Hi. I wrote and posted an incredibly long post on the new Liberal thread, and see that although I worked my fingers to the bone and gave it the best years of my life, there is not a single response! So I'm guessing it was too long to read. But over here, people are used to me going on and on, so rather than let it waste its fragrance on the desert air, I'm reposting it here. Even though it may upset some. I did an edit or two on it. Nobody has to read it, there won't be a quiz. It's on the "right to life" issue. I've made some of these points here before, I know.
The "you" I addressed is "DCF."
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If you define clusters of cells as "children," that is,
to use Pat W.'s categories, if you define an
oocite just penetrated by a sperm as a "child," or
their fused nuclei, or just-implanted cells, if you
call them "children," and if an early human
embryo is a "child," or an embryo that has been
implanted for a week, or two weeks, or three
weeks, or four weeks, or five weeks, or six
weeks, or eight weeks... if you define them all as
"children," then of course that accounts for that
zealotry I hear in the tone of so many (not all)
on your side in the debate.
And of course many who share your views are
filled with sanctimonious zeal!: They have
apparently hypnotized themselves into believing
that a scrambled egg is a roast chicken dinner! I
believe the proposition is an odd one, myself;
beyond odd, actually; and I think anyone would
think the proposition odd who didn't enjoy so
intensely the feeling state which accompanies
that inspiriting, energizing sanctimony that it
motivates them to take leave of their common
sense.
But hey, that's just me. Maybe eggs are
"chickens" and seeds are "tomatoes" and an
acorn is an "oak tree" and ingots are "cars" and a
cocoon is a "silk ball gown" and fertilized oocites
are "children."
Of course, DCF, if those 1.6 million are all really
"children," then it is easy to push aside the fact
that by banning legal abortion you assure that a
great big pile of dead women's bodies will be
produced by illegal abortion. A hundred and
forty thousand women in that one country that
one year, each dead because in her desperation
not to have an embryo develop in her abdomen
into a human being, she gambled, obtaining the
only kind of abortion you will never, ever, be able
to stop-- a dirty, painful, incompetent one. And so
she dies, terrified and in pain, of sepsis or
hemorrhage.
(Oh, God, I wonder how many of those women
had children at home to care for who are now
motherless? How many of them were the only
support for their families?)
In my opinion, what you are doing is taking a
religious notion, an item of pure dogma -- that
clusters of cells are "children," in spite of the
fact that anybody with two eyes and a brain can
see they aren't except by stipulation -- and
trying to shove it down the throats of those who
don't believe in that piece of dogma, or item of
ideology.
Embryos do become fetuses, and fetuses do
become children, and it is hard for civilized
people to decide exactly at what point the line
between fetus and child should be drawn.
Of course you can evade the decision, if you
simply substitute an article of religious faith --
an opinion -- (that is precisely what it is and all it
is) for the hard job of figuring out an answer to
the problem of how one neither makes
stipulations that defy common sense nor
tolerates infanticide.
I had a miscarriage at several weeks, and looked
at what fell into the toilet, and it looked like
some fatty gristle in a blood clot. It is madness,
imo, to define that clot as a human being and
force women to carry it in their abdomens
against their wills until it does become, in fact, a
human being.
But we draw lines all the time. We have to, to
live. So, we could talk about it. Could we talk
about it? Where should the line be, to be fair,
and sensible, and civilized, and good, and
compassionate?
Well, of course, for some, there's nothing to talk
about. It's easy. It's about when a soul (opinion;
religion) enters the cells.
I, personally, think three months feels right. I
don't know whether that is the correct line or
not. It's a hard decision, not a simple one. It
takes a lot of thought by people of good will and
good sense and a desire to minimize the misery
of humankind.
I don't want five or six month fetuses being
aborted. They are babies, to me. It takes no
microscope for me to see that. I also don't want
desperate women late with their periods sticking
knitting needles up their vaginas or lying on a
dirty table and having a drunken oaf scrape out
their uteruses with no anesthesia after
extracting sexual favors. Horrible things happen
to these desperate women. But so frantic are
they not to be punished for the few minutes of
sexual pleasure that resulted in the feared
conception that they will do anything, anything, to
stop it from becoming a human being in their
bodies. (I said "pleasure," but we know it was
only that for the lucky ones; many, of course,
have merely been used by a man as a receptacle
for his sperm, and had no pleasure at all by which
they earned this fate.)
(Oh, if only, if only, a microscopic cluster of cells
would, oh, say, every fifth time, implant itself on
the abdominal wall of the man. And start growing
there. And he would start vomiting a lot in the
morning, and he would realize that soon, if he
didn't do something, there would be a human
being inside his body, and he would have to, for
years and years and years, ... well, you see what
I'm thinking. What would guys think about a
fertilized oocite then? LOL!)
Well, here's the thing. I think anybody who
thinks there's a sacred soul in an oocite, that in
fact it is a microscopic "child," should... not get
an abortion.
I myself don't believe they are microscopic
"children" there, though. I don't think most
people do. And just because you stipulate it,
doesn't make it so. And I perceive you wanting to
use the law to force your religious precept down
the throats of those who don't share it, and I
can't help but resent it very much. I really do
hate it when people try to make me accept their
religious precepts by force of law.
I wish instead of arguing about sacred souls in
fertilized ova (it is so difficult in any case to
convert others to one's religion) the argument
would be about how to make lives better for
everybody, and help women not have unwanted
babies grow inside them, and how not to kill five
and six month old actual, not mystical, stipulated
babies. No decision will be perfect. I know that.
But some will cause much less misery than
others; and some don't require that the whole
citizenry be ruled by the religious precept of a
part. |
