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OhioBlue

(5,126 posts)
Sat Oct 6, 2018, 12:20 AM Oct 2018

Could Gen X be the only U.S. generation of women to live their child bearing yrs with abortion right

If you think about it, we have only had one generation of women that have lived through their child bearing years in a post Roe world. I realize boomers lived many of their child bearing years post Roe in '73, but they have to remember what it was like before. And, really if Roe is overturned, it could still affect the younger Gen X women. But, what would a post Roe world look like for the next generations? I think it would be even worse than it was for most baby boomers. While abortion was illegal in many states, Doctors could still perform an abortion if they found it necessary for the well being of the mother, and some docs could interpret that as for the mental well being.

I know plenty of Republican Gen X women that have had abortions. I know Gen X Republican women whose husbands have paid for abortion for girlfriends before they were married. I know Gen X Republican men that have encouraged the women they impregnated to get abortions. Republicans get abortions too. The Democratic party just has as a platform to trust women with their own bodies and reproductive decisions and the Republican party has adopted and perverted a wedge issue to elicit emotion and gain votes.

As a gen X myself, I am too young to remember or know anyone who died or lost their ability to have children because of an unsafe abortion. I do know that it changed the dynamics of my family as my grandma lost her mother at age 5 to an unsafe abortion. I don't know how we change the narrative. Pointing out that people are hypocrites isn't going to work. How do we reach the people that have lived through the post Roe era, remind them of the protections that they had to make their own reproductive decisions and make them understand what it would mean for them to be taken away from their daughters and granddaughters? The danger to their daughters isn't just from unsafe abortions or troubled pregnancies that need to be terminated for the life and/or safety of the mother, but also suicide. Can you imagine being forced to carry your rapist's baby to term and dealing with the trauma while also having pregnancy hormones rush through your body? Do they not care? Do they not understand that it could happen?

I post this because as much as it sucks that Kavanaugh is most likely going to SC, this has been a very long game played by Republicans. It didn't start with the 2016 election. It was a 30-40 year strategic plan to gain a contingent of one issue voters, expand it, change public opinion to favor one side and eliminate thoughtful, intelligent, medically sound debate and just appeal to emotion through propaganda. They have built an entire industry around the issue. They have metastasized a network of for-profit and non-profit organizations around the issue of anti-abortion. They advertise "Pregnancy Centers" that should have been challenged in the courts more and earlier for the false information they give to vulnerable young women. They have radicalized people through Operation Rescue and other such organizations that claim to be pro-life but also bomb and shoot people that should have been labeled as domestic terrorists and prosecuted more and earlier.

Kavanaugh on the SC doesn't mean that Roe is gone. We have been close before and other SC Justices have moderated. Perhaps Roberts will. But, it is also just as likely that Roe will be overturned. My point is, that we were on this path for decades and at any point with a Republican President and Republican controlled Senate, it was a very possible reality. And again, I ask myself... those Republicans that either support Roe or who in their past have experienced points in their life where they have been able to make their own reproductive decisions due to Roe, how do they reconcile? I also ask myself, how do we change the narrative? Dems are not the party of abortion. Members of both parties have abortions. Dems just trust women and doctors but that doesn't make a good tag line in a narrative when one side is calling the other baby killers.




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RhodeIslandOne

(5,042 posts)
1. Maybe I'm crazy but I think Roberts will be moderate
Sat Oct 6, 2018, 12:41 AM
Oct 2018

Oh not on the corporate shit, but I feel he’ll pick his battles on certain cases to keep at least a bit of sanity for his legacy.

question everything

(47,510 posts)
2. Or the generation disdaining the term "feminst"
Sat Oct 6, 2018, 12:45 AM
Oct 2018

because these women never had to have a man co-sign an application for a credit card, or a mortgage? Because employers never rejected (publicly) because they may get pregnant or have problems with babysitters?

OhioBlue

(5,126 posts)
3. excellent point and one that more succintly states part of my thoughts on the issue.
Sat Oct 6, 2018, 12:59 AM
Oct 2018

I remember a round table with women in celebration of Seneca Falls in 2008. It wasn't the GenX women or even the Boomer women that were the most passionate about women's rights, but those a bit older that recounted stories of what life was like before Roe and Title IX

BigmanPigman

(51,615 posts)
5. At a Stop KAVANAUGH protest at the end of Aug
Sat Oct 6, 2018, 01:11 AM
Oct 2018

There were very few people in general(and I have been to a ton of protests so I can tell) and even fewer young people. In fact the majority were women in their 40s and over. We were there because we know it is an ongoing fight and want to help the future generations, when will they wake up and take this seriously? I was disheartened to say the least.

 

aidbo

(2,328 posts)
4. Millennials (Generation Y) are well into their child bearing years. Older millennials are nearing 40
Sat Oct 6, 2018, 01:10 AM
Oct 2018

OhioBlue

(5,126 posts)
7. Yes, I totally get that. My thoughts were more along the line that we really only have one
Sat Oct 6, 2018, 01:29 AM
Oct 2018

generation of women in the history of the US that has entered the age of puberty and lived and many have passed through the child bearing age under Roe and yet we are at a point were many do not know or appreciate the history and struggle of previous generations.

moriah

(8,311 posts)
6. It'd be hard, but I hope that we'd be willing to do what was right even if it wasn't legal.
Sat Oct 6, 2018, 01:19 AM
Oct 2018

Aka, fund the underground railroad to get people to states where it was legal, have guys willing to pretend to be the father should they demand paternal consent. For rural women, the organizations that funded getting the abortion pill set to Ireland, which would be the more hazardous route but still probably safer to have women present in miscarriage to real medical professionals in the first trimester than to attempt to train people in aseptic "menstrual extraction" that was starting shortly before Roe passed.

And that even those of us out of our reproductive years would help, knowing we'd had it better.

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