Should Fetuses be Allowed to Marry?
One wonders about the fetish that the Right-wing Christian Zealots have for the unborn. Fetuses are babies they say, and should have all the rights of any person. And this person-hood goes back to very act of conception. Even the "morning after" pill, "Plan B" is considered by them to be an abortifactant. The men and women (mostly men) who represent this radical opinion in our government, like Sam Brownbeck (R., insane, Kansas), Bill Frist (R., silly, Tennesee) and Rick Santorum (R., completely crazy, Pennsylvania), take it to the very limits of sanity.
The other day I was talking to a doctor friend, an OB-GYN in fact (who doesn't perform abortions in case you wondered) about this. He's a Catholic and a believer in a woman's right to choose whether or not to carry a fetus to term, but not a fanatic about it. He's a foster parent and when an abortion is performed, he says, "It means that our society has let a woman down." I asked him if a fetus and a person are the same thing. "There are a couple of critical differences," he told me. "First of all, a fetus is "breathing" amniotic fluid, rather than atmospheric oxygen."
The doc and I were roomates in college, and we shared a couple of philosophy and literature courses that had terrific impact on our two malleable young minds. We'd learned that the concept of "inspiration" which means the intake of breath, also meant the "drawing in of the soul" to the Greeks, as well as the most common meaning today, of the sparking of creativity.
But the biggest difference, he told me, between a person and a fetus, is that one of them has been born and one hasn't. I guess the anti-choice religious fanatics don't think that birth is a big deal, that it doesn't have much meaning when it comes to the formation of a human being. I'd suggest that if they don't think birth is crucial, in deed defining human life, they might want to talk it over with a mother - anybody's mother. They might get a different viewpoint from someone who's actually carried a child then has gone through the birth event.
This brings us back to the Ben Franklin-esque, common sense answer to the question "When does life begin?" When the mother says it does.
This isn't as flip an answer as it seems. That this answer is never brought up in the debate might be one of the reasons that most of the leaders of the Anti-Choice Movement are men. Sure, you see a lot of shrieking women on the anti-abortion picket lines, screaming and cursing at the scared young women trying to enter clinics around the country. The ladies are the ones who have the most caring, sympathetic comments for these poor girls going through a horrible experience: "Whore!, Murderer!, You will burn in Hell for Eternity!" You can tell they really care. [author's note: If you think I'm making this up, send me your email address and I'll send you an address of a clinic in a south central Missouri town, right across the street from a Catholic Church, where you see these disgusting, hateful, yentas, running across the street after morning Mass, to offer these kind words of Christian support to the young patients almost every morning.]
But it's the men, the James Dobsons and the Sam Brownbecks and Bill Frists of this country, who really pull the strings in the anti-abortion movement. Them, and of course, the poisonous bunch who have the word "Reverend" in front of their names, but have only hate in their souls, who lead the marches and who quote scripture with such authority. They're the ones who really know what's best for the women of America.
Eric Rudolph, the neocon maniac who somehow slipped through the National Security safety net to bomb a family medicine clinic and the Olympics, called himself "a soldier in the army of the Lord." Making a clinic where abortions are performed one of his targets didn't just spring unbidden into his brain. It was put there by the Dobsons, the Brownbecks, the Frists, the Right-wing talk radio scumbags like Laura Ingraham, Michael Medved. They lit Mr. Rudolph's fuse, all right. The ones who are standing up for "values", for "family", for "God".
It's a good bet that God would just as soon they shut up.
The other day I was talking to a doctor friend, an OB-GYN in fact (who doesn't perform abortions in case you wondered) about this. He's a Catholic and a believer in a woman's right to choose whether or not to carry a fetus to term, but not a fanatic about it. He's a foster parent and when an abortion is performed, he says, "It means that our society has let a woman down." I asked him if a fetus and a person are the same thing. "There are a couple of critical differences," he told me. "First of all, a fetus is "breathing" amniotic fluid, rather than atmospheric oxygen."
The doc and I were roomates in college, and we shared a couple of philosophy and literature courses that had terrific impact on our two malleable young minds. We'd learned that the concept of "inspiration" which means the intake of breath, also meant the "drawing in of the soul" to the Greeks, as well as the most common meaning today, of the sparking of creativity.
But the biggest difference, he told me, between a person and a fetus, is that one of them has been born and one hasn't. I guess the anti-choice religious fanatics don't think that birth is a big deal, that it doesn't have much meaning when it comes to the formation of a human being. I'd suggest that if they don't think birth is crucial, in deed defining human life, they might want to talk it over with a mother - anybody's mother. They might get a different viewpoint from someone who's actually carried a child then has gone through the birth event.
This brings us back to the Ben Franklin-esque, common sense answer to the question "When does life begin?" When the mother says it does.
This isn't as flip an answer as it seems. That this answer is never brought up in the debate might be one of the reasons that most of the leaders of the Anti-Choice Movement are men. Sure, you see a lot of shrieking women on the anti-abortion picket lines, screaming and cursing at the scared young women trying to enter clinics around the country. The ladies are the ones who have the most caring, sympathetic comments for these poor girls going through a horrible experience: "Whore!, Murderer!, You will burn in Hell for Eternity!" You can tell they really care. [author's note: If you think I'm making this up, send me your email address and I'll send you an address of a clinic in a south central Missouri town, right across the street from a Catholic Church, where you see these disgusting, hateful, yentas, running across the street after morning Mass, to offer these kind words of Christian support to the young patients almost every morning.]
But it's the men, the James Dobsons and the Sam Brownbecks and Bill Frists of this country, who really pull the strings in the anti-abortion movement. Them, and of course, the poisonous bunch who have the word "Reverend" in front of their names, but have only hate in their souls, who lead the marches and who quote scripture with such authority. They're the ones who really know what's best for the women of America.
Eric Rudolph, the neocon maniac who somehow slipped through the National Security safety net to bomb a family medicine clinic and the Olympics, called himself "a soldier in the army of the Lord." Making a clinic where abortions are performed one of his targets didn't just spring unbidden into his brain. It was put there by the Dobsons, the Brownbecks, the Frists, the Right-wing talk radio scumbags like Laura Ingraham, Michael Medved. They lit Mr. Rudolph's fuse, all right. The ones who are standing up for "values", for "family", for "God".
It's a good bet that God would just as soon they shut up.
posted by Nittacci at 12:04 PM
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