I'm latinamerican, I dont know about Brazil but in my neck of the woods you just pierce your baby's ears right after she's born. I actually grew up weirded out whenever I read any american books or magazines about girls getting their ears pierced when they hit puberty. To me its in the same vein as a circumcision,…

I often ask Canadians the same thing about Quebec.

Once I tried to grab my dog's tongue like I grabbed my cat's to mess with her while she was yawning. The bottom was SO SLIMY. Never again.

oh, goodness, no.

Exactly, I don't want to step into the fray but the Kimberly Process has been exposed as a scam, De Beers is awful, even De Beers chairman has admitted "diamonds have no intrinsic value" beyond filling a deep psychological need. The amount of land that needs to be shifted just to secure one jewelry quality diamond,…

While I don't think people on Jezebel hate engagement rings, I absolutely think that engagement rings, like a lot of traditions involving marriage, raise issues for feminists. This story illustrates that quite well. Engagement rings, like marriage, used to symbolize a man's commitment to take responsibility for a…

The ring as a symbol of the couple's love is crap, it's just a piece of jewelry that indicates you are engaged or married. The woman has to wear it every day, for years (assuming the marriage lasts), she should like it.

I understand what you're saying, and I think most of us firmly in the Pro-Choice camp would like to see all the negativity surrounding abortions to disappear, so women can make the best choice for themselves without being made to feel like shit about it. But I don't think that's realistic. We're never going to get…

Thank you for telling me this, both because I appreciate your sharing, and because it makes me realize that there is probably no single "right" approach for counselling women in this situation. I don't regret having helped the women who came to the clinic where I worked, but I have wondered in retrospect if, in…

Thank you for sharing this.

Right. The confusion with morality is problematic. I want fewer abortions because I would rather that things always went according to plan, that preventions were always available and utilized because it's simpler medically. But the right-wing seizes on that, as one commenter discussed above, and says, "See! You…

Now that I have the experience of early pregnancy, it has made me stronger in my pro-choice feelings. I can only imagine how awful the sickness and body changes are when the pregnancy is unwanted.

In the end, anti-choice to me comes down to someone being ok with forcing a woman to carry to term a terminally ill fetus,…

Honestly, I can see the importance of trying to de-stigmatize abortions for women who are afraid of being judged for choosing to have one, but I have an anecdote that may speak to the unintended negative consequences of the "abortions are no big deal" attitude. I am passionately pro-choice and have been for as long as…

I think part of the line of thinking is that if we keep saying things like "well, I don't like abortions, but I think other women should be able to have them" still suggests that there is something wrong with abortions. The "pro-abortion" contingent (which I probably belong to) want to normalize the procedure until…

See, I don't mean to call you out because maybe it's not exactly what you meant, but this argument is actually why I think people go down the "pro-abortion" rabbit hole—because your argument implies that abortions should be legal, even though they're immoral. I don't think they are immoral. I don't think…

It is a shame, as others have said, that you shy away from the label even though you agree with the most fundamental part of the movements beliefs. Obviously, I would never ever try to tell you what you should call yourself. I can see why your experience in a clinic made you feel that the approach was too detached…

For myself, and I think for many Jezebel readers, the major issue is that we want to leave morality out of it, at least until the legal right and practical access questions are definitively off the table. At this point in the debate, I really don't care whether someone thinks abortion is bad or good, as long as they…

Are labels helpful, though? I suppose you could argue that labels serve the same function as parties: given that on a practical level, it doesn't work in most western systems for every politician to run on his/her own platform, and for every voter to investigate each possible choice on that basis, parties and labels…

That's also what I think, so I'm probably biased, but are there really people who think that's anti-choice?? I can't imagine there's many people who would prefer to have an abortion more than never having an unwanted pregnancy in the first place, since it is a medical procedure that involves some amount of pain and…

These stories inevitably lead to the fork between Jezebel readers: those who say they are pro-choice and argue that so, apparently is Anita Perry (e.g. "I believe abortion should be a choice between a woman and her doctor, but I'm not nuts about abortions—I'd rather women not have to have them.") and the pro-abortion…