Something to think about...
Michael Trolly
R O E V. W A D E R E P O R T
Sponsored by Roe v. Wade: 25 Years of Life Denied
http://www.prolife.org/rvw
Permission to forward granted provided this entire document remains intact.
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DATELINE 12.14.97 -- 39 days until 25 Years
of Roe v. Wade becomes official.
FACT OF THE WEEK
Including allowing for a 4% undercount, there have been approximately
35,273,792 abortions from 1973 to 1996. [Source: Stanley K. Henshaw, et
al., "Abortion Services in the United States, 1991 and 1992," Family
Planning Perspectives, vol. 26, no. 3 (May/June 1994), p.101.]
THE BITTER PRICE OF CHOICE
by Frederica Mathewes-Green
When I was in college the bumper sticker on my car read "Don't labor under
a misconception -- legalize abortion." I was one of a handful of feminists
on my campus, back in the days when we were jeered at as "bra-burning
women's libbers." As we struggled against a hazy sea of sexism, abortion
rights was a visible banner, a concrete measurable goal. Through our other
foes were elusive, within the fragile boundary of our skin, at least, we
would be sovereign. What could be more personal? How could any woman
oppose it?
I oppose it now. It has been a slow process, my path from a pro-choice to
a pro-life position, and I know that unintended pregnancy raises
devastating problems. I can no longer avoid the realization that
legalizing abortion was the wrong solution; we have let in a Trojan Horse
whose hidden betrayal we've just begun to see.
A woman with an unplanned pregnancy faces more than "inconvenience"; many
adversities, financial and social, at school, at work, and at home
confront her. Our mistake was in looking at these problems and deciding
that the fault lay with the woman, that she should be the one to change.
We focused on her swelling belly, not the pressures that made her so
desperate. We advised her, "Go have this operation and you'll fit right
in."
What a choice we made for her. She climbs onto a clinic table and endures
a violation deeper than rape - the nurse's hand is wet with her tears -
then is grateful to pay for it, grateful to be adapted to the social
machine that rejected her when pregnant. And the machine grinds on,
rejecting her pregnant sisters.
It is a cruel joke to call this a woman's "choice." We may choose to
sacrifice our life and career plans, or choose to undergo humiliating
invasive surgery and sacrifice our offspring. How fortunate we are -- we
have a choice! Perhaps it's time to amend the slogan -- "Abortion: a
woman's right to capitulate."
If we refused to choose, if we insisted on keeping both our lives and
bodies intact, what changes would our communities have to make? What would
make abortion unnecessary? Flexible school situations, more flex-time,
part-time, and home-commute jobs, attractive adoption opportunities, safe
family planning choices, support in handling sex responsibly: this is a
partial list. Yet these changes will never come as long as we're lying
down on abortion tables 1,600,000 times a year to ensure the status quo.
We've adapted to this surgical substitute, to the point that Justice
Blackmun could write in his Webster dissent, "Millions of women have
ordered their lives around" abortion. That we have willingly ordered our
lives around a denigrating surgical procedure --accepted it as the price
we must pay to keep our life plans intact -- is an ominous sign.
For over a hundred years feminists have warned us that abortion is a form
of oppression and violence against women and their children. They called
it "child-murder" (Susan B. Anthony), "degrading to women" (Elizabeth
Cady Stanton), "most barbaric" (Margaret Sanger), and a "disowning [of]
feminine values" (Simone de Beauvoir). How have we lost this wisdom?
Abortion has become the accepted way of dealing with unplanned
pregnancies, and women who make another choice are viewed as odd,
backward, and selfish. Across the nation three thousand crisis pregnancy
centers struggle, unfunded and unrecognized, to help these women with
housing, clothing, medical care, and job training, before and after
pregnancy. These volunteers must battle the assumption that "they're
supposed to abort" -- especially poor women who hear often enough that
their children are unwanted. Pro-choice rhetoric conjures a dreadful day
when women could be forced to have abortions; that day is nearly here.
More insidiously, abortion advocacy has been poisonous to some of the
deeper values of feminism. For example, the need to discredit the fetus
has led to the use of terms that would be disastrous if applied to women.
"It's too small", "It's unwanted", "It might be disabled", "It might be
abused." Too often women are small, unwanted, disabled, or abused. Do we
really want to say that these are factors erase personhood?
A parallel disparaging of pregnancy itself also has an unhealthy ring.
Harping on the discomforts of pregnancy treats women as weak, incompetent;
yet we are uniquely equipped for this role, and strong enough to do much
harder things than this. Every woman need not bear a child, but every
woman should feel proud kinship in earthly, elemental beauty of birth. To
hold contempt is to reject our distinctive power, "our bodies, ourselves."
There is a last and still more terrible cost to abortion, one that we have
not yet faced. We have treated the loss of our fetuses as a theoretical
loss, a sad-but-necessary loss, as of civilians in wartime. We have not
yet realized that the offspring lost are not the enemy's, nor our
neighbor's but our own. And it is not a loss of inert, amorphous tissue,
but of a growing being unique in history. There are no generic zygotes.
The one-cell fertilized ovum is a new individual, the present form of a
tall blue-eyed girl, for example, with Granddads red hair and Great-aunt
Ida's singing voice. Look at any family, see how the traits and
characteristics run down the generations in stream. Did we really think
our own children would be different?
Like the gypsy in Verdi's opera, Il Trovatore, our frustration has driven
us to desperate acts. Outraged by the Court's cruel injustice, she stole
his infant son and, in a crazed act of vengeance, flung him into the fire.
Or so she thought. For, in turning around, she discovered the Count's son
lay safe on the ground behind her; it was her own son she had thrown into
the flames. The moment of realization will be as devastating for us as it
was for her.
Until that time, legal abortion invites us to go on doing it 4500 times a
day. And, with ruthless efficiency, the machine grind on.
(Frederica Mathewes-Green is currently a nationally syndicated columnist
and a contributing editor to World magazine, Books & Culture, and several
other publications. Articles by Ms. Green have appeared in the Washington
Post, National Review, and The Information Please Women's Sourcebook, as
well as other national periodicals and anthologies. Ms. Green is the
author of Real Choices (Questar Publishers, 1994), the result of
nationwide interviews with post-abortive women on the reasons they had
abortions and the sort of resources which could have solved their problems
and enabled them to have given life to their children.)
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
How many deaths were we talking about when abortion was illegal? In
N.A.R.A.L. we generally emphasized the drama of the individual case, not
the mass statistics, but when we spoke the latter it was always "5,000 to
10,000 deaths a year." I confess that I knew the figures totally false,
and I suppose the others did too if they stopped to think of it. But in
the "morality" of the revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted,
so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics. The
overriding concern was to get the laws eliminated, and anything within
reason which had to be done was permissible. -- NARAL co-founder Barnard
Nathanson on his lying about deaths from illegal abortions. [Source:
Bernard Nathanson, M.D., Aborting America (New York: Doubleday, 1979),
193.]
DID YOU KNOW?
... That from 1973 until 1987, according to the National Center for Health
Statistics and Centers for Disease Control, 215 women died from *legal*
abortions? [Sources: National Center for Health Statistics. Health, United
States, 1994. Hyattsville, Maryland: Public Health Service, 1995 and
Abortion Surveillance 1985, Center for Disease Control, Table #18.]
--
The Roe v. Wade Report is a weekly special feature sponsored by "Roe v.
Wade: 25 Years of Life Denied," a web site at http://www.prolife.org/rvw
that highlights information and analysis concerning the infamous Supreme
Court decision and its effects.
--
Michael David Trolly "Fight for the Son with a new Foundation
Kemptville, Ontario, Canada Shout to the world 'cause you're never gonna
cq...@freenet.carleton.ca stop! Come to the Rock with a big Revolution!"
m-tr...@earthling.net [The World Wide Message Tribe - Revolution]
Heather Bostelaar
> FACT OF THE WEEK
>
> Including allowing for a 4% undercount, there have been approximately
> 35,273,792 abortions from 1973 to 1996. [Source: Stanley K. Henshaw, et
> al., "Abortion Services in the United States, 1991 and 1992," Family
> Planning Perspectives, vol. 26, no. 3 (May/June 1994), p.101.]
35 million children who won't starve due to neglect by a parent that
cannot or will not support them.
> A woman with an unplanned pregnancy faces more than "inconvenience"; many
> adversities, financial and social, at school, at work, and at home
> confront her. Our mistake was in looking at these problems and deciding
> that the fault lay with the woman, that she should be the one to change.
> We focused on her swelling belly, not the pressures that made her so
> desperate. We advised her, "Go have this operation and you'll fit right
> in."
Pro-CHOICE. If she chooses to have her baby, that is also a valid option.
Perhaps there is some pressure to have an abortion, but there is at least
a similar amount of pressure NOT to have one.
>
> If we refused to choose, if we insisted on keeping both our lives and
> bodies intact, what changes would our communities have to make? What would
> make abortion unnecessary? Flexible school situations, more flex-time,
> part-time, and home-commute jobs, attractive adoption opportunities, safe
> family planning choices, support in handling sex responsibly: this is a
> partial list. Yet these changes will never come as long as we're lying
> down on abortion tables 1,600,000 times a year to ensure the status quo.
What are pro-life groups doing to support those women who choose to keep
their babies? In so many cases, these groups denounce the pregnant single
mother for being promiscuous enough to get pregnant. Birth control is out
of the question in these pro-life organizations run by religious
institutions, merely abstinince. That just isn't happening with everyone.
People are sexually active, for a variety of reasons. Not necessarily
healthy ones, but it makes no sense to force people into unsafe sexual
situations and then say 'i told you so' rather than offer a safer alternative.
> QUOTE OF THE WEEK
>
> How many deaths were we talking about when abortion was illegal? In
> N.A.R.A.L. we generally emphasized the drama of the individual case, not
> the mass statistics, but when we spoke the latter it was always "5,000 to
> 10,000 deaths a year." I confess that I knew the figures totally false,
> and I suppose the others did too if they stopped to think of it. But in
> the "morality" of the revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted,
> so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics. The
> overriding concern was to get the laws eliminated, and anything within
> reason which had to be done was permissible. -- NARAL co-founder Barnard
> Nathanson on his lying about deaths from illegal abortions. [Source:
> Bernard Nathanson, M.D., Aborting America (New York: Doubleday, 1979),
> 193.]
Deaths due to what? This is pseudo-statistical brainwashing if I ever saw
it.
>
>
> DID YOU KNOW?
>
> ... That from 1973 until 1987, according to the National Center for Health
> Statistics and Centers for Disease Control, 215 women died from *legal*
> abortions? [Sources: National Center for Health Statistics. Health, United
> States, 1994. Hyattsville, Maryland: Public Health Service, 1995 and
> Abortion Surveillance 1985, Center for Disease Control, Table #18.]
>
Now how many women would die under knitting-needle and coathanger conditions?
Heather--Pro-choice and pro-child.
--
~~~goes really good with arsenic sauce
Paul Derbyshire
I don't think Michael said anywhere he was against contraception. On the
contrary, contraception is necessary by any rational pro-life viewpoint.
--
.*. Friendship, companionship, love, and having fun are the reasons for
-() < life. All else; sex, money, fame, etc.; are just to get/express these.
`*' Send any and all mail with attachments to the hotmail address please.
Paul Derbyshire ao...@freenet.carleton.ca pg...@hotmail.com
Heather Bostelaar
Paul Derbyshire (ao...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA) writes:
> I don't think Michael said anywhere he was against contraception. On the
> contrary, contraception is necessary by any rational pro-life viewpoint.
>
Michael didn't say anything. He just gave us this propaganda for our
"enlightenment".
Rational pro-life viewpoints? Lessee...You show me one and I will show
you the alien growing out of my stomach.
Jason Cobill
> Rational pro-life viewpoints? Lessee...You show me one and I will show
> you the alien growing out of my stomach.
>
>
Umm.... I don't think people should abort fetuses.
If you're having sex, you should be prepared for the consequences.
(I'm prepared to bend the rules for victims of rape, but there are still
other options.)
Is that *ir*rational? It's pro-life, at least. Admittedly I don't
shoot clinic doctors, but I certainly hope you don't think all people with
a pro-life opinion are extremists.
Are all pro-life arguements irrational?
-Jay
--
"A little nonsense now and then, Jason Cobill
is relished by the wisest men." aq...@freenet.carleton.ca
- Willy Wonka :) :) :) :) :)
Heather Bostelaar
Jason Cobill (aq...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA) writes:
>> Rational pro-life viewpoints? Lessee...You show me one and I will show
>> you the alien growing out of my stomach.
>>
>>
>
> Umm.... I don't think people should abort fetuses.
> If you're having sex, you should be prepared for the consequences.
> (I'm prepared to bend the rules for victims of rape, but there are still
> other options.)
> Is that *ir*rational? It's pro-life, at least. Admittedly I don't
> shoot clinic doctors, but I certainly hope you don't think all people with
> a pro-life opinion are extremists.
> Are all pro-life arguements irrational?
You make a remarkably good point. I don't think you are irrational at
all, nor is your argument.
Idealogically, I am pro-choice, however, I am of the view that adoption is
better than abortion.
YOu are entitled to see my alien, w/ its poorly done lounge versions of
popular radio hits.
Heather
Stephen Gilman
Jason Cobill (aq...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA) writes:
>> Rational pro-life viewpoints? Lessee...You show me one and I will show
>> you the alien growing out of my stomach.
The abortion debate, taken out of a religious context, comes down to
whether or not fetusses (fetii?) are 'persons'. There is absolutely no
way to determine this one way or the other. It's a matter of belief.
Therefore the can be no *rational* argument from EITHER SIDE! It's all
just a matter of belief.
Hell, in my opinion even if you were to use a religious context you could
say that abortion is perfectly moral since the Bible doesn't forbid it.
And if anyone wants to debate me on this one, I'm prepared to do it.
>>
>>
>
> Umm.... I don't think people should abort fetuses.
> If you're having sex, you should be prepared for the consequences.
> (I'm prepared to bend the rules for victims of rape, but there are still
> other options.)
> Is that *ir*rational? It's pro-life, at least. Admittedly I don't
> shoot clinic doctors, but I certainly hope you don't think all people with
> a pro-life opinion are extremists.
>
> Are all pro-life arguements irrational?
>
> -Jay
> --
> "A little nonsense now and then, Jason Cobill
> is relished by the wisest men." aq...@freenet.carleton.ca
> - Willy Wonka :) :) :) :) :)
--
Stephen R. Gilman: Independent Film & Video Guy.
Director, Camera Operator, Production Assistant, Etc...
Member of SAW, IFCO and OHFTA.
ao...@freenet.carleton.ca http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~ao668
Ian Clysdale
Stephen Gilman (ao...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA) writes:
> The abortion debate, taken out of a religious context, comes down to
> whether or not fetusses (fetii?) are 'persons'. There is absolutely no
> way to determine this one way or the other. It's a matter of belief.
> Therefore the can be no *rational* argument from EITHER SIDE! It's all
> just a matter of belief.
>
> Hell, in my opinion even if you were to use a religious context you could
> say that abortion is perfectly moral since the Bible doesn't forbid it.
> And if anyone wants to debate me on this one, I'm prepared to do it.
Actually, this one comes down to your first argument. One of the ten
commandments is "Thou Shalt Not Kill." Therefor, if fetuses are
'persons,' then abortion is an act of murder, and therefore a deadly sin.
For the record, I fall into about the same camp as Heather, both
pro-choice and pro-life -- while I don't think I have the right to dictate
to anyone else what they should do with their bodies, I'd like to see more
people giving the children up for adoption rather than just killing them.
The adoption waiting lists in this country are currently in many cases
years long - it's not like there's a shortage of homes that want children.
But I do like arguing for the sake of arguing. :)
ian
--
ian clysdale - eris' poster boy * "Hmmm, I seem to be a bit of a
icly...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca * autopodovorarephilic" - srm
(imminentizing the eschaton one act of overwhelming arrogance at a time)
Jason Cobill
> The adoption waiting lists in this country are currently in many cases
> years long - it's not like there's a shortage of homes that want children.
I'm not so sure the waiting lists are so long because of lack of
children, I think it's more the beauracracy involved.
Not that I'm not quite content letting the placement commitees do
their jobs and take all the time in the world to find a good family.
I was just thinking for a moment... *danger danger danger*
Is it not possible that *any* family that applies for a child is
99.9% likely to be a better environment than most "natural" families?
Maybe I just know lots of cruddy families, but it seems to be that
any people who want a child to love so desperately, would probably be
better parents than your typical "Oh, crap, it's blue" suddenly-thrust
-into-parenthood parents.
I suppose it's more complicated than just the love aspect, but
does it really need to be? Is a person in a higher income bracket or with
a better benefits package more likely to be able to provide a better
environment to grow up in? I don't think so.
It would be interesting to take a look at the process. I'd like to
know more about it.
Can anyone point me at some interesting info?
> But I do like arguing for the sake of arguing. :)
Quickly! Get your throwing-stones! He must be punished! :)
Jason Cobill
Heather Bostelaar (cu...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA) writes:
> YOu are entitled to see my alien, w/ its poorly done lounge versions of
> popular radio hits.
Oh, well, I'm not interested if it sings. Singing aliens are a dime
a dozen. Show me something my alien *can't* do. :)
(Like, play tetris!)
Heather Bostelaar
Jason Cobill (aq...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA) writes:
> Heather Bostelaar (cu...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA) writes:
>> YOu are entitled to see my alien, w/ its poorly done lounge versions of
>> popular radio hits.
>
> Oh, well, I'm not interested if it sings. Singing aliens are a dime
> a dozen. Show me something my alien *can't* do. :)
> (Like, play tetris!)
>
Will Dr. Mario be alright?
Amanda Klaman
Ian Clysdale (ac...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA) writes:
> Heather Bostelaar (cu...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA) writes:
>> Will Dr. Mario be alright?
>
> Not after everything you did to him, NO! Even if it was concensual,
> that's *STILL* really twisted... Er... Wrong SIG. Sorry, kids.
>
> ian
*horror-filled, high pitched shriek*
Good heavens, what is that smut you just said? Oh, lord, my innocent
eyes..however shall I overcome the sin that has occured tonight..? Time for
calming slumber..
--amanda (sleeping under her 100% virgin wool blankets, as always)
--
...Santa hasn't been the same since he came back from 'Nam...
Ian Clysdale
Heather Bostelaar (cu...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA) writes:
> Will Dr. Mario be alright?
Not after everything you did to him, NO! Even if it was concensual,
that's *STILL* really twisted... Er... Wrong SIG. Sorry, kids.
ian
--