One of the most
deeply rooted differences between almost every Pagan and conservative Christians is
our diametrically opposed views of women and the feminine.  We exalt the feminine as Sacred, they denigrate it as spiritually inferior to their male deity.  Women are equal to men, and not just because they can act as men, but because feminine values are equal to masculine ones.  

The differences are not simply theological, for they spill over into how women are treated in this society. For example, former Blue Dog Senator
Zell Miller explained that absent abortion we’d have
more soldiers to fight and die in wars and more Americans to do the minimally
paid jobs that Mexican laborers seek when they come here to work.  Miller was giving these as positive reasons
for abolishing abortion.  The so-called “pro-life” contingent mostly honors unborn life and happily sacrifices actually living human beings to corporate, military, and ecclesiastical priorities. 

Current NeoConfederate Republican and Blue
Dog efforts to re-define rape in a way to eliminate it in some serious cases, and maybe in a great many,  makes me think it is time to touch on these issues again. The current effort by Rick Santorum and the right in general to redefine abortion as like slavery underscore the need to do so. And in case anyone misunderstood, he emphasized it.

They are doing
this in a bill submitted by Republican and Blue Dog degenerates to deprive
women of still more control over their bodies and lives.  Along the way the right is rolling out
a new lie regarding the issue: the fetus is like a slave and abortion is like
slavery. 

Leanne at
Bluewavenews commented

…somehow, in the minds of
the anti-choice crowd, granting the woman autonomy over her own life and body
is more like slavery for a fetus than is forcing that woman to undergo an
unwanted pregnancy, to deliver an unwanted baby, and to deal with the
subsequent changes to her body for the rest of her life. Ending an unwanted
pregnancy is supposedly slavery, while requiring a woman to carry an unwanted
fetus to term is not.” That adult human beings can argue this is a sad
commentary on the utter collapse of morality and reason on the political right.

At first it seemed
to me the logic here is akin to arguing an apple is like a lego and an apple
pie is like a lego car.  But it is
actually far worse than that, for as blogger scatx pointed out, the right has
actually taken the position of the slave holder towards his slave in arguing
against abortion. 

If you do take the time to understand the intertwined history of abortion and slavery, it becomes painfully difficult to assert that abortion is wrong.  Because then you must defend the slaveholder who wanted the enslaved women to birth that child so that he could enslave them both (even as he probably used religion and morality, rather than economics and labor, as his excuse and defense for why one shouldn’t turn to abortion.) Who would be willing to fault the enslaved woman who aborted her fetus because she didn’t want that child to be a slave?  Who would be willing to fault the enslaved woman who aborted her fetus because she physically could not bear the burder of labor and pregnancy?  Who would be willing to fault the enslaved woman who aborted her fetus as a punishment to the man who raped her, barely fed her, barely clothed her, denied her religion, denied her liberty, and whipped her when she worked too slowly, made a mistake, or attempted to flee?  Who would be willing to fault the enslaved woman who aborted her fetus to protect her life and to save the evils of her life from those of her child?  To include the history of enslaved women in the history of slavery and then compare that history to abortion is not easy

When conservative anti-choice advocates make that comparison, they actively erase the enslaved women from that past, from her own history.  This is similar to their larger approach on the issue: erasing women from the discussion.

Scatx’s entire
post is a long one, well worth reading for those interested in getting an in-depth understanding of this issue.  One reason “social conservatives” will ignore it.  It also makes clear the genuine depravity of those using “Abortion
is slavery” rhetoric.  Read it and come back wiser. Another reason they will ignore it.

Ta-Nehisi Coates,
who has more insight in his occasional hangnail that Rick Santorum has in his
entire head, observed “If you’re going to compare
abortion and slavery, then, by God, understand that whereas mothers choose
every day whether to bring children to term, no slave-master ever chose to have
his slave escape. (To say nothing of comparing mothers with slave-masters!!
Fuck, my brain is hurting.)” 

These neo-Confederate imbeciles have no depths to which
they will not stoop, and it is important to throw their garbage back into their
faces whenever they do so. 

My thanks to Balloon Juice
for alerting me to scatx’s post in a wonderful post of their own, which inspired this blog.