The changing atmosphere of the American political machine is something I'd like to never discuss.
However, the War on Women in America is something that is discussed with passion in my home. Wendy Davis is a true American hero and I will be proud to teach my children about her and about her courage, ambition and bravery.
However, I will not go into a lengthy discussion of this.
I am a little confused though...
I have a friend (who I'm sure will read this and comment and the discussion/debate/war will be rather interesting) who posted about abortion during his wife's first pregnancy. In discussions with him, he saw bringing a child into the world as a way to make the world a better place (and he'll correct me on the diction if I'm wrong here). He saw it as a huge responsibility to raise a just and moral child because this child could be a leader in the future world. He no longer saw himself on an island, caring not for what passed him by in the water.
He was already pro-life/anti-choice. But in one of his blog posts in particular, his opinions were far more focused on the fact that he thought that pro-choice people wanted to take away his child (I guess in the same way gun enthusiasts think I want to come into their homes and take their guns). I cannot understand for the life of me why he thought this way. If he is comfortable with me posting his now defunct blog, I will later link it here. However, I do not want to invade his privacy if he is uncomfortable with this. Yes, we live in a day and age where if you put something on the internet, too bad. I don't want to be that person. But here are some excerpts that illustrate the point he was making:
And that is why my fury is beyond anything that this world could cause when there are those who would deny my solemn responsibility to protect my child.
He discusses three types of people who are not against abortion. This is his description of the third group:
These are those who do not merely deny my resposibility to protect my wife and child; they do not merely fail to help me guard them from the butchers who would take the innocent life and, in the process, grievously wound my wife. No, the third group are those who openly champion the cause of the butcher. They are the ones who stand up and applaude those evil men who would slice my child into pieces and suck him out of my wife's body; or poison him with salt; or pull her feet-first out of my wife and then, when she is mere inches from birth, slice open the back of her sweet, precious little head and suction out her brains; or use any one of the cruel and barbaric practices that have been designed to destroy those who are most innocent and most needing of our protection.
I questioned him about his worry that others would take his child away from him. He did not address this question, but instead focused on the fact that others called his unborn child non-human or sub-human. I may not be completely up on "abortion literature," but I can say that I've been pro-choice my entire life and have never heard the phrase "sub-human." Nor has my mother, who worked in an abortion clinic in the 1980s.
I am a firm believer that a fetus is not a living, breathing child until it exits the womb and breathes on his or her own. That belief comes from many locations, but is strengthened by my faith. I have not been told by anyone that my faith is wrong in this respect, which I appreciate. However, based upon the way that anonymous posting occurs, I assume that accusation is not far off.
Becoming pregnant is a choice my partner and I came to. We chose to bring another breathing, loving Liberal into this world. And we could not be happier.
However, our hope is that this loving, amazing Liberal does just what my friend hopes his child will--bring about the change that we hope for the world.
The problem is that what we think will help the world and what he thinks will help the world are two very different ideals. And there's no way to see eye-to-eye.
This is the problem with Congress. Each side in Congress sees the other side as a godless enemy who's only goal is to destroy humankind. Do I agree with some of this? Unfortunately, yes. Do I think that the other side is trying to plunge us back into the dark ages where women sat at home, barefoot and pregnant and we taught no sex education to our children in the hopes that they wouldn't replicate our mistakes? (http://bit.ly/12kCDjM) Perhaps. Do I think that they are bad people who will burn in whatever metaphorical place people call hell? No. Do I think that they have not had a rational conversation in quite a long time to come to this conclusion? Perhaps.
While this post was not supposed to be about the political landscape, it would seem that as we have no ability to approach our opposing-viewed persons as equals with minds and thoughts that are acceptable as we live in a "free" country, we cannot expect to elect people who can do what we can't.
And this, my dear friends, is what is wrong with this country. We have no ability to see the other side of the coin, to be able to say to our neighbors "I may not agree with you, but I'll fight to the death your right to say it" or to reach across and simply say, "hey, I know how you feel about XYZ, but how do you feel about knitting/crocheting/cosplaying/Doctor Who/Firefly/cars/hockey/lacross/the Olympics/the World Cup/etc.?" To be able to find common ground starts a dialog, one which hopefully is encouraged with the love that we are SUPPOSED to have for each other.
And for those who truly believe that there is no way to love their neighbors, no matter what crime they feel these neighbors have committed, I simply refer them to Matthew 5:44 "But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you" or Matthew 19:19 "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" or Mathew 22:39 "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" or Mark 12:31 "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" or Luke 6: 27-29 "But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you. And unto him that smiteth thee on the [one] cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloke forbid not [to take thy] coat also." or Luke 6:35 "love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and [to] the evil." or John 13:34 "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another."
I wonder if they'll still protest...
7 comments:
Yay! Welcome back to the blogosphere!
First, brava, excellent post, particularly the last paragraph. I, too, am very concerned about the political climate. There seems to have been a gradual shift over the last twenty years from "people who disagree with me are wrong" to "people who disagree with me are evil." This occurs on both sides of the aisle, as they say. And, unfortunately, I have no real solution to it, aside from the one you've identified: raise good children who will love their enemy and do good to those who hate them. Simply put, we need to out-breed the haters.
(Aside: I don't think the "War on Women" rhetoric helps this climate; I think it is disingenuous to insinuate that your opponents have some sort of vendetta against women. Every pro-lifer I know speaks from a sincere desire to help both mother and baby. Saying they want to wage war on women will, I think, only encourage the type of polarization you decry.)
Now, to defend my writing from 4 ½ years ago (back when I was in my "John C. Wright" phase; yikes! Did I really used to write like that?): firstly, I think you misrepresent what I was saying, or at least trying to say. More likely, I was just not expressing myself clearly back then (yay, emotional stream-of-thought writing!). You say "he thought that pro-choice people wanted to take away his child," but I don't think I said this or ever implied it. As I clarified in the comments of said blog post (feel free to link my blog at your whim), my anger was coming not from a fear that people were trying to kill my baby, but from the knowledge that people like Wendy Davis would stand up and cheer if someone did kill him. I think my mom expressed what I was trying to say in the comments of that post:
"I want to ask you, if you saw someone sexually abusing a two-year old child, would your response depend entirely on whether the child was related to you? Wouldn't you be angry just because an innocent and helpless child was being abused? Wouldn't you feel protective toward the little boy or girl no matter whose he or she was? Wouldn't you want to stop the abuser? Wouldn't you say that the child deserved to be protected even if the mother didn't want him or her?"
NB: Recently, I have becoming increasingly aware that my grandchildren may be killed through abortion while I am unable to defend them. While that passionate paragraph may be unrealistic for my children, it is a real possibility for my grandchildren. Am I allowed to care about any future, hypothetical grandchildren I may have, at least, and not want them to be killed?
(Continued....)
(Part 2)
Thank you for your admission that your belief that a fetus is not alive is an act of faith. (Now you get the fun job of explaining why someone who says that "I am a firm believer that a gay person is not a living human being; that belief comes from many locations, but is strengthened by my faith" is a bigot, yet your stance is not.) I'm sure you were just not expressing your ideas in the most clear way, but the sentence "a fetus is not a living, breathing child until it exits the womb and breathes on his or her own" is simply tautology, and boils down to "it is not breathing until it is breathing." This is a) obvious and b) irrelevant. Since when has life required breathing? Fish do not breath and yet are alive. It is theoretically possible that human beings could be genetically modified to have gills instead of lungs. They would not ever breath, but still be alive. In fact, the scientific definition of life makes no mention of respiration as a requirement. The closest it mentions is "metabolism" which is something that fetuses can easily be verified to have. Simply put, they don't need to breathe through lungs because they get all the oxygen they require from the umbilical cord. Wait until you're about 16-18 weeks pregnant and you start to feel the "butterflies"; I'll be interested in your explanation for why this thing that you can very clearly feel moving around and kicking you is somehow not alive. Or even earlier, when you go in for your end-of-first-trimester ultrasound, explain why this thing with a very clearly audible heartbeat is not alive.
Lastly, I am absolutely overjoyed that you are pregnant. I think it will be wonderful for you, you will be wonderful for your child, and your child will be wonderful for the world.
Part 1 of 2
A fetus is in a woman's womb and is dependent on her for everything. Just like a person on life support. Both cases involve a dependence on others. Therefore, the person responsible for them (mother or family member making decisions) is entirely responsible for whether to pull the plug.
Out-breeding the haters. I like it. :)
This will become contentious, but I can't understand how you don't see the war on women. First, there was Todd Akin not understanding how the female reproductive system works, while being totally wrong and looking like a damn fool (“Legitimate rape” http://bit.ly/SHKJ0n and http://1.usa.gov/minqXo). And he’s not the only one to do it. Next, cutting off funding for Planned Parenthood, which does a whole lot more for women than just abortions, as this link explains: http://bit.ly/hQB0sz. States requiring medically unnecessary and invasive ultrasounds that were put into law because lawmakers wanted to embarrass women into not having an abortion, sometimes without ANY debate (http://bit.ly/14yd3LG ) and recently abortion-restricting laws in North Carolina were put as a rider on a motorcycle safely bill (http://bit.ly/15G8tM1). Here is one woman’s perspective (http://bit.ly/142cKuj), on having a trans-vaginal ultrasound and that’s all I can find as NO responsible doctor will to say they are medically needed prior to having an abortion (I went 5 search pages in Google, with several phrasings of the question). I’ve had one too and can’t imagine that being forced upon me, a bit more on this below. There have also been laws allowing for an employer to fire an employee who uses birth control (http://bit.ly/PQMVCJ) and being "too attractive" being held up in court as a legal reason to fire someone as recently as this past Friday. We don't need to go into the whole abortion bill situation in Texas as that's a topic for another post, but know that anyone that tried to bring tampons or feminine pads had them taken from them at the doors. So you can't be on your period and in the Senate chamber (http://yhoo.it/15ocHW5)? (I did understand taking away the jars of urine though) Across the country, pregnant women are being told to endanger their lives and the lives of their children in order to keep their jobs (http://n.pr/1b8Ero6). Equal pay for equal work is totally scoffed at (http://n.pr/11CftrA). Recently when a group of male lawmakers got together to discuss birth control, they would not allow any women to participate in the hearings (http://dailym.ai/zjLujT and http://abcn.ws/A0HXtP). There is also a Conservative talk show host who called a woman a slut for using birth control. Finally, VAWA gets picked over because people decide they don't like what's in it (http://nyti.ms/10T4EB8). All these are focused squarely on the female gender. What am I missing?
Now, I have to ask, why do you think that pro-choice activists think of abortion as a spectator sport? Do you think we line up to cheer on a woman who makes the difficult decision not to carry her pregnancy to term? That we're standing in the waiting room with tequila and tuna rolls to celebrate the momentous occasion? Your statement of "the knowledge that people like Wendy Davis would stand up and cheer if someone did kill [your unborn child]" is both asinine and offensive. I'd think you would have more sense than to assume that your adversary is cold-hearted and evil.
As to what your mom said, I would obviously have no problem stepping in to stop any abuse of any child. But again, that's a child who has been born, who is alive (yea, it's redundant, get over it. :P) In your mom's scenario, why doesn't the mother want the child? What does that have to do with the child being abused?
Part 2 of 2
Your grandchildren could be subject to all sorts of things that you don't have the ability to defend them from. They could join the army, without you being able to stop them from doing it, and could be killed. They could be killed in a horrible bus accident, without you being able to defend them from it. Or, they could turn out to be gay and face many issues that you do not have the ability to defend them from. They could get an atrocious tattoo, or piercing, or lose a limb, or donate a kidney. You have no control over what another person does. You may have influence, and that is the goal with raising hate-less, loving children. If you have no say what your adult grandchildren (or adult children for that matter) can do with their own bodies or their lives, why should you have complete say over what anyone else chooses to do with their bodies or their lives?
I don't understand your question of why a gay person is not a human being. That doesn't make sense. Please elaborate.
Using gills is still a form of breathing. While a physical breath of air is not taken in, fish process oxygen through the water they take in. Here's a link from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA): http://1.usa.gov/15Cr7US
I've had ultrasounds. Yes, the fetus moves, and the heart beats. But if it was outside of me, it wouldn't move and the heart wouldn't beat. If the fetus could survive outside the womb, I might say you have an argument, which is why one of the few things I agreed with George W. Bush's term was that he outlawed late term abortion. I'll be at 16 weeks this Wednesday, when I have a doctor's appointment. I guess we'll talk more then, but I highly doubt my opinion on choice will change.
To go back a few steps, when we had our first ultrasound, I was 6 weeks along, so they had to do a trans-vaginal ultrasound. They had a hard time finding anything on the ultrasound, yet somehow were still able to give us an idea of what the heartbeat sounded like. When we asked the doctor at 10 weeks what that had meant, he said it was a simulation based upon the movement of the fetus. This is disgusting icing on the cake; women who are forced to have trans-vaginal ultrasounds aren’t even hearing the actual heartbeat.
My partner is curious to the answer of why is it that a 12 year old is wholly owned by her parents but a fetus is owned by the government?
Finally, why does your faith get to dictate what I do with my body where mine is not allowed to enter the equation?
Straw men. Straw men everywhere.
I have training both this week and next, and will be quite busy, so I don't know whether or not I'll have time to respond at any length at any time soon.
However, I'd just like you to do one thing: at your 16-week ultrasound, ask your doctor or ultrasound technician if your baby is alive, without any preamble, or explanation, or mention of abortion. Just ask "is my baby alive?"
I'd be interested in the doctor or technician's response.
So I've read through your comment a couple more times, and this conversation seems familiar. I think we've had it once or twice before, and it wasn't particularly fruitful then either. We're both too high on the ladder of inference to ever be able to exchange ideas meaningfully on these topics; we will each see the information that conforms to our world view in the evidence and reasoning. Nevertheless, a duty to honesty, charity, and truth compels me to respond, regardless of whether or not I think it worthwhile.
"A fetus is in a woman's womb and is dependent on her for everything...." In this analysis, then, the right to life is not an inherent, inalienable right that we have just for being human (cf. The Declaration of Independence); instead, it is a conferred right, granted to us by a person or persons responsible for our care. We are more or less human, or more or less have the rights of full personhood, depending on whether we are more or less able to care for ourselves.
Another issue is that it can be argued to what extent any of us are fully independent. I know I wouldn't survive long if farmers stopped making my food and grocers stopped selling it to me. Does that mean my right to life is conferred by them? Once your beautiful baby is born, you will very quickly find that the dependency doesn't stop there. Your baby will not even be able to lift her precious little head to feed herself.
Suppose that a baby was born for whom no one in the world cared enough to take care of; does this baby therefore not have a right to life? Is it not wrong to kill it?
"Your statement is both asinine and offensive." May I offer the other cheek?
(part 2)
"Your grandchildren could be subject to all sorts of things that you don't have the ability to defend them from." So, because something bad could happen to my grandchildren, therefore I should not care, or work to prevent it? Because Damien might die in a car accident, I shouldn't care if someone murders him?
"I don't understand your question of why a gay person is not a human being. That doesn't make sense." Exactly. Thank you for agreeing with me.
"[F]ish process oxygen through the water they take in." Similar to the way a fetus processes oxygen from the umbilical cord. So by your own expanded definition of "breathing", a fetus does breathe.
"Yes, the fetus moves, and the heart beats. But if it was outside of me, it wouldn't move and the heart wouldn't beat." And if you were on the surface of Pluto, you wouldn't move and your heart wouldn't beat. That depriving an organism of nutrients and placing it in an environment hostile to its metabolic processes causes it to die is not an argument that it was not alive to begin with. Rather, it is an argument that it is alive. An inanimate object does not require a specific environment or nutrients to exist. Animate organisms do.
"I was 6 weeks along, so they had to do a trans-vaginal ultrasound." Irrelevant aside: Anne Marie's 5-week ultrasound with #3 was not transvaginal; she only ever had one transvaginal ultrasound, with Damien.
"My partner is curious to the answer of why is it that a 12 year old is wholly owned by her parents but a fetus is owned by the government?" No one "owns" anybody. You cannot own another human being. Remember, our country fought a whole war over that point. Celebrated the 150th anniversary of its biggest battle recently, too.
According to your partner, who says the government owns a fetus, or that parents own a 12-year-old? Is your partner implying that the government trying to protect a human being constitutes a claim of ownership? Is your partner implying that the government is claiming ownership of Trayvon Martin?
"Finally, why does your faith get to dictate what I do with my body where mine is not allowed to enter the equation?" I have said it before, and I will say it again; I have exactly as much faith in the proposition that an unborn baby is a living human being as I do in the proposition that the sun is up during the day time. I have seen overwhelming evidence for both of these facts with my own eyes.
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