Sweet Jesus Elisabeth Hasselbeck is a moron:
The run-down if you don’t want to watch the stupidity first-hand: The women of The View are discussing Hillary Clinton’s proposal to give every child born in the United States a $5,000 bond. Elisabeth dislikes this idea, but she sees one upside: “This would maybe cause less abortions in the world.”
The rest of The View cast realizes that this is kind of inane, since $5,000 doesn’t off-set the cost of pregnancy, childbirth, and raising a kid for (at least) 18 years, plus bribing someone into childbirth just seems like a bad idea. Whoopi Goldberg responds by asking Elisabeth if she’s ever been in the position where she had to consider having an abortion; Elisabeth says no. Whoopi then launches into an explanation of why abortion rights are crucial, and emphasizes that most women really struggle with the decision and don’t take it lightly. Then Babs chimes in, pointing out that there was a myth that women would have babies to collect more welfare dollars, and that, in fact, women were not having children for the extra $20 a month. Joy says that it’s impossible raise a child on $5,000.
Elisabeth counters with, “You also cannot ignore the fact that there are abortions done for superficial reasons and for reasons that are not extreme.” How can we not ignore this fact? Well, because as Elisabeth says, “It’s my personal feeling.”
It’s basically the same as “The only acceptable abortion is my abortion” meme that goes around a lot in both anti-choice and moderately pro-choice circles. Anti-choicers rely on the stereotype of the woman who is too lazy to use birth control and too selfish to give birth to prop up their political position. Elisabeth is ok with abortion, provided that the woman in question fits her definition of “in need.” Of course, the description of the woman deserving of an abortion shifts depending on who you’re talking to, and when you add actual people with complicated lives into the mix things get very messy very quickly. If I got pregnant tomorrow, would I “deserve” the right to terminate my pregnancy? After all, I’m a student living on loans, deeply in debt, in a foreign country, graduating law school in eight months and then studying for and taking the bar exam, and moving back into a fifth-floor walk-up apartment in Manhattan with two room mates come January. But then, I come from a middle-class family and I have parents who would help me and I could always do the adoption thing — and giving birth right before the bar isn’t that much of a hassle, right?
So I suspect I’d pretty much be the picture of the woman having an abortion for “superficial” reasons. And the “my reasons for abortion are way more justified than your reasons” game is a losing one.
Right along with the “women have abortions because they are selfish and superficial” schtick is the “but women use abortions for birth control” line. It shows up in the comments at Jezebel about halfway down the page. And it’s kind of a funny argument — I mean, if a woman isn’t having an abortion to control whether or not she gives birth, why is she having one? Abortion is a form of controlling the number, timing and spacing of your births — in other words, birth control.
What the “abortion shouldn’t be birth control” crowd actually means is the exact same thing as Hasselbeck — that women are having abortions for reasons they disapprove of. Take this comment:
I dont agree with everything Hasselbeck says but i understood what she was saying when she said it. I got angry when Whoopi said, its the worst thing a woman could go through. You think women want to have abortions?
Off the top of my head I can count 7 people I know who had abortions basically as a means of birth control.
3 girls in high school had about 3 abortions each. Their boyfriends were my good friends and i know they did because they drove their dumbass girlfriends to the clinic every time. I begged them to just try a condom. Or birth control and it never seem to get into their heads.One girl in college had 2 in one year. Because she was 1.) broken up with her boyfriend and it was his but she wanted to date other guys and not want to be a freshman with a baby and 2.) because she just started dating a football player and she really liked him and didnt want to lose him because of them. I was her suitemate in college and I ripped her a new one when she told me. I told her to wrap it up and deal with it. and that she was a retarded assclown who shouldnt be allowed to have sex without proper testing.
Wow, what a friend. Your college suitemate tells you she’s pregnant and she doesn’t want to have a baby because she’s no longer partnered with the man who got her pregnant, she’s a freshman in college, and she’s not ready to be a mom. You “rip her a new one” and impart upon her that she is a “retarded assclown.”
the bad roommate got knocked up because her and her “friend with benefits” werent careful and she didnt want because he was, get this, UGLY. he was a good lay but ugly. She didnt want to be tied to him so she had an abortion. She didnt want the responsibilty and she really couldnt handle it because she could barely take care of herself. Once again I went through the roof. I did take her to the abortion clinic and I sat there and waited all day.
Again, the problem seems to be that the room mate got pregnant in a situation that the commenter disapproved of. I would say not wanting to be tied to someone you never had a real relationship with and recognizing that you are incapable of taking care of yourself, let alone a child, is a pretty good reason not to have a child. But not in the anti-choice world, where people who feel they are the least qualified and the least ready to have children should be the first forced into childbirth.
Its a sobering thing to go to a clinic you strongly oppose. I saw teenage girls who begged their mothers to let them keep it, I saw one woman who said outloud she couldnt keep it because then her husband would know she was having an affair.
Like i said, i dont always agree with Hasselbeck. I can understand why some have abortions. Rape and incest among other factors I absolutely understand. But we also have some fucking morons who go and do this. Makes me sad.
People do lots of things for reasons I dislike. For example, I think it’s a bad idea to purposely get pregnant in order to save a failing marriage, or because you just want something to love. But you know, life is complicated,and while on their face those sound to me like really bad reasons, to the women living those scenarios they are valid and they are reflective of a context larger than a one-sentence description. The definition of “superficial” is pretty flexible, and when we start playing Vagina Police we get into some nasty territory.
Plus, who gets to regulate what’s valid and what’s not? Is Elisabeth going to run an abortion-approval company where she has to stamp your abortion-card before a doctor will see you?
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I know this has been asked a krumzillion times, but how is “I don’t want a baby” superficial? Yeah, yeah, don’t explain it to me again. It would be wrong to wish unwanted pregnancy on anyone, but jeebus, Hasselbeck’s never gonna learn, is she?
Jesus, I love Whoopi!
Tch. At the clinic I went to I saw women of every age range, ethnicity (well, representative of where I live), economic level, married, single, having their partners with them, having their mothers with them, and alone. I didn’t see anyone who seemed to be frivolously having an abortion or coerced into having an abortion.
Really, going to an abortion clinic just made me realize even more this is a service that *anyone* might need.
Oh, and Elizabeth Hasselbeck is a total privileged whiny baby moron.
I’m against the $5000 payment but not because it will reduce abortions. (What an absurd thought and far more superficial than anything else Hasselbeck describes.) I’m against it because it doesn’t work and it hides what really needs to be done. I live in Quebec and for years they offered $500 for the first two children and $5000 for the next children. The birthrate continued to drop because finances are not the only reason that women forgo having children. Now that payout is gone and it has been replaced by inexpensive universal childcare (still not enough spaces and the transition was a doozy), parental leave paid out of the employment insurance, guarantees on retaining your job, tax breaks for childcare expenses and no sale tax on diapers, formula and other infantcare necessities. We are now going through a mini babyboom, still not up to replacement levels but getting there.
Still I agree with the I love Whoopi sentiment and I still don’t understand why Barbara doesn’t hit her upside the head every time she opens her mouth.
How selfish of her to want an education before she has a baby! She should be forced to either become a dependent housewife or a minimum wage slave for the rest of her life for getting pregnant! Or, hey, some women are able to handle the stress of having children and staying in college, so she can too, because all women are the same!
/snark
I love the fevered imagination of self righteous anti-choicers.
What JW said; why are there people (especially the sort of middle ground, moderate-pro choicers that Jill mentioned) who think it’s ever right to expect or think a woman should carry out a pregnancy that she doesn’t want?
“You also cannot ignore the fact that there are abortions done for superficial reasons and for reasons that are not extreme.”
You mean it’s OK for skydivers who are consuming energy drinks while lighting themselves on fire can have abortions in the Hasselbeck Administration?
Furthermore, I always find it fascinating that people of this ilk think that it’s a good idea for selfish, superficial, or “f*cking moron” type people to have children they don’t want or aren’t prepared to care for. Because that’s exactly the type of childhood I wish I had . . .
oh but johanna, they can always be put up for adoption. Like that solves any of the issues that would lead a woman to abortion in the first place. Just what we want, more children forced into the over stretched, under funded foster system.
What would someone who seemed to be “frivolously having an abortion” look like?
I’m imagining… pom-poms. Or maybe a pink feather boa.
We have a $3000 (maybe $4000 now? Not planning children, I’ve no idea the exact amount) “baby bonus” (yes, it’s actually called that) here in Australia, and really, it doesn’t do much for families since it’s not enough money to raise a child on (even if we do have universal healthcare to some degree), and it prompts periodic panics about how teenage girls and stupid womens are popping out babies to get $3K and spending it on plasma televisions. Or whatever.
That letter had a bit of that good ole Penthouse Forum feel to it. Who would get a ride to the abortion clinic from a roomie who’d slagged your decision? The teen girls (girlS – plural!!!) begging not to have abortions. Can anyone here imagine a clinic (existing outside of the fevered imagination of a right-to-lifer) where someone saying they didn’t want an abortion wouldn’t lead to them being called into a room without their escort to make sure this was their decision?
I call bullshit.
I’m imagining Samantha Bee in that recent clip “Is America Ready for a Woman President” with her feet in the stirrups, checking her e-mail, and demanding to know why the doc isn’t finished yet. She’d probably have a cosmo in hand too.
BTW, I think that $5000 proposal is not a payment the parents as a reward for breeding, but a bond for the kid’s later education.
Surely there must be a prom dress or a ski trip in there somewhere.
That Elizabeth Hasselback is a bloody moron. I think Whoopi should’ve turned the screw a few more times.
Pink feather boa works, but the feet in the stirups would also have to be in a mid-pedicure state. With those little foam toe separators.
Zuzu is right. The $5K goes into an account for the kid for them to access presumably when they reach their majority to buy a house or pay for college. Which makes Hasselbeck’s comments re superficial abortions even more inane. What is more disturbing to me is that there are plenty of people who take soundbites or opinions they hear elsewhere and perpetrate them as “facts” or “evidence”. I had a similar argument with a co-worker last week because she was angry that a women she stood behind in the grocery store paid with food stamps and later, in the parking lot, got into a Lexus. She either couldn’t or wouldn’t understand that women on welfare really didn’t have lots of children to pay for their Lexus’. She has heard that “those women” have lots of kids so they can collect lots of taxpaer money and dadgumit that is the truth!
She thinks peope can get through college on less than $5000. For this, she is clearly not a person whose feelings and emotions should be the deciding factor on… anything, really. $5000. If only!
Whoopi- tell her you had an abortion! Maybe then she will realize that “women who have abortions” are not vague fantasy women off somewhere downing cosmos as they get their third abortion this month.
OMG foam toe separators.
And of course, they’d be handing out invites for their abortion after-party.
Again, the problem seems to be that the room mate got pregnant in a situation that the commenter disapproved of.
In all of these comments, the commenters do not ascribe ANY rights to the unborn as if it’s a piece of trash and that is the point that many are trying to make.
If you have a health problem or some other serious problem, abortion is more palatable, but for simple convenience, it’s monsterous.
El Viajero, have you ever been pregnant? Because carrying a pregnancy for nine months, giving birth and raising a child or giving it up for adoption is more than just an “inconvenience.”
Also, seriously, what’s with the term “unborn”? When and how does one become un-born? My potential future children are not yet born. They are also not yet conceived. They are “unborn,” right? Do they have rights? Must I stop using birth control and start having sex because my current choices are forcing them to continue their unborn status, or preventing them from every being born in the first place?
In other words, “unborn” is a really stupid term.
As for the question of rights, I personally think that a fetus may be invested with some rights, but that fetal rights do not trump the rights of the woman carrying it. So unless I can demand that you use your organs to support my existence, a fetus can’t demand that of me.
But you are missing the point! Giving birth before the bar exam would be a non-issue, because if you were a good woman you would immediately drop out of law school upon finding out you were pregnant, then move home with the parents, and raise your baby, and dutifully hang your head in shame for the next 18 years. Anything less would be incredibly selfish. Duh.
Oh, and the father of the baby–same rules would not apply. And, his support system (and maybe even yours ) would expect you to throw yourself on your sword so as not to ruin HIS future.
i also love how she (elizabeth) basically equates being middle class with being just above the poverty line. like she would have any idea.
FYI: El Viajero is a particularly nasty troll from Lawyers, Guns and Money. And very likely a pseud for Fred Jones.
This is just a foretaste of the nastiness to come, mark my words. There is no arguing in good faith with him.
She clearly doesn’t understand the plan, which is to have the $5K in a bond, earning interest, for 18 years.
I think, though, she hears “money for a baby” and thinks “welfare.” Remember how much conservatives freaked out about cash payments to (poor, black) people displaced by Katrina?
Mmmmm, lipids.
Hi Jill. I can’t tell what your attitude towards the $5000 per kid policy is. You haven’t clearly said that you think the policy would *not* prevent abortions. And at one point you said that “bribing someone into childbirth just seems like a bad idea.” That makes it sound as if you think someone *could* be bribed into childbirth for $5000, even though doing that would be a bad idea. But then I’m confused because that is surely Hasselbeck’s position, and you don’t seem to like her very much. Mind clarifying your point?
Chad, to be completely honest, I haven’t looked into Clinton’s policy at all, so I don’t know the details of it well enough to weigh in. At first glance I don’t like it, but that’s an uneducated evaluation. But the point of this post isn’t the Clinton policy; it’s Hasselbeck’s ignorance, and how her statement is par for the course from anti-choice and even moderate pro-choicers.
So you would neither disagree nor agree with Hasselbeck’s assertion that the policy would prevent some abortions, you just don’t like her idea that some abortions are “more valid” than others. Is that right?
Chad, how would it prevent abortion to give a $5000 bond to a kid that won’t mature for 18 years?
People don’t have babies to get welfare, why would they go for this?
Oh I see now zuzu. Sorry–all I knew about this was what Jill wrote in the post, which didn’t make it clear that it was just a bond for the kid and also didn’t make it clear that she disagrees with Hasselbeck’s claim that the policy would prevent abortions. So I was left with the impression that she might actually agree with that part of Hasselbeck’s position. Now I see that Hasselbeck’s remark was completely bizarre, and of course Jill doesn’t agree with it.
So the boyfriends — the poster’s friends — refused to use condoms and yet it was solely the “dumbass girlfriend’s” fault that she got pregnant and had to have an abortion?
Nice.
I noticed that too, Mnemosyne. Are we sure the original story wasn’t posted by Ann Coulter? This looks suspiciously like one of her rants, where she carries on about how stupid women are in an effort to get a pat on the head from the Patriarchy and take her rightful place as an “honorary” guy.
Everytime Elizabeth opens her mouth, I want to stuff a rag in it and make her really listen. There is knowbody on television that knows less of what she is talking or commenting about. She really does not realize that if the Supream Court takes our rights away, that Women will unite and bring that building down.
That woman is a complete idiot. She won’t listen to anything someone with sense tells her, because it isn’t possible that she could ever be wrong about something she has absolutely not experience of. To even suggest such a thing is the worst insult to her and her kind imaginable. What I’d like to do is to see her or someone she loves in the situation to have to make such a choice and then see what she thinks. Not that I really expect much from her, because of course that situation would be different, not like us regular, slutty women out there. But I guess I can hope that she would at least learn some empathy.
And Jill, I’m sure that any future abortion I have would also be considered superficial and frowned upon. Because I’m a middle class married white woman with two kids already and I’m overeducated. Technically, I could financially afford another kid (except I have no idea how we’re going to afford college for the two we have, much less some hypothetical third), but I just don’t want one. I hated being pregnant, I hated childbirth, and I’m not terribly fond of the baby years (mine are just starting to get interesting and fun–at 5 and 2). But, my kids are brown, so maybe I’d get a pass for not bringing more non-white children into the world. Who knows, maybe racism would beat sexism in that case.
Also, I don’t really care for Whoopi’s characterization of abortion as the “the most difficult, important choice a woman can make” or whatever she said. I agree with her sentiment, that it should be legal, safe, and available for whoever needs one, but it’s language like that that makes it so much easier for the crazies to other and dehumanize the choices that women make every day to have an abortion. And it also allows the mushy middle ground, moderately pro-choicers out there to make the “some women have abortions for frivolous reasons” arguments. For me, the decision to have an abortion should I get pregnant again wouldn’t be all that terribly difficult. I don’t like being pregnant and I don’t want more children. Period. Sure, it would be an important life decision, but not all that much different than the decision to go to college, or grad school, or to get married, etc. And certainly not as life changing, or guilt inducing, as that comment implies that it should be.