No Clowning With Choice

I know for some it might seem counterintuitive for a lesbian to care deeply about abortion. (Which, obviously, is dumb because lesbians need abortions for all manner of reasons.) But honestly the current national debate about abortion should be maddening for all regardless of sexual orientation or gender. All this ceaseless moralizing is just a convenient way to control women and pregnant people, particularly poor people and people of color. Make no mistake, the only thing these abortion bans will do is make it unsafe for women and pregnant people to end their unwanted pregnancies again. Abortions will still happen, period. They’ll continue to be easy to access for the rich, but become unsafe and potentially deadly for the not rich.

What I think the framing of the abortion debate really is (besides obvious Christian-right propaganda and typical patriarchal bullshit) another example of how our culture continues to other-ize perfectly normal largely female activities. Take ads for period products. Like, for fuck’s sake, we’ve all grown up with a lifetime of watching blue liquid be poured onto pads because it’d be too “gross” to show fake blood. Somehow the concept of menstruation is too icky for polite people to talk about despite more than half the world’s population experiencing it basically every month for literally decades of their lives.

Part of what makes Cicily Strong’s* “Goober the Clown Who Had an Abortion When She was 23”-sketch work so well is it deflates the typical “Not something we talk about in polite society”-ness of abortion. She’s not making fun or light of abortion, quite the opposite. She’s instead skewering the absurdity of the taboo that says women and people who have been pregnant should hide and never talk about their abortions. One in three women will have an abortion in her lifetime. It’s not shameful, it’s healthcare. And you probably know and love someone very much who has had one and is grateful they are safe, legal and accessible.

The only shame is if we let a loud minority (because, again, most American support safe and legal abortion) control us. So honka-honka off with that nonsense. And don’t ever clown around with women and pregnant people’s right to choose.

*My tired brain appreciates the spell checks! Doh!