October 10th, 2006
I am a Pro-Choicer. I believe in the right to choose. I’ll just state that out in the open. You won’t change my mind on that.
And not that it’s any of your business but I’ve never had an abortion nor do I expect to. I also have no children nor do I plan to.
However, I do have many questions about the Pro-Life/Anti-Abortion view. Mind you, I don’t expect to change your mind either. I’m just curious and interested in a two-way discussion. All (non-hateful) views are welcome.
I find that once I start thinking about the whole when-is-a-baby-a-life debate, I’m just as confused as most anyone. I mean, there’s no evidence as to when exactly a fetus becomes “a living being with a soul”. I’ve read and heard all sorts of debates on the subject.
There’s the thought that a being becomes “a life with a soul” upon conception, but “as many as 50% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage — most often before a woman misses a menstrual period or even knows she is pregnant. About 15% of recognized pregnancies will end in a miscarriage. More than 80% of miscarriages occur within the first three months of pregnancy.” [“Understanding Miscarriages” (WebMD)] If that’s true, wouldn’t it make more sense that a “soul” wouldn’t make permanent residency until after that 3rd month, just in case.
For me, I often think of my brain or mind as connected with my “soul” — I know, symbollically it’s supposed to be your heart — so I looked it up, and while the brain starts to develop in week 3 after conception, it’s not until the 2nd Trimester that brain waves are detectable and it’s not until the 3rd Trimester that there’s rapid brain development and the baby is strong enough that it might survive if born early, though the chances of complications and death are high. [Prenatal Development]
So, for me, I think it would have to be in one of those steps. Maybe.
I guess I really don’t know. I’m not the Creator of Life after all.
Anyway, I guess that’s why I don’t want to make a decision for anyone else as to whether or not she should or shouldn’t be able to have an abortion or where to draw the line. I don’t think you should kill living beings. I think a living being is someone who could survive on his or her own, given the chance, but I guess that’s not the right answer either since there are certainly a whole lot of people of many ages who suffer a whole lot of maladies and injuries who would die without the care of others. We wouldn’t leave our grandparents to die just because they can’t survive on their own or soldiers injured in war.
Then again, I wouldn’t want to ask a woman whose life is at risk to carry a baby to full term or a woman who’s been raped to carry such a heavy reminder of her victimization for nine months or a young teenager who’s almost a baby herself to carry the child of her incestuous father.
I wouldn’t want to refuse anyone her right to make her personal choice whatever it may be. In the end, she’ll answer to God or Buddha or herself, but it’s not my place to judge her. I have so many of my own choices to weigh on my shoulders.
But I keep coming back to some inconsistencies in various arguments. I don’t understand the people who honestly and truly believe that life begins at conception and that with that life comes a “soul” and that it is a sin to abort that life; it is murder. To believe so extreme and completely is one thing. That I can understand, but then to say, that you want to pass a law making this sin illegal with the exception of rape, incest and danger to health…do two sins make a right?
Tags: abortion, pro-choice, anti-abortion, pro-life
March 7th, 2006
There’s a lot of hoopla about the abortion fight lately. There’s a lot of name-calling and word-twisting going around. It’s almost dangerous to join into a conversation and express your opinion because the truth is very few people are 100% extremely for or against abortion and the people in the middle are in a mosh pit of sorts.
The Blogsphere, especially the feminist-leaning ’sphere, is filled with a whirlwind of terms and phrases — War Against Women, Women-Haters, Women-Opressers, Pro-choicers, Pro-lifers, Anti-abortionist, Anti-lifers. Personally, I’m not fond of the “pro-life” and “anti-life” versions as they really don’t reflect the groups labeled as such. I think “pro-choice” and “anti-abortion” are probably the best fits I’ve heard or read so far.
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Tags: pro-choice, anti-abortion, abortion, War on Women, Women's Rights
August 14th, 2005
I am pro-choice. It’s not a choice I would make for myself and I don’t know who’s right about when a fertilized egg technically becomes a living being, but I am a supporter of a woman’s right to make that choice for herself. Granted I have all sorts of qualifiers about what I think is right or wrong. I do think there should be a cut-off of some sort. I don’t think women who are more than five or six months pregnant should be able to abort their child unless it’s for a medical reason, but again, who makes that cut-off decision? I don’t know.
What I do know is that I’m tired of people misrepresenting the facts that are undeniable. I’m tired of organizations using the television and big-names spokespeople to mislead and misdirect the public. I was tired of it last year long before Nov. 2nd and I’m still tired of it. I have no patience for it anymore.
The NARAL Pro-Choice America TV ad depicting Supreme Court nominee John Roberts as supporting bombers of abortion clinics is one on of those such misrepresentations. It uses words and images to make implications that are just not true.
As Associate Counsel to President Reagan, in a 1986 memo, John Roberts wrote that abortion-clinic bombers “should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.” He refered to the bombers as “criminals.” [“NARAL Falsely Accuses Supreme Court Nominee Roberts”]
Furthermore, the brief the ad claims Roberts filed was written seven years before the abortion clinic bombing depicted and and talked about in the NARAL ad. The brief itself was regarding a case where an abortion clinic had sued protestors blockading the clinics. Bombs were not involved.
The ad contends that Roberts “filed court briefs supporting violent fringe groups and a convicted clinic bomber.” Indeed, Roberts’ name appears on the “friend of the court” brief in Bray v. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic that the ad shows. But what Roberts was supporting wasn’t violence or bombing or even the behavior that was the subject of the lawsuit - blockades of clinics. In fact, Roberts went out of his way to say that the blockaders were trespassing, which is a violation of state law. What Roberts argued was that a federal anti-discrimination law couldn’t be used against abortion blockaders because they weren’t discriminating against women – they were blockading men, too. [“NARAL Falsely Accuses Supreme Court Nominee Roberts”]
*sigh*
The sad part is that the damage is already done. Of all the people who saw the ad, very few will check the facts or even believe the facts now that the misrepresentation is “out there”. Those of us who care enough to be well-informed take in all sorts of resources and we know how to use factcheck.org. No wonder we’re becoming a country of lemmings.
Well, at least for me, the more I read about John Roberts, the more I like what I’m finding out about him. He seems to be an upstanding guy with the courage to interpret the law without letting any personal or political beliefs get in the way.
Tags: pro-choice, John Roberts, Supreme Court, NARAL
June 30th, 2004
Talking politics is a quick way to make friends and enemies these days. Personally, I have tried not to discuss politics or religion in my journals or with my friends “back home”. For the most part I discovered that some people tend to take both subjects way too personally and feel the fanatical need to convert everyone they know to the “right” way of thinking which is of course always their way. Some of my friends “back home” had a penchant for getting into loud, angry, pissing matches over politics, religion, and sometimes even books and movies and while I enjoy a good debate, I don’t like shouting matches or banging my head against a wall.
For the most part, many people either make up their minds and cling to those opinions no matter what the facts or opinions of others or they do as their parents or spouses do and believe what their parents or spouses believe. Sometimes both options play a part. Unfortunately many people never let exeriences or newly learned facts to change their opinions; they cling to the belief that they are right despite everything.
Some of my friends “back home” are like that which is why I don’t allow such topics on the mailing list we all use to keep track of each other. People become too easily offended, emails fly back and forth because people are offended or they want to force others to see things their way. It’s all very unpleasant and sad.
I like to keep an open-mind. I won’t say that I don’t think I’m right. I just admit that I could be wrong. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me. In fact, my opinions on many things have changed over the last 33 years. Things I believed in with all my heart when I was a teenager have proven themselves not true or have become questionable as my experiences and new facts have reared their ugly heads. I may still be a bit naive. I may still not understand every facet of everything going on in the world, but at the very least I have an open-mind and I accept when I’m wrong and I find talking, debating with others either strengthens my beliefs or changes them.
I think it’s a sign of a mature individual…though I don’t know that I’m all that mature or that I’m even mentally healthy at times. 
So, I’ve come to enjoy in my new life the ability to have mature, adult conversations about politics with people here and people I’ve met online — people who don’t just shout rhetoric back and forth and people who have a clue not only about what is going on in the world but don’t believe everything they hear or read.
So, here is my political stance for those of you who are interested:
- I have voted for every President who has been in office since I started voting at 18 years old — I’m 33 now.
- I have been registered as a Republican, a Democrat, and an Independent at various times in my life. Currently, I am registered as a Democrat though 3 months ago I was an Independent.
- I have never believed that we should invade Iraq. I never thought they had weapons of mass destruction last year. I can’t believe the Bush Administration keeps insisting that is why were are there. I don’t know why other countries who do indeed have weapons of mass destruction have been left to their own devices. I believe we were lied to and if we weren’t lied to then the Bush Administration can’t admit they made an error in judgement and I don’t know which is worse.
- I was for invading Afghanistan but very disappointed that Bush didn’t finish the job.
- I am offended that Bush doesn’t think the outsourcing of American jobs to other countries is an issue. The companies might be saving money but they aren’t passing along that savings to the unemployed masses.
- I am offended that Bush’s administration thinks that the 1.25 million jobs they “created” in the last few months should quell the rising voices when the jobs that have been created are not equivallent in skill or money to the ones that millions of Americans have lost over the last 4 years.
- I am horrified that Bush wants to change the law to keep Americans who love each other from any kind of union, whether you call it a marriage or not, and the rights and benefits such a union should have.
- I am against abortion but believe it’s not my place to tell anyone they can’t have one for whatever reason.
- I am against the draft.
- I am against any merge of church and state and yet Bush’s administration is constantly dragging religion into their politics.
- Bush’s administration scares the hell out of me. I really believe they are out of control and believe that they are too powerful to be ruled by the laws, standards, and beliefs they hold everyone else to.
- It scares me to talk to people who still believe there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It scares me to listen to people who swear by every word that comes out of Bush’s mouth.
- It scares me that people still think there was a connection between Sadaam and 9/11. I never thought there was and it makes me sick to think that propaganda was used and so widely believed.
- It scares me that people don’t realize that some of those prisoners in those Iraqi prisons were innocent bystanders who were arrested by accident, tortured and humiliated, and even killed. People were killed in inhumane and compassionless ways and yet we are justified because other people that look like them caused 9/11 and other people who look like them have been killing hostages in the Middle East — ironically, the terrorists weren’t in Iraq before we arrived and opened the door but their presence now is used as a reason why we invaded…
- I am afraid of the Homeland Security and the Big Brother concept that it is.
- I am afraid that the terrorists have won by causing us to step closer to losing the freedoms they hate us for.
Tags: politics, dysfunctional drama, George W. Bush, outsourcing, Afghanistan, Gay Rights, abortion, pro-choice, WMD, innocent, detainees, Homeland Security, Terrorists
