Abortion.

[Butterbeer]

I still don't get it

So what if trees and babies are unthinking?

PS: I'm workin' on it.

what? the 94 outrage ..or still working it out?

[hectorberlioz]

Already started....Teacup.

[Butterbeer]

from little beginnings (whether leaves or babies) do great things spring!

[Rían]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

Okay. So Hitler and Stalin weren't committing murder either, since they made the law and hence were acting very lawfully.

Excellent point.

[The Gaffer]

Here's a thought that occurs to me from time to time which I don't really understand.

If I genuinely believed that mass murder was being committed on the scale of millions of people per year being systematically destroyed, I would hope that I would be pretty militant about it. Pretty militant to the extent of physical resistance and being prepared to go to jail.

I would get a bunch of my mates and go around handcuffing myself to clinic entrances. When I got sent to jail, others would step forward to take my place. Eventually, abortion would become impossible because so many people (claim to) share the view that abortion is murder.

So why doesn't this happen?

[Nurvingiel]

This same thought occurs to me sometimes, and then my brain spirals into a horrible do-loop until my head explodes.

Extreme anti-abortionists do firebomb clinics and try to kill abortion doctors, and then go to jail. Only a handful of people who oppose abortion do these things.

I'm guessing the regular anti-abortionists feel committing more murders wouldn't make up for the murders that have already occured.

And really, it wouldn't change the laws. What it would do is create and entrench the idea that anti-abortionists are nuts in society, who would move toward being more supportive of abortion. Meanwhile, a lot of anti-abortionists would go to jail for a long time, and lose the ability to lobby the government to change abortion laws.

[The Gaffer]

Yeah but you don't need to firebomb clinics. Non-violent direct action would cripple them in no time. And if it really is a holocaust, how can a person who believes so possibly sit at home and do nothing??

I think the real answer is that the vast majority with "anti-abortion" views don't in fact think it's the same thing as a holocaust.

[hectorberlioz]

One big incident and now there are "extremists" who bomb clinics all the time?
Gimme a break.

Besides, those doctors always get the sympathy hand from novelists who portray them as upright doctors, standing over their family as a herd of evil fundamentalists try to crash in their door.....
(A Case of Need, Michael Crichton)

One novel and now all novelists are writing it....

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

The clinics bombed by the Olympic bomber, or the murder of Dr. Schlepian in front of his family in his kitchen, or the Greenbelt bomber, or the bomb in Tulsa, or the actions by "Operation Rescue"?

You'll have to be more specific.

[jellyfishannah]

Here are a couple essays by Frederica Matthewes-Green who is a pro-life speaker and a member of Common Ground Network for Life and Choice. She's an excellent writer and I recommend reading any of her other essays. She has quite a few on this topic.



Seeking Abortion's Middle Ground

I was pro-choice at one point in my life, but I came over to a pro-life position years ago. I’ve been there ever since. Perhaps because of my background, I think there’s a logic to the pro-choice position that deserves respect, even as we engage it critically. It is possible to disagree with somebody without calling them baby-killers, without believing that they are monsters or fiends. It is possible to disagree in an agreeable way.

The abortion argument is essentially an argument among women. It’s been a bitter and ugly debate, and I find that embarrassing. For me, that gives a special urgency to this conference.

To reach agreement in any kind of conflict, you need to be able to back up and see far enough into the distance to locate a point you can actually agree on. What the two sides have in common is this: Each of us would like to see a world where women no longer want abortions. I don’t believe that even among the most fervent pro-choice people there is anybody who rejoices over abortion. I think we both wish that there were better solutions that could make abortion unnecessary, or prevent pregnancies in the first place. We’d like to see the demand for the procedure reduced, by resolving women’s problems and alleviating the pressure for abortion. We can go along this road together as far as we can, and there will come a time when pro-choicers are satisfied, and pro-lifers want to keep going, but that doesn’t mean we can’t go together for now.

A few years ago, quite by accident, I discovered an important piece of common ground. Something I wrote in a conservative think-tank journal was picked up and quoted widely. I had written: "There is a tremendous sadness and loneliness in the cry ‘A woman’s right to choose.’ No one wants an abortion as she wants an ice-cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal, caught in a trap, wants to gnaw off its own leg."Read the rest...


The Lessons of Roe

I was what the sociologists call an "early adopter" of feminism. Soon after arriving at college, in 1970, I knew that it was the religion for me. I had discarded the religion I grew up with, Christianity, as an insultingly simpleminded thing, but feminism filled the gap. Like a religion it offered a complete philosophical worldview, one that displayed me as victim in the center, a feature with immeasurable appeal to a female teenager. Feminism had its own gnostic analysis of reality, by which everything in existence was decoded to be about the oppression of women; it had sacred books, a secret vocabulary, and congregational gatherings for the purpose of consciousness-raising. It even had a habit and tonsure, in a sense; we didn’t don wimples, but we cast off oppressive undergarments and shunned the razor.

I was the first in my dorm to become a feminist, which caused my friends some worry. I printed up posters, yelled chants at marches, and arranged to bring Ti-Grace Atkinson to campus as a speaker, one of the more interesting disasters of my life. But the real cause, of course, was abortion. Laws varied across the land; in my home state it was illegal, but friends could travel to New York or California to end a pregnancy. Unfair! We wanted all abortion laws everywhere repealed, because otherwise women were slaves. The bumpersticker on my car read, "Don’t labor under a misconception. Legalize abortion."

When the Roe v. Wade decision came down, in January 1973, I was doing an independent semester in film studies and working in Washington, DC. I volunteered at the flagship underground feminist newspaper, "off our backs," and was proud when the first issue I worked on included my review of a French movie. That same issue carried a long editorial about Roe. Mostly, we felt it was OK. However, the Roe decision says that a woman must have a medical reason to have an abortion at the end of pregnancy. That struck us as meddling. What do nine men in black robes know? Why can’t a woman decide for herself whether to end a pregnancy, even in the ninth month?

Thirty years later, there are many things I regret about those years-don’t get me started!-but chief among them is how short-sighted I was about the impact of Roe. What can I say, except that I just didn’t know. I thought that women would only have abortions in the most dire circumstances. I thought that the numbers of abortions would be small. I thought every child would be a wanted child. I thought the unborn was nothing but a glob of tissue. I thought abortion would liberate women. I was wrong.Read the rest...

[jellyfishannah]

Originally Posted by The Gaffer

Here's a thought that occurs to me from time to time which I don't really understand.

If I genuinely believed that mass murder was being committed on the scale of millions of people per year being systematically destroyed, I would hope that I would be pretty militant about it. Pretty militant to the extent of physical resistance and being prepared to go to jail.

I would get a bunch of my mates and go around handcuffing myself to clinic entrances. When I got sent to jail, others would step forward to take my place. Eventually, abortion would become impossible because so many people (claim to) share the view that abortion is murder.

So why doesn't this happen?

Trying to directly help the unborn baby (handcuffing yourself to a clinic entrance, for example) is not going to do anything. The problem is much deeper than that.

Most of the women that have abortions are doing it because they feel like they have no choice... So much for "it's her right". She doesn't want to be in that situation. But it's a simpler way out. Easier for her when she feels like everyone around her will just be relieved to have that "problem" out of the way.

[sun-star]

Originally Posted by The Gaffer

Yeah but you don't need to firebomb clinics. Non-violent direct action would cripple them in no time. And if it really is a holocaust, how can a person who believes so possibly sit at home and do nothing??

I think the real answer is that the vast majority with "anti-abortion" views don't in fact think it's the same thing as a holocaust.

It isn't a choice between chaining yourself to railings and doing nothing. Anti-abortion groups, and private individuals, lobby MPs. They hold rallies. They introduce bills into Parliament. This is non-violent direct action - they're legal and democratic ways of making an argument and effecting change. Targetting individual abortion clinics doesn't solve the wider problem - it might scare a few women into not having abortions, but it doesn't change the law and it doesn't address the reasons why women have abortions. I know the politics of abortion in the US are totally different to here, so I can't speak for that, but in the UK at least, people who oppose abortion aren't inactive and they aren't hypocritical. They just have a more subtle understanding of the situation than you're crediting them with.

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

She's wrong that it's a conflict between women. She's wrong that the conclusion is final on when "it" becomes "a baby". And she's wrong in identifying herself as a feminist, or even an expert on feminism.

You can do drugs as a freshman in college, but it doesn't make you a chemist.

And, fortunately for us all, there are people who are NOT certifiable on both sides of the issue, even in the US. There are people involved in measured discussion of the problems, and people who are working to make abortion the non-issue that would be the best outcome for everyone.

[hectorberlioz]

Are you going to be more specific, or do you just want to pull up a source?

[jellyfishannah]

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

She's wrong that it's a conflict between women. She's wrong that the conclusion is final on when "it" becomes "a baby". And she's wrong in identifying herself as a feminist, or even an expert on feminism.

You can do drugs as a freshman in college, but it doesn't make you a chemist.

And, fortunately for us all, there are people who are NOT certifiable on both sides of the issue, even in the US. There are people involved in measured discussion of the problems, and people who are working to make abortion the non-issue that would be the best outcome for everyone.

Does she still identify herself as a feminist? Maybe I misread...

[The Gaffer]

Have you got yourself a stalker there, Sis?

I don't think I said that anti-abortion groups were inactive. But lobbying and debate are not direct action by any stretch of the imagination.

And I agree that it's not a conversation between women! Most often, it seems it is men who make the most strident arguments, the ones where abortion is equated with murder.

To reach agreement in any kind of conflict, you need to be able to back up and see far enough into the distance to locate a point you can actually agree on.

If they ever decided to round up the gardeners and do us all in, I'd sure hope that those protesting took a more robust approach than this.

However, good, if general, points made in that article. Thanks for posting it.

Each of us would like to see a world where women no longer want abortions.

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

She's wrong that it's a conflict between women.

As a legislative, political issue, men have very much participated.

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

She's wrong that the conclusion is final on when "it" becomes "a baby".

She says, "Polls on American attitudes toward abortion show that between 70 and 80 percent already agree that it’s a baby" That, in itself, leaves 20-30% who don't. But, as this may be a matter for science, as much as for belief, even if 100% of people believed something, that wouldn't make it true. It doesn't make it true for religion, and it doesn't make it true for science, either.

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

And she's wrong in identifying herself as a feminist, or even an expert on feminism.

I thought I covered this one with this:

You can do drugs as a freshman in college, but it doesn't make you a chemist.

Did you want evidence for this one? Or can you find someone who isn't a looney by yourself?

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

And, fortunately for us all, there are people who are NOT certifiable on both sides of the issue, even in the US. There are people involved in measured discussion of the problems, and people who are working to make abortion the non-issue that would be the best outcome for everyone.

[hectorberlioz]

That'll do

[sun-star]

Originally Posted by The Gaffer

I don't think I said that anti-abortion groups were inactive. But lobbying and debate are not direct action by any stretch of the imagination.

You said:

if it really is a holocaust, how can a person who believes so possibly sit at home and do nothing??

Doing nothing = inactive

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

Originally Posted by The Gaffer

If they ever decided to round up the gardeners and do us all in, I'd sure hope that those protesting took a more robust approach than this.

Someone with a shorter learning curve than Pastor Martin Niemoller, by preference.