I bet there were those who were okay with Sigourney Weaver being a host for the alien
In my other blog incarnation, I refused to weigh into the abortion debate. It always seems like such a lose-lose scenario, and rather pointless to wade in the fray – since there are no possible words to change any one’s point of view. This is one of the few issues which can only be definitively decided on an individual basis and meditated by one’s life experience.
I was pro-choice long before there was any choice, but what a great many on the ‘pro-life’ side forget to address is this; there more than one alleged right to life they should be busy defending. Get as fetists as you want in the posters, get graphic, hand out bloody dolls, coins, or whatever – but understand this – all you have accomplished is to turn any sane or reasonably minded individual against your point of view. Beating up clerks or doctors just paints you as thugs…and bombing clinics and murdering doctors is an unforgivable act of urban terrorism and put you squarely on the same side as the Taliban.
On the other hand, it was not until I had carried a fetus to full-term and given birth that I was able to succinctly answer the question; when does life begin? Now I know but even being able to answer it seems like a useless kind of thing to know. While I may appreciate the fact that life begins at conception; whose right’s trumps whose body? Here is the thing – while I can appreciate the miracle of being – I would not willingly force or compel any female to carry a fetus to term against her will since the physical well-being of that fetus is entirely dependent on the level of physical care exercised by the host-female. A woman is more than a womb.
Years ago, a Toronto Star columnist, (I believe it was Rosie Di-Manno) wrote a column lamenting the fact a woman had 17 abortions and counting. Di-Manno is probably as pro-choice as one could get, but even for her, this woman’s actions were well over the bounds of civilized behaviour. I always thought she had it wrong. The more willingly a woman is to use abortion as a form of birth control shows absolutely her general unfitness for even being a surrogate motherhood to a child who would, in the best case scenario, be destined to be discarded at birth.
And in the pro-life camp, I would like to ask; how far are you willing to go to restrain me from having an abortion if I deemed it is necessary? Will you bind my hands and feet to keep me from reaching for a coat hanger or a knitting needle? Does that sound too extreme? I would remind you of the time when the law of the land criminalized abortion and literally thousands of women preferred to risk jail and gamble on death rather than give birth.
Ask yourself – how far will are you really prepared to go? Will you be satisfied if you jail and make me a criminal because I refuse to become a host for another human? This is the path of the Handmaiden’s Tale and I will not let you lead me, my daughter, or even her daughter, there without a fight. Know this, I am not shy to shed much blood protecting my right to my own person or my liberty. Instead, I suggest you content yourself with imagining me and my sisterhood’s eternal damnation in the world to come.
When I first heard the Order of Canada was to be bestowed upon Dr. Henry Morgentaler, I was shocked, and thought – egad an abortionist has been awarded the Order of Canada. Why would the committee award the honour to someone who divides us??? Since then, I have a chance to read the papers and both pro & choice blogs, but mostly, it has caused me to reflect what life was like before Dr. Morgentaler fought the government and won. Well, he might divide us, but no woman in this country is driven in despair to reach for a coat-hanger or knitting needle and risk death or jail, and in my mind, for that fact alone, he deserves it, and my freedom demands it.
And for those of you who think a woman cannot be trusted to make the right decision, a decision which is in her own best interests, I ask you this; why does the expression and fulfillment of your value system demand a ‘woman’ give way to the despair of the coat hanger?
I cannot be the keeper of anyone’s conscience, and instead, I will trust women to be their own keepers.
Here is a good one for you:
While abortion is legal, which you support, why are those who are religiously opposed to abortion (for a host of reasons, generally dependent upon appeal to scriptures, revelation, or tradition) forced to subsidize this practice? Must co-existence with abortion always include forced tithes from non-supporters? Your boundary conditions, while good math, are not real politics. It is not just abortion, it is abortion-with-taxes. Remove the mandatory financial support for abortion from the backs of the electorate, and this issue will go away. Hmmm?
Do also include the Mordor alliance of leftist causes. A crisp Heil Hitler support for abortion, abortion-with-taxes, is a loyalty test for acceptance into this higher than average income bracket, with over representation in the socialist social services sector. Their is a diversity of factions in the alliance. Your uttered support for abortion must also include the usual suspects: support for Global Warming, support for the red or orange party, support for whatever. So penetrating is the alliance of Left-Mordor, that they have penetrated the media, academia, and the bureaucracy. Alternatives, scandals, and innovation are no longer on the table of dialogue for abortion. It is either abortion-taxation or you are a racist, rapist, heteronormative scum.
I wonder to what extent the suppressed scandals, walled up in the basements of the main stream media, would have on both your thinking and that of the taxpayer collective of the working class, if the media had done its job and reported them, as they occurred, in the past. Toronto still sees back street abortions; abortion is done for birth control; abortion is over-directed against women and people of color; abortioneers are corrupt, incompetent, bury their mistakes, and hide evidence; abortion kills viable babies.
So, while I have seen many of these ‘why I differ from the non-left and support abortion’, generally as part of a job application package for a high paying, high pension, low effort job in those many agencies, bureaucracies, or departments in the control of the left, it is also tied up to other, larger issues, like endemic leftist corruption, deception, and bankrupt ideas.
You can abort all the children you want, dear. Do not make me pay for it. When you make me do something against my religious beliefs, this is no longer a matter of polite civics, but one of religious oppression, leading to holy war. The left accords this courtesy to some religious groups, the left advocates this to its activists that they do not have to pay for things they dislike, like defense budgets or police pensions. The precedent is there, right? er, left?
When the activists swarmed my high school, back when I was a youth, they said that abortion was not for birth control, would not apply to a viable fetus, and would end the horror of back street abortions. Instead, we now have abortion for birth control, viable babies are butchered, abortions are merrily done in back streets, and, lo and behold, there are scads of thousands of high paying activist jobs directly and indirectly dependent the existence of this policy. When you utter an iota about abortion, you align yourself with the diversity of the Borg collective of the left. Abortion becomes abortion-taxation.
I do not have the wisdom of Solomon, the Turkish sultan. I respect your opinion. The left has bundled and defined this issue into their ‘bundle of sticks tied together’ program. However, lacking Occam’s razor and a philosopher-barber to clarify the problem, I suspect that the guillotine will have to be used.
‘While abortion is legal” actually it isn’t but neither is it criminal or illegal. In this country, there are simply no laws governing abortion which suits me just fine. And while there are those who are opposed to abortion for whatever reason it is simply a matter of them following their conscience and not having one. While I have no problem with the ‘pro-life’ movement following the dictates of their conscience – I object to their attempting to force their values or beliefs on me and work towards criminalizing or limiting anyone else’s freedom of choice to have an abortion or not. Now, where did you ever get the idea I believe in the subsidization of anything? As for abortion as birth control…well, I thought I already dealt with that one in my post but I would suggest that any woman who would use abortion as birth control method is not necessarily someone who I would encourage to breed in the first place. You maybe, but not me.
Abortion is over-directed towards women and why wouldn’t it be? Fenris, have you ever considered the possibility that a man cannot physically have an abortion? Really, sometimes you take this whole gender equality thingy too far. And well, if you want adoption to appeal to more women perhaps it would have been better if the law hadn’t been changed so adoptees can now unseal their birth records regardless of what their ‘birth’ mother wanted. No one forces abortion on women of colour in Canada, and if my neighbourhood is anything to go by, ‘women of colour’ seem definitely slanted towards having children rather than not. I think you have been reading far too many Americans who have a whole host of issues which simply aren’t relevant to Canadians.
As far as having as many children as I want – well, Fenris, I have been a widow a long time but I have yet to demand anyone other than me to support them so I would suggest your wallet is quite safe from me or mine. And Fenris, holy war. You must be off your meds again or is this your way of signally you want to restart the pogroms against the Jews?
I did not know that abortion was not legal. You have me there.
I can understand your anger at having beliefs and opinions forced upon you. Even worse when these beliefs and opinions are subsidized by your own money. Thanks to white privilege, and the invisible i-pod of white privilege, I have never had others beliefs forced upon me, nor had to pay for them. I guess I will never know what it is like. Which is good, considering what history shows what happens when this occurs.
You seem to have a much better grip on reality than me. And when reality comes knocking on your door, smile and open the door to the sunshine! Your world view is champion!