The Automatik

I moved into a new place about a week ago so things around here have been a bit of a mess.

That is the excuse I am giving as to why I didn’t find out about this amazing event until today.

The ignorance in this would be laughable if it weren’t so staggering.

Let’s be clear: these people aren’t protesting against RU-486, also known as “the morning after pill” or chemically-induced abortions.

They are protesting against birth control pills because they kill babies. So what is it that birth control pills do exactly?

There is a lot of controversy in the medical community about just what it is that The Pill does. According to the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG):

As Christian physicians, we affirm that all life is created by God and that human life is initiated at conception. Fertilization, not implantation, marks the beginning of human life. Disruption of the fertilized egg represents abortion.

They go on to state that, “The mechanism of action of any medicine will not change based on how we feel about it, or on who developed it, or on how eloquently it is defended or opposed. How a medication works is a scientific question.”

Sounds reasonable and logical, doesn’t it? In fact, the site does address three things that The Pill does: 1) prevents ovulation, 2) “inhibit[s] of transport of sperm through the cervix by thickening the cervical mucous” and 3) prevents implantation of a fertilized egg, aka the “hostile endometrium theory.”

Number three is the source of all the controversy.

The rest of the Association’s presentation goes on for over 10,000 words (I counted!) not including all their endnotes. Sorry, but I am not going to read 10,000 words arguing about when and where life supposedly begins or ends, although I will tell you that they conclude that, “there is no evidence that shows that the endometrial changes produced by [The Pill] contribute to failure of implantation of conceptions.”

And why am I not reading all 10,000+ words? Because this argument isn’t about beginning or ending life. It’s about women controlling what happens to them by controlling their own bodies. Such self-actualization and self-determination is a threat to the patriarchy and must be destroyed. Unfortunately many women are active participants in this destruction through an ongoing, socialized internalization of misogyny. The women-haters of the world may be ignorant, but in one respect they are quite shrewd: the best way to oppress a group of people is to infiltrate them from the inside.

The Nazis knew how this type of thing worked. They enlisted prisoners in their own concentration camps as guards for the other prisoners that were starved, beaten, raped, gassed, and otherwise tortured and murdered. These guards were called Kapos and you can read about them in Primo Levi’s excellent book The Drowned and the Saved (among other numerous sources).

The Kapos were often murdered after they’d served their purpose.

The misogyny of a patriarchy that would refuse women basic rights like birth control is not much different. In this view, women only serve one purpose: we must bear children at any cost. Taking control of our own bodies is now equated with murder.

Yet, the sperm which are necessary to fertilize eggs are not factored into the claim that The Pill kills babies. These are the same sperm whose transport is inhibited by The Pill, just as the egg is supposedly prevented from being implanted.

But men aren’t called murderers if they get vasectomies. Of course not! Because it is the slutty, filthy, disgusting women who are at fault. We want to have sex because it feels good not because we want to have children. How dare we not submit to our purpose in life as human incubators! The nerve.

In this world of women-haters, women are only good for one thing. Why not force women to bear children as soon as they start menstruating? Or perhaps every menstruating woman who is not actively pregnant should just be charged with murder. Of their own unfulfilled eggs.

If you’re going to wage war, sometimes you have to fight dirty.