Feminist Hivemind Links

This blog is all about the goodness, y’all.

Women and Woo

Scepticism and the sceptics have done a good job at demonstrating that those things are not only bogus but also dangerous. What they have failed at is to look at the reasons why predominantly women fall for them. Instead they often go for the easy answers: It’s because they’re women.

The case for open borders

It is not an accident that most of the victims of immigration control across the Western world are people of colour from developing countries. Here in Britain, it is striking to contemplate how many of the people held in immigration detention facilities come from countries which Britain itself once colonized and plundered in the era of the British Empire: as some activists have put it, “we are here because you were there”. In many former British colonies, many of the most repressive laws still in force – including the criminalization of gay relationships, still a reality in much of Africa – are direct legacies of colonial-era legal systems imposed by Britain itself. Global poverty, likewise, is not an accident but a product of economic oppression over the course of centuries, and the inequality between the richest and poorest countries in the world can only be described as staggering. And yet we continue to punish people for fleeing poverty, violence and instability and seeking a better life in another country.

My Letter to CFI’s Board of Directors

Sent to the CFI Board of Directors via the Corporate Secretary, Tom Flynn (tflynn at centerforinquiry dot net)

Subject: WiS2: The “Welcome” Speech and the Event Itself

I have relatively little to say about CEO Ronald Lindsay’s “welcome” speech at Women in Secularism 2 that has not already been said elsewhere, but because I know you all have some discussions to have and decisions to make, I wanted to try and save you the legwork of tracking down all the commentary on this that’s been happening. There’s a link compilation here, sorted by day: https://dissentofawoman.wordpress.com/2013/05/20/women-in-secularism-2-breaking-news-even-at-wis-we-have-to-defend-the-purpose-of-wis/ (Full disclosure: I wrote this.)

So all that mess aside.

This is only the second secular conference I have ever been to. I only went to the American Atheists event last year because it coincided with the Reason Rally. I think I didn’t fully realize what last year’s Women in Secularism conference was all about or I’d have flown halfway across the country all over again just to be there for it, and I am still sad that I only realized afterward how phenomenal an event it had been.

This year I said, “I am gonna be there.”

I made it.

I was so thrilled. I was seeing names and faces of people I’d only ever known through their writing, but here we all were. I was getting to hear new voices, too. Goddard, Namazie, Goldstein… these were women I’d never really gotten much exposure to, and I think I will be a different activist forever because of the discussions that I got to listen to and participate in at Women in Secularism 2.

Consequently, I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that Lindsay did not ruin the conference, even if he provided a particularly convenient example to point to later for why we needed the conference in the first place. All the complaining doesn’t mean we did not appreciate WiS. All of the complaining is happening because we appreciated the conference so much that his dismissive and derisive attitude toward its organizers, speakers, and paying attendees was just… it broke our hearts.

He broke our hearts because we loved what we’d come together to do so much that it was a huge disappointment to discover that even here, even at a Women in Secularism conference, our points of view and our concerns were being cautioned away lest we speak too loudly or too forcefully within our own movement.

We don’t intend to let it stop us, though. I know that I have made a tremendous number of new activist connections as a result of WiS2, and that drastically changes my efficacy as an activist as well as everybody else I might now be in a position to support just a little. Whatever Lindsay’s attitude is/was toward feminism and indeed the purpose of the conference, it has done a great deal of good which cannot be undone by his apparent willingness to undermine us.

I am writing to ask for more.

CFI put a lot of time, money, and hope into this conference, and the good it did cannot be undone. We want more. We haven’t given up, so please don’t you give up either. Give us another conference next year and I intend to be there, just as jubilant to be with my community as I was this time.

Thanks for your time, and indeed for everything.

-Xenologer

Ashley Miller on Atheism and Social Justice

In case anybody reading didn’t know that Ashley Miller’s blog is super cool, please go read this beautiful essay by Kate Donovan: Why Atheism Inspires Me to Seek Social Justice

I have but this one short life. Though it would be nice to plan to live to a ripe and grouchy old age, it could end tomorrow. Or next Tuesday. Life has this terrible habit of behaving unpredictably, you know.

Though I am extraordinarily clumsy, I will likely, as do the vast majority of people, fade out of existence quietly. Five, ten, fifty years from then, I will have become nothing but curled pictures and retold retellings of stories.

These are facts, and they are cold. We atheists hear a lot about the chill of disbelief, about what we miss without a sense of the supernatural, the oceans of unseen, unmeasured universe we just have to have faith in. We are asked if it isn’t just a little bit lonely, to have nothing but ourselves and the neurons between our ears? With so little meaning to our lives, what motivation can we have?

Quite a bit, really.

Go read more. It’s lovely. Whoever you are, you deserve something lovely today.

(Edit: I owe Kate an apology because I utterly failed to notice that she was the one who’d written this entry. Anyway. Kate is amazing. Go love Kate.)

Women in Secularism 2: Breaking News: Even at WiS, we have to defend the purpose of WiS!

If you want some background as to why we even had this conference, Ken Chitwood posted in the Houston Chronicle about it on May 15th about the upcoming event. Female atheists fight for equality in freethought movement

Women are in a bit of a conundrum when it comes to religion. Increasingly, women want more roles, greater leadership and increased participation. At the same time, such vertical movement is harder for women to attain as pockets of religious conservatism tighten control, leaving women with a crisis. It turns out, what is true for women in religion is true for women without religion as well.

From May 17-19 over 300 women will be convening in Washington D.C. for the Women in Secularism 2 conference, a sequel to the first successful gathering the year before. The aim for attendees is to hear from prominent female free-thought activists on this seemingly contradictory predicament.

While the initial conference was about celebrating female secular activists, this year is meant to take the cause one step further. Not only will the convention rally female free-thought voices and call for women in leadership positions in secular organizations, it will combat those in the secular movement who have shown hostility towards emerging feminine secular champions.

Some of you may remember that I dropped a very quick entry about Ron Lindsay’s embarrassing introduction to Women in Secularism 2 (TW: animated gifs).

Now here come all the links and citations and other lengthy ridiculousness. My thanks go out to Mary Ellen Sikes because I got lots of these links from her.