Using LGBTQ+ to Advance a Neo-Liberal Agenda
Who exactly are the LGBTQ+ who are having abortions?
Recently there was an article published by LGBTQNation titled, “Anti-LGBTQ abortion opponents are getting more extreme. These 4 political moves could stop them.”
It discusses the right wing escalating efforts against abortion.
What is of interest is the following statement:
Sixteen states have already passed anti-abortion legislation since the beginning of 2021, bringing the total to 106 bills enacted this year so far. Restricting access to safe, legal abortions isn’t just an issue for heterosexual folks. It also affects LGBTQ people, Black and Indigenous people of color (BIPOC) and everyone else. Approximately six percent of abortion seekers in 2014 were LGBTQ-identified, according to a study by the Guttmacher Institute.
This was the subtitle of the article which was, “Approximately six percent of abortion seekers in 2014 were LGBTQ-identified.”
https://www.guttmacher.org/report/characteristics-us-abortion-patients-2014
So abortion rights are an LGBTQ+ issue because 6 percent of those having got an abortion were LGBTQ+.
My understanding of pregnacy is that, unless artificial insemination is employed, almost all of pregnacy involved a penis inserted into a vagina with ejaculation. So exactly who are the LGBTQ+ having these pregnacies.
The Guttmacher report lists key points and one of the key points is:
The vast majority of abortion patients (94%) identified as straight or heterosexual. Four percent identified as bisexual; fewer than 1% as lesbian, gay or homosexual; and 1% as something other than straight, gay or bisexual.
So when you get further in the report you get these statistics.
The vast majority of abortion patients identified as heterosexual or straight (94%). Four percent of patients said they were bisexual, while only 1% identified as “something else” and 0.3% as homosexual, gay or lesbian. Respondents who indicated “something else” could write in a more specific response; 12 of the 81 who answered affirmatively indicated “pansexual,” which was the only response provided by more than one respondent.
So out of this 6% LGBTQ+, it turns out that 0.3% are homosexual, gay or lesbian.
Lumped into the 6% LGBTQ+ statistic is “Something else.” I am not sure how or why “something else” is LGBTQ+ unless you define LGBTQ+ as that which isn’t heterosexual. LGBTQ+ is an identity which is defined by straightness.
Further examining the 0.3% statistic, evidently there are those who are homosexual, but not gay or lesbian? What exactly does this statistic mean? As for gay’s who got an abortion, I don’t think this involved biological men, maybe transmen who identify as gay, but not Gay biological men.
How Lesbian are you if you are engaged in heterosexual activities? The thing is that if you have a questionnaire you likely have wrongfully filled out forms and people with all sorts of novel and curious ideas about what their identity is. With a number of 0.3% that could just be the noise of error in filling out forms.
What this LGBTQ+ statistic of 6% really represents is people who are engaged in hetrosexual activities to the point of getting pregnant but are making some claim to be not straight in some way, but not so “not straight” that they didn’t get pregnant.
Or otherwise stated, 6% of the heterosexually active claimed some non-straight identity, but not a homosexual identity.
There really isn’t much “L” (Lesbian), “G” (Gay) involvement in this, and there is NO HOMOSEXUALITY, involved with this, this is about heterosexuality and its results.
A more accurate reporting by LGBTQNation, would be “Bisexuals and others” comprise 6% of the persons getting an abortion. This is an example where the use of LGBTQ+ is used to drag Lesbians and Gays into issues which really aren’t Lesbian and Gay issues.
Now, there could be good reasons for Lesbians and Gays to support abortion rights, perhaps as a political alliance, perhaps on the basis that the enemies of Lesbians and Gays are often opponents of abortions. Lesbians might very well support abortion rights as part of feminist solidarity. The issue being discussed in this essay isn’t abortion rights, it is the use of initialism to obscure identity.
However, this article doesn’t make any such arguments as to why Lesbians and Gays should support abortion rights. It is instead lumping the Lesbians and Gays into the LGBTQ+ to obscure to make it seem like maybe it is a common activity of the LGBTQ+ and obscuring that the fact that it isn’t involving Lesbians and Gays. It also obscures that it is heterosexual activity by not focusing on what creates babies, but instead the claimed identity of those getting abortions.
Initialism is used to drag Lesbians and Gays into issues which aren’t theirs directly or immediately. Lesbians and Gays having homosexual sex aren’t getting pregnant.
The reality is that no one individual is LGBTQ+. There are Lesbians and Gays, and bisexuals, and in terms of the Guttmacher report, “Something else,” and transgender, and the plus “+” refers to various sexual identities, “pansexuals,” “asexuals,” and other identities.
This is the neoliberal drafting of Gays and Lesbians onto the neoliberal agenda of abortion rights by slopping together different identities into the Alphabet Soup.
When the claim is made that it is an attack on the LGBTQ+, always ask who is it really an attack on. It often isn’t an attack on Lesbians or Gays, but someone who wishes to exploit the Lesbian and Gay communities for their agenda.
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