When you’re the host
The hostility is a little too obvious with this one:
A bill advancing in Oklahoma would require a woman to get the written consent of the fetus’s father before obtaining an abortion.
The bill, which passed out of a House committee Tuesday, would also require a woman “to provide, in writing, the identity of the father of the fetus to the physician who is to perform or induce the abortion,” according to the bill’s language. “If the person identified as the father of the fetus challenges the fact that he is the father, such individual may demand that a paternity test be performed.”
The bill’s author, Rep. Justin Humphrey (R), could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
What’s the problem here? The father doesn’t gestate the fetus. That’s the problem here. It’s not his body that gets taken over for nine months. He doesn’t have the same kind of stake that she does. He may long for a baby, he may long for a baby far more than she does, but that has nothing to do with the fact that she is the one who has to share her body in order to make the baby.
It is because the woman does have to share her body in order to make the baby that the father must not have a veto power over her choice not to share her body, nor a right to force or compel her to share her body. His desire for a baby (gestated by someone else), however strong, cannot overrule someone else’s desire not to gestate a baby.
Humphrey says he gets all that “it’s her body” stuff – he just disagrees with it.
But in an interview with The Intercept earlier this month, Humphrey said that men should be able to have a say over the fate of a fetus, and suggested that a woman has greater responsibility in a relationship for preventing pregnancy because she would be the “host.”
“I believe one of the breakdowns in our society is that we have excluded the man out of all of these types of decisions,” he said. “I understand that they feel like that is their body,” he said of women. “I feel like it is a separate — what I call them is, is you’re a ‘host.’ And you know when you enter into a relationship you’re going to be that host and so, you know, if you pre-know that then take all precautions and don’t get pregnant,” he explained. “So that’s where I’m at. I’m like, hey, your body is your body and be responsible with it. But after you’re irresponsible then don’t claim, well, I can just go and do this with another body, when you’re the host and you invited that in.”
Not a problem he’ll ever have to deal with, is it. Easy for him to assume that women who get pregnant without wanting to are just “irresponsible” and that’s the end of it. Easy for him to assume that all pregnancies are “invited in.”
Just FYI, Humphrey, the other entity in a biological relationship wherein one is deemed the “host” is known as the “parasite”.
I know consistency is never going to be the strong suit of people that stupid, but —
How can it not occur to them that requisitioning somebody else’s body to serve other people in need means people can get stopped in the street, sent to hospital, tissue typed, and their spare kidney, liver lobe, lung, etc., etc. extracted for someone who is in need of an organ transplant.
Rhetorical question, of course. Women aren’t humans, just brood sows, so it’s not like you have to worry about the principle applying to real people.
But still. They know they’re surrounded by infidels who think women are half of Homo sapiens. Why don’t they feel like they have to pretend they didn’t just argue for compulsory organ donation?
If I invite someone into my home, I can kick them out at any time. Being a host, and offering an invitation, does not mean I am now barred from rescinding my invitation.
Oh, but, you know, that wouldn’t be the same as “inviting them in”. These are innocent people, not slutty sluts who had sex and everything, and assumed the male might be partially responsible for preventing pregnancy. Shame on them, they need consequences so they will learn never to have fun again.
I would say I’m glad to be out of Oklahoma, but I fear this thinking is contagious all over the damn country.
Emily @3, also, if the ‘guest’ is actually a gate crasher that turned up with the person you invited into your er… home, then you should be entitled to kick them out.
I think this metaphor is nearing the limits of its usefulness. Is that politician really trying to infer that women are impolite and ungracious enough to rescind an invitation to dinner, or that they are cattle and he’s just dressing it up in a way that tries to make women look bad. Either way, he really sucks.
Rob #5, the point I was making was Judith Jarvis Thomson’s point: even if I actually DO fully invite someone into my house, they have no right to my house. It’s MY house. Only I have rights to it. It might be kind of me to let someone stay, but I am not obligated to do so.
Emily, I totally agree with you. I object to so-called pro-life authoritarians constantly setting the agenda by framing things the way the do.
Pro-life: as if the life of the existing sentient human woman (and often her family) is less important than the potential new life.
Guest: placing an onus of ‘politeness’ on the woman to just accept that this is how it is for the next wee while and she can clean the carpets afterward.
We can make use of their metaphor, but for a wavering audience it still frames the discussion in the way they want it framed.
Everything in that one statement.
Rob, its rhetorical effectiveness is no doubt dependent on the (either implicit or explicit) assumption that women have natural duties toward babies; that women’s bodies are designed for babies. Religious worldviews are often associated with this kind of teleological thinking.
Exactly Chris #8. They feel like it is their body God designed it for babies. So it’s really the babies’ body, not the women’s.
Ugh, typo. Should say “They feel like it is their body, but God designed it for babies. So it’s really the babies’ body, not the women’s.”
First, a pregnant woman is generally referred to as a mum-to-be, so the contributer of the sperm is not yet a father, just a potential father-to-be. Nit-picking maybe, but referring to the ‘father of the foetus’ is rather putting the cart before the horse; people become parents once the baby is born.
Second, what does Humphrey think shpuld happen in cases where the impregnator’s name is unknown?, or worse, in cases of rape where the rapist is either not caught, or is caught but refuses to give permission to abort?
Third, in the interest of fairness, will the bill also require men to get written permission from their female partners before having a vasectomy? It does, after all, deny the women the chance to be mothers unless they change partners (an option for the men, of course; if they want babies, maybe check that the women do too, before committing to a relationship / having unprotected sex).
Finally, when are these fuckwads going to learn that they have no right to tell women and girls what they can and cannot do with their own bodies?
Probably never. But if they stop getting elected, at least their beliefs resort to private delusions, rather than public policy.
Good luck with that one. My experience with Oklahoma (which admittedly was only 35 years) tells me that they will continue to elect the most regressive people they can find, preferably climate change deniers to boot. My father is among them, and he will vote “Christian” every time. I put that in quotes, because he has a limited definition of Christian that does not include Mormons, Unitarians, Episcopalians, any liberal denomination, and barely includes Catholics.
His church drove away a minister they had been happy with for 30+ years after a sermon explaining why evolution was reality.
I’m wondering (well, not really) why these stalwart defenders of the rights of men are not insisting men have veto power over the woman giving birth. After all, it’s a huge imposition, forcing a man to be a parent if he doesn’t want to be. But nothing is forthcoming on that front. Do you think maybe it has nothing to do with being fair to men? Perish the thought.
Presumably, he is, as we speak, drafting the bill providing for the widespread, cheap provision of contraception to all.
#16; No, he’s too busy drafting the bill to grant all women the power of pre-knowledge.