I have been carefully staying out of this, partly because, on the few non-argument- driven forums I hang out in on the Net, abortion is a banned issue.
The reason is that, as someone said earlier, one is either pregnant or one isn't. It's that kinda issue. You're either "for" or "against." Like pregnancy itself, it's tough to find a middle ground amongst all the rhetoric. So, just for something fun to do on a sunny afternoon in Sitges after a rain, with the environment washed clean and my self feeling similarly so, I think I'll actually violate a personal rule and weigh in on the subject. Just this once. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "mainstream20016" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "oneradiantbeing" <oneradiantbeing@> wrote: > > > > Mainstream: The wanton disregard of the fetus in determining > > to abort is incredibly cruel. Mainstream, have you ever been the guy helping a woman to get through an abortion? >From the way you speak, I have to imagine that you have not. I have, several times. And none of the fetuses in question had the slight- est DNA link to my own. I tried to help the women through a painful experience because they were in pain and I wanted to help, in any way I could. One of the only ways in which I found that I *could* be helpful was just not to judge. I'm sorry, but there is just one enormous load of judgment in your statement above. It's in the second and third words of the sentence. "'Wanton disregard' of the fetus?" How about wanton disregard of the carrier of the fetus? It is *not* as if abortion is an easy decision. You're trying to make it sound as if it is one. I'm sorry, but if you had been the shoulder to cry on for as many women who have made the decision to have an abortion as I have, I don't think you'd talk the way you did above. > > DS: I believe it's more cruel for a religion or government > > to abduct the bodily rights of a living individual and > > force them to reproduce against their will. The bottom line is actually more sinister than that. When abortion is banned, the religion or government in question has abducted the woman's right to *have* a will. It's a power game. They're trying to impose *their* will on the will of all the women whom they mistakenly think they "govern." Whether it's a priest or a state governor, it's almost always a man. And that man is saying to the women he is supposed to *represent* within a democracy, "So I understand that you think you have a will. I'm here to tell you that you don't have one. No matter what *you* decide about this fetus dwelling within you, I am here to say -- definitively -- that your ideas on this matter Just Don't Count. *I* am the one who gets to decide what is right and what is wrong in such matters, not you. Live with it. And if you don't *like* living with it, please remem- ber that I have the right [in the near past and, if some people get their way, in one possible future] to throw you in jail / excommunicate you. But you do what you think is right. I'll wait." > If one doesn't want to reproduce, one should prevent pregnancy. > There are many convenient ways of preventing pregnancy. There are many convenient ways of trying. Not one of them is foolproof. Every one of the women I helped get through an abortion was practicing -- and regularly, without a single exception -- some purportedly effective means of birth control. I'm sorry, Mainstream, but you're talkin' like a priest or a politician -- and above all, like a GUY -- trying your best to make women feel really, really, really, really BAD about contemplating an abortion, or having had one in the past. And in my book, that puts you on a very, very, very, very different plane of attention than the women I held while they sobbed their way through the experience you so blithely call "wanton disregard of the fetus." You have NOTHING to say about it. It's not your body. It's not your decision.
