JC, these are difficult questions for all of us, but uncomfortable? I think that is the wrong word.
What does make me uncomfortable is your easy willingness to assume that reaching
conclusions different from your own stems from some failure to have thought at all. You
say "women have to face up to" these questions, as if we haven't debated and considered
deeply and responsibly about these issues already. Then you add that "Women are fierce
defenders -- only after birth"-- an astonishingly ridiculous, inaccurate, and insulting
generalization. Merely because we may have arrived at a different decision from what
you seem to believe is the moral high ground (and apparently the ONLY high ground) in
the debate, you choose to speak with condescension and a thinly veiled hostility which I
find offensive as well as intellectually arrogant (and weak) .
When YOU conclude that life begins at a moment, a day, a stage of gestation with such
absolute moral conviction, you have denied the reality that others may have concluded
otherwise with the same deep responsible and moral consideration. You fail to grant
others the respect we each deserve as intelligent and moral individuals capable of making
valid decisions independent of yours.
We HAVE faced up to the question of life and death; you just do not like the answer
that was given by some. Condemn it for yourself based on your own ethical beliefs, do
what you can to change it, but do not tell me that I and other women here have not given
as much consideration, both intellectually and ethically, to the decision as you. |
