I would like to expand a little on a subject that SS brought up concerning abortion. I know that all you young’uns don’t have a personal memory of what it was like pre Roe vs Wade. So, if you’ll bear with me a moment, I’ll give you a little history lesson.
Back in my mother’s day abortion was illegal in all States of the Union. Rich women could afford to go to places like Switzerland, or even to Mexico, to have a safe abortion. And, believe me, they did.
Poor women, on the other hand, were forced onto kitchen tables. The work was done by either a midwife (with everyone in the neighborhood knowing why the woman was visiting that particular midwife) or by a quack doctor who had lost his license to practice medicine at all. If something went wrong during the procedure and a real doctor was called in to save the woman’s life, he (the doctor) could be sent to jail if he treated the woman and didn’t report the fact that she’d had an abortion. The State thereby guaranteed that the doctor would become part of the police force by informing on his patient. Many doctors complied, for religious reasons, did not treat the patient and the woman died. Or, if he treated the woman and saved her life, he could end up in jail or have his license to practice medicine revoked. Even though it was against the law, women still had abortions.
I’d like to remind you that this was at a time when having a baby out of wedlock meant that you were branded for life as a whore. In the big cities you could just move to another neighborhood and your parents, if they still spoke to you, could visit you. In the smaller townships around America, you were the town tramp – never to be allowed to marry and have a family in the normal, conventional American way. Young girls who got into “trouble” were usually forced to give their babies up for adoption and thereby never see or hear from them again. This attitude was a holdover from a time in the European past, when a woman was expected to suffer for her “sins”.
The controversy over Roe vs Wade spun around my young head and was finally decided in January 1973. Having been raised in the Catholic Church, I was very against the idea. However, my mother and I had a conversation that changed my mind. Her personal memory of the time before, watching friends getting into “trouble” and ending up with never having a child at all because of a botched abortion. A mother who was rational and pragmatic raised me, and I learned to think for myself.
At the age of 35 I finally, for the first time (thanks to birth control pills), found I was pregnant. My choices - yes I had choices - were as follows: give the baby up for adoption, have an abortion, keep the baby and raise her myself, or marry the father and raise the baby together. I was one of the lucky ones. He was a wonderful man and we loved each other very much. My husband and I were together for 22 years before he died of cancer and we have two beautiful daughters, and one granddaughter.
To conclude, I like having choices. I like the idea that I was raised at a time when I didn’t have to feel guilty about my life or my lifestyle. I don’t believe in abortion for myself, my choice, but I will defend a woman’s right to make her own choices when confronted with any conflict in her own life. Now, if that makes me a feminist – yes, I accept that, but it does not make me a man-hater.
- AG
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63 comments:
Another one I can't make a stupid comment about...damn!
Great post, great words.
Right on Sister!!
But I am leaving this blog (for now) and going back to DD's where I can hear about crock pots and spel anyway I want!
Freedom of choice is great, I just want it extended to the person you are actually killing. And if the arguement is that that being is unable to sustain life on its own then I say neither is a 6 month old or a person who is paralyzed from the neck down. There are a lot of people that depend on others to sustain life. Why isnt it legal to kill them?
flawed...the two you talk about (6 mo old/chair guy) at least have the potential of being kept alive.
A blob of cells do not...
That aside, I don't agree with abortion as a convenience - ala Madonna (35 abortions in 5 years because she was waiting for Guy Ritchie to knock her up) - but I do fully support it in cases of rape, incest, etc.
35 abortions in 5 years, eh? Where do you get your information? Enquiring minds want to know, I want to know!
Go Back to Catholic School,
You take a 6 month old baby put him in a house full of food, by him/herself and come back in 1 week and see if he/she is alive.
Something people very often fail to understand: being pro-choice does not mean being pro-abortion. Abortion is not a nice thing. As AG said, as I have said before, we consider ourselves lucky that we have never been in a position where we have had to make that kind of a choice. In an ideal world, there would never be a need for abortion at all, but - look around you, my friends - we do not live in an ideal world.
Not saying he can feed himself...but he has the ability to be kept kicking. The cells don't - no matter what you do.
Star...she said it herself in an interview w/Rolling Stone. (now I pulled 35 out of my @$$...I know the number she said was over 20)
the cells will survive as long as you dont stick a hoover vac up there and suck them all out.
ahh...but your point (which was wrong) was they could sustain life on their own - they can't.
(you are also wrong about the Bengals...and my wallet will thank you!)
Hey guys, not a personal attack, just a question because I'm curious... I'm a little like Kinsey...
Do you all use condoms when having sex?
Do you take responsibility for whether or not a zygote gets started (I was good in biology, first a zygote, then a fetus, then a child)?
Or do you leave that responsibility entirely up to the woman you’re having sex with?
Not knowing how many of you are involved in long-term relationships or if you just sleep around, it might be a touchy subject and I apologize for that, but I’m really curious, you know.
If we made contraceptives more available to people, especially teens, perhaps we needn’t have had this issue brought up at all. And I’m all in favor of RU486 to be given to women in cases of rape and incest, along with screenings for HIV and other STDs. If I heard that was now an option in the States, I might even consider returning there at some point and paying taxes. As for Madonna, I’ve been anti for many years, and for many reasons, so I won’t even discuss her. I completely agree that abortion should not be a form of birth control (as it was throughout the Soviet Union for many years). You’re missing the point as are some of the States in America that now allow abortions to be done during the later stages of pregnancy. And the tests for screenings for birth defects should be made available much earlier than the 5th month of pregnancy.
As an aside, and to conclude: There was a time when we heard a rumor that the Catholic Church insisted that every 10th condom have a pinhole. I guess they don't do that anymore. However in 1961, in New York City, my mother was told, after having 5 children and 3 miscarriages, that she could NOT have her fallopian tubes tied until after she’d had her 6th child. She was already 36 years old. It was a law in NYC because the Catholic Church had such a strong lobby. But she was saved because the birth control pill became available and dear Dr. Tanenhaus subscribed them for Mom. Today, we’re all subject to fundamentalists of all religions who want women to return to the status of only being baby machines. Sorry, there are too many people starving in our world today and I believe in zero population growth.
"Barbara Victor's book "Goddess" (HarperCollins) includes the shock claim that Madonna has had 11 abortions in 25 years."
Babs Victor is a tabloid journalist whose only goal is to sell her shitty sensationalist spin to bored housewifes and gay men with too much free time and disposable cash to waste on trash like this.
Madonna never said shit about abortions to Rolling Stone. Check yourself before you wreck yourself.
lets talk about crock pot,
im also saying a 6 month old cant sustain life alone either.
Nice quote Flava Flav...
To AG. What gets me about the Catholic deal is that it is a bunch of DUDES making up the rules...DUDES who are telling others how to live while never having to reap (themselves) the impact of their decisions.
To your curiosity...I fly free!! (but also been with my one and only for the last 14 years)
Lets talk about crock pot,
I heard Jake Plummer was a party to a botched abortion. I think they sucked have his brains out which causes him to fuck up at least twice a game.
Madona sucks,
So do you believe that a man who helps make a baby has no right to say whether it should live or not? Contrary to a previous AG post, a women cannot have a baby by herself.
should have read "they sucked half of his brain out"
One of my friends, a man, who has been through the experience of his girlfriend having an abortion took the position that it was, in fact, entirely her decision. He was there to talk, help her reach a decision if she wanted, and there to be the dad if she had decided to have the baby. But ultimately, he thought he had no right to say what she should do because, once the sex is over, it is only about the woman and her body. I think he approached the situation in an incredibly enlightened way. In all fairness, I would not expect most men to be able to do that. And I do not mean that to be insulting at all.
SS, I've known many women who have had babies by themselves (now possible with artificial insemination) and end up raising them alone as well. That is a matter of choice. Who says women must be denied unconditional love because they’re not found a mate.
Unfortunately, a great many men still think of themselves as little bees, flying from flower to flower, with the desire to pollinate as many flowers as they’re able before they’re at a stage (usually because of their drinking habits) when they can no longer function. There are men who go through life without recognizing their responsibility to either help rear a child by their presence, or to help with the financial burden of rearing a child. Hence, so many single family homes. Sad fact of life, but there you have it.
SS..for what, in your case, amounts to about 3 min work I don't think you have the right to make that choice when compared to the life-time a woman will spend either thinking about the child they don't have with them or the one they do....
Reading this has made me realize that Jesus truly blessed me when he made me a gay.
Thank you Jesus!
Finally...something to laugh about during this post (besides SS).
I love you too...in a non-guy on guy way...
Hey, give it a shot. Works for me!
...and don't forget it was beer money in a gay bar. That shows that Jesus loves the gays.
Forgot about that. Jesus blessed me 3 times last night, but not with beer money. Maybe we should give other examples of the blessings received from our Lord.
In the interest of disclosure, I feel it's the woman's choice. The one exception is minor girls. Since this is a medical procedure, there should be consent from the parents like all medical procedures.
However, if someone is going to take the stance that the father has no right in the decision of whether or not a woman has an abortion, then a man should not be forced to support a baby he doesn't want even if the woman decides to keep it.
Woman's body, woman's right. Period. The sperm donor should obviously step up to the plate (or 'strap a pair on', right DD?!) and take responsibility for the work he's done but it is the choice of a woman, NOT some asshole in D.C.
DD, I go back again to my statement that we do not live in an ideal world. Of course, any unexpected pregnancy should be between two people who love and/or respect each other and they should be able to calmly and reasonably decide together what to do.
But I agree with you. If I were to get pregnant and chose to have the baby and raise it on my own (yuck!), then I would expect to maintain full financial responsibility.
DD!! Thank goodness!!! Bro..what did you have for breakfast (and by all that is right, let there be a crock pot involved!!!)
You can't put a fetus in the crock pot!
Weezy, that totally made me choke on my coffee.
Monkey, where are you? Please come rescue me from work and make me go drink beer.
K, but I really don't want to drink the pp at U Zpe ale mozna ja chci vodka. A co ty? Ja take' need to ring RTM pro prasky. Co chces? Jsem take' Weezy a blazen dneska.
I was going to suggest (group) masturbation as a way to prevent unwanted pregnancies, then came across this: http://www.forumspile.com/Cliche-Kitten_Die.jpg
Can't say I didn't try to help.
And one of my daughters claims she's a mass murderer.
So do you think a guy should be held responsible for child support if he wanted to abort a baby and the mother wouldnt?
AG, would you care to explain that?
Monkey, move away from your computer. The door is behind you. Turn around slowly, put your shoes on, and go outside. Name a pub, any pub, I'll meet you there in 20.
Hello?! That all depends on the crock pot!
Come on...we all know that is you Shawn Kemp! Or wait....is that you James Worthy?
And why doesnt anyone address the issue of violating the unborn babys liberty and right to decide?
Sounds like millions of kittens have been exterminated because of her daughter's sins.
Erm, because it's unborn, ding-dong.
SS, that is a question of when you think life begins, which obviously we are never all going to agree on. I happen to think that the person who is already in existence is more important.
As to financial responsibility, every situation is different. The answer would be yes for me, that I would release the man from any responsibility, but the answer would be different for a 16-year old girl who is not getting an abortion due to personal conviction. There are no easy across-the-board answers.
What else can you pot in the crock pot?
Last night I crock potted some beef brisket and now I have tender BBQ beef in the fridge.
There are a few words which I find terribly offensive and should be removed from your vocabulary immediately. They are (but not limited to as the list is constantly evolving):
*Tender
*Moist
*Precious
*Restriction
*Succulent
*Delicious
*Tissue
Now that we've agreed on these established guidelines we would appreciate you revising your post. Thank you.
Monkey, AG - U Zpěváčků now. Last one there buys the drinks.
Uh uh. The one with the job buys the drinks and the dinner and the pills.
I was tendering my precious tissue with now restrictions when I had a 'development' that some would call delicious or even succulent - to me it was just moist.
Could you crock pot freedom fries with ketchup?
DD loves these words:
Balm
Ointment
Salve
and he uses them too!
'Tendering'? You colored?
i like ur blog
SS-- "And why doesnt anyone address the issue of violating the unborn babys liberty and right to decide?"
Brain waves in a fetus are first detected at 8 weeks (2 months). Because the fetus has no brain waves before this point, it can be argued that it is unable to think or decide until it is 8 weeks old. With the fetus being unable to reason and decide between life or death up until the 8th week, the mother should be allowed to decide up until the beginning of the 8th week.
At 8 weeks, a fetus looks like this: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v333/lbuggy/8weeks.jpg
And just for more info.:
At 12 weeks the brain is fully formed and the fetus is able to silently cry and feel pain.
Lauren,
So basically it relies on the mother to stay alive. All Im saying is that there are masses of people in our society that physically rely on someone else to sustain yet suicide and euthanasia are illegal.
Dear Steve,
Knowing full well that I'm about to begin a new brouhaha when I mention a certain subject, i.e. the Catholic Church, I’m going to jump in and do it anyway.
In a situation when a woman was in labor and the doctors found that both mother and child would die unless they allowed one to die in order to save the other, the conventional thinking at the time was that the child should be allowed to live and let the mother die. It did not matter what the father said, the Catholic Church – in its infinite wisdom – made this the rule to live by. It did not matter how many other children were in the family, the feeling was that the father could always re-marry in order to give the children a new mother, but the new child should have the right to life.
That’s the way it was in countries that chose Catholicism as their national religion. Believe it or not, Protestant or Catholic, we have all been influenced by this kind of dogma/doctrine here and now in the present day. We’ve been raised to believe that women are worthless creatures and can easily be replaced, of course not overtly but with sly remarks and raised eyebrows and remarks such as: “My wife is turning 50, I think I’ll trade her in for 2 25s”.
Misogyny began to rear its ugly head with Saul of Tarsus (known to you as St. Paul). Until then, in almost every culture throughout the world, WOMAN was looked upon with awe, and we still call it “Mother Earth”, but that dates from the pagan past. When Paul began writing his epistles, and men who chose to join a Church where women would be excluded unless they “married” Jesus took up the gauntlet, women were subjugated to the position they have occupied until very recent history. Abraham Lincoln said: “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present”. He was wrong. There never was a “quiet past”, there has always been a “stormy present” and we must continue to make things better – not revert to the injustices of the past.
If a mother and a child were on a railroad track would you expect the mother to get out of the way and let the child get hit? Or if a mother and a child were under gunfire would you expect the mother to use the child as a shield to save her own life or the opposite? I dont find sacraficing your life for that of your child a bad thing to teach whether it be from a religious point of view or not. If I had children I would give my life in a second so that they could live if the situation deem that necessary.
And I applaud you for that sentiment. It means that one day you may very well be a good father. Given the choice, however, I don’t know if you’d sacrifice the woman you claim to love in order to bring a new life into the world.
Speaking of which, I noticed that only “Madonna Sucks said” answered my question concerning the use of condoms (really nice to know that someone, out there in the nether world, is involved in a long term relationship). Anyone else who is listening out there, I have a couple of comments to make.
1) Any man who does not use a condom while enjoying casual sex is being irresponsible.
2) Any man who causes impregnation while enjoying casual sex without the use of a condom is being doubly irresponsible.
3) Any man who then insists that the woman keep the pregnancy is a hypocrite.
4) When Jesus said - “It is easier for a camel to pass though the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the gates of Heaven” – he was not only talking about money. He was talking about hypocrisy as well.
So, for all you hypocrites out there, RETHINK YOUR HYPOTHOSIS. I can’t take you seriously if you continue to see the world through your own personal rose-colored glasses.
SS - I think that any of us would sacrifice our own life for that of our child, or even someone else's child. But a foetus (or a zygote at earlier stages, as AG would point out) is not a child.
In the religion I was brought up in, abortion is allowed when the mother's health, either physical or mental, is threatened. It's a slightly different perspective on the sanctity of human life.
I think any woman who has sex with a man not using a condom is equally responsible
I think any woman who gets pregnant by a guy who is not using a condom is equally responsible
Any man that wants to take custody of HIS chlld should have that right.
AG,
Sounds like you are talking about rape. Woman have the option of saying "no" to a guy that won't use a condom.
Trying to wade through comments sucks.
One thing that caught my eye, and that I need to put my two cents in, is the sperm donors rights. You know, just because the woman's body is the body that nouriches the bundle 'o' cells for the first 9 months (three weeks, two days, fifteen hours...ha ha), doesn't make him any less important. In fact, with many more fathers taking active rolls in thier children's developement, I really trully believe men should have more of a chance. If a woman gets knocked up, I do think the decision should be mutual, I think both people DO have equal rights in this. There are plenty of women, that I personally know, that should NEVER have been given the option of reproducing. And I have met some wonderful men that proved they can be just as nurturing as a woman can, and in many cases, much more wonderful.
Of course, I got knocked up by one of the assholes. His loss.
Now, if you will excuse me, I have kittens to kill...
"Every time you masterbate...God kills a kitten. Please, think of the kittens."
-SJV
aaaoohhh....that's it...that's it...you know you like it Mrs. Cleaver....oh yeah! Oh Yeah!!!
um...sorry about that little kitten.
FYI I am prochoice though I disagree with abortion being used as a form of birthcontrol. I do believe men should be informed and a discussion with the fetus's father is in order. Ultimately it's the women's body therefore her choice.
I myself have recently had the desire for a baby but admitted that I don't want to fuck up my body or rather am afraid to. Sometimes you gain wieght, feet swell, sensitive sense to smell, nausea...I just saw my freind go through it and it ain't pretty. Though some are fine.
I lost my little sister when I was 5. It was in her 9th month. My mom still hasn't recovered. Neither have I really or my dad though he seems to be in a world of his own these days.
I think we, everyone in the world, should focus on sex education in a very frank manner. PUts the facts out on the student's desk. Talk about one night stands and relationships of all kinds. A friend of mine is doing this right now in Canada. IT's a very important issue which is related to abortion. Maybe if people were more educated about sex, pregnancies there would be less abortions. Accidents do happen yes.
That is all I have to say.
As for that Madonna myth. Who gives a shit about Madonna! Kabbalah my ass. If Kabbalah will get me burberry flats and everything bring it. otherwise fuck off!
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