THe title alone is enough to make me doubt it's true. That's the title that someone like BillO, Rush, or Inshannity would use when making it up, to make it sound like some horrific new fad sweeping through liberal colleges or something.

Even presupposing it's true, I somehow doubt the author, or any of the participants expects to ever hear about, let alone attend, another 'abortion party'.

As most abortions take place early in pregnancy, before the outer effects of impending motherhood are visible to the untrained eye, this sounds like an excellent way for a less than scrupulous woman to make some quick money, and you don't even have to be pregnant to do it. All the crafty young lady has to do is tell people, "Hey, I'm pregnant but I can't afford my abortion." Then have people over for some fun, look a bit embarrassed, say thank you a lot, and collect the donations. Later, tell everyone you're going to the clinic and sneak off to the movies for a few hours. It actually sounds like the screen play for an offbeat con-woman movie.

This just reeks of wanna-be writer (and total fictional BS)

The addition of the 3 year old boy (to illustrate how out of touch and indifferent the fictional party-goers were) and the poor fictional "boyfriend" who is used solely to frame the women as hostile towards men...it's all just a little to "perfect" for it to be real.

Kind of like King Arthur writing a blog about how he just "happened" to be wandering by a sword in a stone and...whaddya know? He was the only one who could pull it out!

C'mon. This guy is good though. He knew enough to at least pretend to be indifferent to the party, because he knew that if he came off as a finger wagging shreik we'd suspect he had an agenda. But, no, he wrote it as if he were merely a dispassionate observer.

Like this:

I went to a party of a good friend of mine who just happened to be a Promise Keeper. It was a fun time, though I did notice that he seemed to be a little terse with his wife. He had asked her for a beer and she went into the kitchen to get it, but the baby was crying so she was understandably delayed. After 10mins my friend excused himself and went into the house. Both my friend and his wife came back out to the party 5mins later and I noticed that the side of her cheek was red and swollen as if she had got a hard smack. I was a little shocked, but no one else seemed to think it odd at all.

Upon seeing the wife's swollen face the guy next to me asked, 'Hey, what do you say to a women with two black eyes? Nothing! You already told her twice!' This joke set the whole backyard roaring. I was a little put off by it, but I seemed to be the only one.

And THAT is how you write fictional events.

I don't have any Promise Keeper friends. I never went to any party of a Promise Keeper. There was never any guy who smacked his wife nor a guy who joked about spousal abuse.

I made it all up.

Just like the blogger did.

Fake or not, that article is making serious rounds in certain circles. One of my brothers, liberal, pro-choice, etc, just emailed the link to me a few minutes ago and a first cousin, conservative, Catholic priest, member of Opus Dei, mailed the same link about an hour ago. I expect WW3 to start raging in my email box for the next day or two.

All I'd like to know if if Byard Duncan is prone to embellishing his Alternet articles, should I assume he's also taking liberties with the truth in all of his other articles there as well? Should I trust his gay friendly article on protesters after the passage of Proposition 8 (May 26, 2009) and his pro Obama health care article (June 16, 2009) to name a few or just the single article which doesn't depict certain pro choice feminists in a positive light? Just curious.

The notion that it's "tacky" to throw a party to raise money for life's necessities is a very middle class, blinkered opinion. This fits in the tradition of rent parties. In musician circles in Austin, it's common to help cover someone's medical bills by having a benefit show. Why should this be different?

more nazis flitting around a maypole!

Broadsheet writers need to become more comfortable with exploring what is behind the uneasiness that I perceived among the various responses to Byard Duncan's Alternet article. I say this as a long-time reader (and fan) of Broadsheet. The event was described as "tacky" and as "bad etiquette." The other main worry concerned the effect Duncan's story could have reinforced the idea of feminism held by the Bill O'Reilly brand of "anti-choicers"--that the it reinforces the negative image of feminists as men-haters who love nothing more than having abortions. How 'bout the fact that this party was just fucked up? It was wrong in and of itself and not just because it has consequences for an "us" upon whom we are too frightened to pass judgment of any sort.

It's okay to be a "pro-choice feminist" and say there's something fucked up about throwing a $10-per-plastic-red-cup house party to fund the termination of a developing fetus. The organizers of the party failed to communicate that they understand that there is a difference between throwing an "abortion party" and throwing any other house party for some ole cause. There is a difference. The decision of whether or not to keep or terminate a pregnancy ought not to appear as the choice between serving Coors or Bud Light. It's not about "bad taste," it's about ethics.

As a feminist, I do not believe that women take lightly the decision of whether to keep or terminate a pregnancy--which is why the decision ought to be left up to women. And I realize that there are not a lot of readers who are going to welcome the fact that I just passed judgment (the horror!) on the party organizers--and did so for more than just being tacky or representing "us" badly to misogynists who have no desire to understand feminism. But I realize that I live in the same "real world," as Kate Harding put it, with the organizers of this party and that seriously offends me. Perhaps they (the organizers--not necessarily the student seeking the abortion) take abortion lightly. Perhaps they take it too lightly--which violates the premise of why we think abortion is a decision that ought to be left up to women. Calling out the abortion party as ethically fucked up does not threaten Roe. On the contrary, it reinforces it and says (even to those who believe abortion should only occur illegally) that we demand that abortion remain a decision left to women because they are capable of being moral social actors.