Ms Lauren at Feministe asked her readers a few days ago to comment on abortion.

My readers may remember that in January we discussed whether women's lives have improved since Roe v Wade. I don't think they have.

Some people who commented on Feministe's blog are very much of the belief that abortion is crucial to the well-being of women. It's interesting to look at the reasons given.

One person wrote:

"Without [reproductive rights] women's lives become almost unbearably difficult, especially for those women who are poor."

Especially for women who were raised in neglectful or abusive situations, the world seems dangerous and dark--to the extent that carrying an unplanned pregnancy will make our lives "almost unbearably difficult". I remember feeling this way myself.

Looking around, though, I do have to challenge the idea that women's lives were in reality almost unbearably difficult when abortion was prohibited and have now improved.

This person (a woman) goes on to immediately add:

"Men and women are going to have sex, and I can't imagine men agreeing to having penetrative intercourse only when they want to be fathers and are absolutely convinced that the woman also wants to be a mother. To be completely honest, most of the time men want to have sex and not become fathers."

This suggests that the purpose of abortion rights is to free men to have penetrative intercourse without simultaneously signing onto the possibility of fatherhood.

Since this woman started out by saying that abortion makes women's lives bearable, she may mean that abortion makes our lives bearable because it means that we can now have sex with men who want sex but not babies, and who would want us to clean up the results of some particular acts of penetrative intercourse by driving to an abortion clinic and having the baby sucked out into a dish, so a lab tech can strain it in the back room and count two tiny arms, two tiny legs and a tiny skull to make sure they got it all.

The modern empowered post-Roe v Wade woman. Life is good.