I debated with myself a long time about what order these last two should go in because I can move from a specific to a general or a general to a specific. And I have at last decided on the former.

And this is actually something I've looked forward to writing, because it deals with the intersections of a lot of prejudiced attitudes that crop up in abortion apologetics. So, without further ado...

1. The average abortion supporter either does not understand basic biology or does not understand its significance to the abortion debate.

2. The pro-choice strawmen have been held up for so long they are now simply assumed and no longer recognized as strawmen at all.

3. The average abortion supporter does not understand how basic rights work.

4. The average abortion supporter does not understand the first thing about the pro-life position.

5. Abortion apologists do not recognize their own anti-feminism.

Yes, I'm going there. Support for abortion is anti-feminist. It is founded on anti-feminist ideology and it runs on anti-feminist principles and it results in anti-feminist culture. I've already touched on this before but it bears repeating: women do not need abortion to be equal with men. We don't. We never have, we never will. Abortion is not some magic tool that makes women better than they otherwise are. Unfortunately, there are a lot of abortion apologists who seem to think that it is.

I'm going back to fandomsecrets because it really is such a cesspool of culture of death thought. Instead of picking out individual comments this time, I'm just going to link this whole thread because it really must be seen to be believed.

Here we have a group of supposed feminists who are equating suffrage and abortion (because the right to vote for your own elected officials is completely the same as the right to kill the unborn whenever you want, amirite?) and further contending that any disagreement with them on this issue constitutes "direct physical harm." Thankfully, there are a few pro-life anons on the thread (who are braver than I am, as I am sick and tired of dealing with the idiots on F!S on this issue). But overall, they all agree: unless women have abortion, they are unequal.

Hold on, though. Because, what would women without abortion be unequal to? Men? Except that why would that be the case? No, men can't physically get pregnant. So what? Why does pregnancy make women less-than? Or unequal to women who aren't pregnant? Again, why? Yes, some women are pregnant and others aren't. So what? Why does pregnancy make women less-than?

This attitude is not pro-women, it's anti-pregnancy. Pregnancy being something only women can do and therefore uniquely female. A hatred of something that is uniquely female that permeates any movement so completely that they come to believe that without the ability to kill unborn children they are materially lesser than they would be if they had it is, quite simply, thoroughly internalized misogyny being expressed as anger. Anger at those who are not anti-pregnancy--and therefore anti-woman--and anger at the unborn, who they have chosen to cast as the oppressors of their bodies. Which is an especially ridiculous position given that the unborn are the single group of humanity that is totally unable to take action to harm anyone.

It's important here not to get mixed up on what I'm saying. Pregnancy is not the sum total of what women are or are capable of. Obviously. Women are not made great through pregnancy or important because of pregnancy or required to undergo pregnancy or anything else like that. But the reverse isn't true either. Pregnancy is a normal event. Literally as natural as breathing. It is a sign of health and neither reduces a woman's self, nor her freedom. The only reason to view abortion as some kind of necessary right is to hold the view that because women can become pregnant, they are reduced in their natural state. And that without artificial intervention to change women and make them more acceptable, women are rendered powerless. That a woman, by herself, really is less-than.

That is the essence of misogyny. Abortion apologetics need anti-feminism to work.

One more point in relation to the F!S thread.

The suffragettes were almost universally pro-life. As are most feminists, including Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Caddy Stanton, and Pearl S. Buck. Pro-abortion feminism is a new invention, and not feminist at all, as I have pointed out. In fact, Alice Paul, the subject of the video that sparked the thread, said "Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women." She, and many of her contemporaries believed that misogynists would use abortion as a tool to reduce women to easy sexual targets, encouraging their victims to get abortions if they became pregnant. You can read more about Paul and other pro-life feminists (many names you'll recognize from the history books) on the history page of Feminists For Life. Also, for the record, Alice Paul was right to worry. That has actually happened. The Abortioneers even agree, though they don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, saying "at the end of the day, aren't men really more pro-no-babies than women anyway? Think about it! How many women have we heard from in clinics or on hotlines who simply can't get the time of the day from their baby daddies? Don't you think these men, deadbeats though they may be, would make great advocates for increased access to contraception? Even if just to keep their

pregnant partners off their backs?

"I'll take what I can get!"

Way to support women, there, gals. In order to try and make abortion a central part of women's equality, you have deliberately decided to invite the assistance of men even you acknowledge as misogynists and deadbeats. I'm really feeling the sisterhood.

The video celebrating Alice Paul is about what happens when pro-life feminists work together to advance true human equality, not how we should all gang up on the unborn and oppress them to death. And it angers me to see those advocating violence try to hijack real feminists.