In Garrison Keillor's column this week he says "In the past two weeks, I've attended two benefit concerts to raise money for musicians to pay their medical bills, and that is just ridiculous. Why should anyone, least of all a valuable contributing member of society, have to pass the hat to pay the doctor?"

How is having a kegger to pay for your abortion that different?

If you think there's something tacky about having a party to fund a procedure that many people think long and hard before having, ask yourself how you'd feel about a party to fund chemotherapy or a lumpectomy.

The young woman needed help to raise enough money for a medical procedure.

Of course, it's not just a medical procedure, but a political and moral dilemma that should also require sackcloth, ashes, a confession, and the permission of a few white men thrown in for good measure.

The idea of having a party to raise money for rent is pretty old:

http://www.routledge-ny.com/ref/harlem/parties.html

You should read the Alternet piece a bit more closely. The "gifts, toys, wine and food" were presented at a baby shower that the author attended prior to the "abortion party," not at the "abortion party" itself.

Obviously, the birth control party must have been a disaster.

People have fund raisers all the time for their cancer or whatever. What if this was a procedure that was medically necessary or advisable? Do we know?

But in the end, what I never have had explained to me is - if this woman is so horrible and eeeeevil for having this abortion party, why do they want this horrible person raising a child to become a future citizen? Do they want another (theoritcal) person on the public teat? What if the baby has health problems? Want Medicaid to cover it? Want to pay for this unwanted kids medical bills with tax money? After the outrage nobody ever answers those questions for me. Probably becasue the answer is no, and its easier to bang the drum than answer a question. So they have no credibility.

In any event, its certainly not something I would attend, but people have parties for all sorts of bullshit and tacky reasons. Big woo.

People have parties after going through other medical procedures like chemotherapy, and I'm sure women throw parties after getting their boobs done, so why not?

I mean, an abortion is simply a medical procedure, it's not like it takes a life or anything. It's simply removing some unnecessary tissue.

Would you be ashamed of a party celebrating the successful removal of a tumor? So why would you be ashamed of this? Are you indicating there is something wrong with abortion? Quit being so anti-woman!

I couldn’t, of course. I saw Maggie’s boyfriend, sitting near the kitchen, wearing rainbow suspenders and looking uncomfortably alone. As it turns out, he had been the object of a lot of vitriol from Maggie’s friends -- women who thought that he should not have had anything to do with the abortion. Both he and Maggie had been saddened about this reaction because they had made the decision together. When we talked, his sentences spilled out in quick little jumbles, like scattered puzzle pieces. His eyes stayed focused on a point behind me. He looked as if he’d like to be somewhere else.

Maggie, too, looked less than excited. A few days beforehand, one of her friends had asked her to have the abortion in Ohio. When Maggie insisted on bringing her boyfriend along, the friend told her not to bother coming. Maggie was being shown a great deal of respect, certainly. But she told me she couldn’t help but feel as though her pregnancy had been "hijacked" by women who felt like her inclusion of a man in the decision was weak or wrong. This was a surprise to me, but I didn’t exactly know how to weigh in.

Assuming this part of the story is true, perhaps, this accounts for the author's ambivalence, which was completely justifiable, in my opinion. Tackiness of the party aside, if Maggie's friends, out of some faux feminist zeal, made Maggie's boyfriend uncomfortable at this "celebration," because he, as the potential father of this fetus, was included not only as an equal partner during the final decision, but accompanied Maggie to the abortionist as well, I find THEIR behavior far more problematic than the concept of the party itself. Also interesting how all of the Broadsheeters missed the elephant in the room. You know, we do feminism no favors when we excuse bad behavior in its name.

I agree with the posters saying this is a lighthearted way to deal with a serious problem -- namely, how hard it is for young women to afford abortions.

But beyond that, it seemed to me that the writer's primary goal in writing this was to set the stage for the treatment of "Maggie's" boyfriend, and to examine the role of men in the debate. I found his take quite thoughtful, actually. He'd been surprised at the angry reactions to the boyfriend's (supportive) involvement in the abortion decision, and he responded by reflecting that women have every right to anger. *shrug* Seemed like a fair take to me.

Yes, I have a friend who threw a "good-bye" party for her ovaries. It was a lot of fun, despite the fact that during the surgery her doctors had discovered a metastasization of the cancer that killed her a couple of years later.

Nobody's forcing you, unlike the way you want to force others to live by your rules.

I did, however, think the extent to which Maggie’s friends were eager to vilify her partner was peculiar. These were liberal people, after all -- people whose views on sex were worlds away from anything someone might consider "modest." I couldn’t help but notice how aggressive and, for lack of a better term, ‘male’ their attitudes became when confronted with the issue of a woman’s right to choose. It was almost as if, in the process of upholding an ideal of openness and acceptance, they had fallen victim to the same forces they were trying to critique.

But could I blame them for responding with such anger? No way. I knew many of them had experienced the most hurtful forms of structural sexism -- the kinds I will never see. The kinds that that disguise themselves as "the norm." These women, who had only recently begun to unravel the ways their voices had been excluded from relationships, dialogues and society in general, had every right to respond with anger. I imagine it would have been nearly impossible not to.

I certainly can blame them. As a black female, I have endured more than my share of racist misogyny in my history and will see more before I leave this earth. Yet, I would never permit myself to behave in such a judgmental, disgusting way concerning someone else's personal decisions. I despise this sort of cult of victimization which allows any minority and/or woman to behave rudely to any individual, who does not share a similar gender or racial background, on the basis of past abuse and pain in a racist or misogynist culture. I feel it lowers both minorities and women to the level of their abusers and reinforces a sad sense of self-righteousness which hamstrings any good and worthy points these individuals are capable of employing. If EVERY decision must be taken to the level of gender warfare, even with sympathetic and supportive male partners, exactly where does the concept of a conciliatory, gender neutral society arise? If abortion rights are to be maintained, we DO need men like Maggie's boyfriend as allies. I fail to see the point of alienating men who are sympathetic to our cause.