Abortion is Medical Care not a Fucking Spa Vacation

 

TOM COTTON: The military should not be paying for abortion tourism

SHANNON BREAM: So what should women who are in uniform in a place where they cannot access an abortion because they are there on orders, what should they do?

COTTON: They have 30 days of annual leave pic.twitter.com/18UHQnmWx6

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 16, 2023

He's being disingenuous about how easy it is to just go ahead and get leave depending upon what your unit is up to, and seems to be oblivious to how time-sensitive the mission to get a pregnancy resolved truly is, but I guess what this dead-eyed putz is implying that really set me off is the idea that taking leave and making a trip to where safe, legal reproductive care can be obtained is a FUCKING VACATION! A FUCKING TOUR OF THE WONDERFUL AND LUXURIOUS WORLD OF NOT CARRYING A FETUS. A GODDAMN SIGHTSEEING EXTRAVAGANZA OF YOUR KNEES UP AND WHATNOT IF SURGICAL AND A PHARMACY IF MEDICAL! AND MAYBE YOU WILL WITNESS THE LOCAL ANTI-ABORTION TRIBES PERFORMING THEIR SLUT-SHAMING RITUALS! AND EVEN INVOLVE YOU IN THEM!

I don't know how Tom Cotton was raised, but I guess if it was in Arkansas, land of the Duggars, maybe his early rearing really was as backwards regarding sex ed as a very backwards thing can be. The thing where women who are raped are seen as having been traps for their rapists. The thing where having had sex taints and uses a woman up--makes her less worthy. (Describing the sexual female as "used gum" in Christian abstinence education haunts me. Vaginas, are elastic like gum and self-cleaning like ovens. What the whole fuck?) The thing where her life is nothing compared not only to a viable fetus, but even to a nonviable one. As if she was obliged to go down with the ship because someone else desperately believed in miracles. 

There are some states that want a whole committee to even determine when an abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother--they don't really care about her life. They care about signifying how anti-abortion they can be to appease the extremists. 

Maybe Tom Cotton thinks he can scare woman out of serving at all. He doesn't care if their pregnancy was the result of a situation that befell them in the line of duty, or a disaster created by a genuine non-ironic Bravo Foxtrot.  Or maybe they are just overworked, underpaid, and too committed to have a kid right now, and that isn't his business. Unless he wants to compensate soldiers better on behalf of their ability to have families. And even so. His inability to appreciate that birth control and even abortion are rational choices for employees of the US services and their ability to choose it for themselves is essential to their ability to continue being a valued part of their mission is shortsighted and bigoted. 

But dismissing the right of someone to healthcare as if this choice wasn't as much a part of their American freedoms as their choice to serve in the first damn place, and their desire to do the second part isn't at all connecting with him as to why he should support the first? Talking about a decision that has an impact on their entire lives as if it was for a massage and a facial?  "Tourism"? Just a use of vacation time? The flippant and misogynistic degradation of it all?

His demonstration that he cares so little for his fellow citizen or soldier because they are female-bodied is a shame and I don't like how in Arkansas, he's only going to be more eligible for reelection for this kind of thing (or not? Tell me there's a hope for not!).