| Topic: |
Science > Abortion |
| User: |
"Sports Pants" |
| Date: |
25 Aug 2004 09:40:27 PM |
| Object: |
Great article by Carol Crossed. |
(Google for other articles by Carol Crossed, she's an exceptional writer.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
A Woman's "Right to Choose" is a Woman's a Right to Lose by Carol Crossed
This year marks the 25 years of the regime instituted by the Supreme Court
decision in Roe vs. Wade, a regime in which, contrary to the civic
inspiration of American and in betrayal of our ideals and tradition, we
have treated a whole class of persons as non-persons.
Deep in my bones is some knowledge of what it is to be a non-person, for
my great grandmother was a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee, and in
1838 this whole people was removed from its ancestral home in Georgia and
marched to a reservation in Oklahoma a thousand miles away. Their
possessions in their arms, their infants on their backs, the old and ill
in wagons, guarded by federal troops under the command of General Scott,
the people went on foot across the Tennessee and the Great Smokey
Mountains and Kentucky, with many dying along the way.
And one day the people simply stopped. General Scott ordered them forward,
but no one moved. The story goes that the General sought out the elders
and told them to order their people onward. The elders simply sat and
shook their heads. The General was angry and adamant. One wise old woman
looked up at him and explained. ³We cannot move forward. You see, our
souls have not yet caught up to our bodies.²
Our nationıs path since Roe v. Wade has likewise been a trail of tears,
littered with dead bodies. After 25 years it is time to call a halt, to
let our souls catch up to our bodies. Our ethics must match up to our
science, our morality to our technology, and our responsibility to our
license. We must examine this deadly doctrine that some persons are
non-persons.
Black Americans, too, have in their bones a knowledge of what that
doctrine means. In 1857 the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case ruled
that slaves were not persons but property. A defender of slavery wrote the
following words explaining why this was correct: ³There is a vast
difference in the mental and physical organization of man; hence a
difference in humanity; a degree of humanity is not humanity itself;
therefore they [the slaves] cannot bear fully the term human, but
intermediate human.² Isnıt this verbiage chillingly similar to the
statements of todayıs defenders of abortion?
Was the Dred Scott decision wrong and is slavery evil? Yes, we all agree.
Were the Cherokee mistreated and dispossessed? Yes, we all acknowledge it.
Is the Roe v. Wade decision wrong and is abortion evil? Those willing to
stand up and say yes are called ³religious extremists.²
And it seems always to be that way in our county. The people who have
affirmed Americaıs best values have always been called religious
extremists. The Moravians sat on our Cherokee land in Georgia in a vain
attempt to prevent our removal to Oklahoma. The movement to abolish
American slavery was populated and led by Christians. The womenıs suffrage
movement was led by Quakers. This centuryıs struggle for civil rights was
led by Baptist preachers. And the Catonsville Nine anti-Vietnam War
activists were Catholics.
We can see that what was extreme was not the values these people
expressed, but the foresight, integrity, and bravery needed to assert
mainstream values before the mainstream was ready to acknowledge them. The
proponents of abortion have spent 25 years trying to secure its place in
mainstream value, but their arguments in favor of it all fall down.
First, it is said that abortion is not imposed on anyone, it is simply a
choice. Even some religious persons and institutions have talked this
language, saying that while they cannot, in a pluralistic society impose
their religious views on others.
But the question whether an embryo or a fetus is a human being is not a
dogma of religion. It is a fact of science. The humanity of the fetus is
not derived from the Bible; itıs in your college textbook in embryology.
Science is charting and mapping the early and complex formation of the
tiny new human with an ever-improving specificity that demolishes any
euphemisms about ³uterine contents² or ³lumps of tissue.² Religious people
are never allowed to forget the Churchıs treatment of Galileo and his new
cosmology. It is the standard criticism of religionıs relation to science.
But today religion is demanding that society recognize the findings of the
new embryology, and for this too, religion is criticized.
It is increasingly evident, even to pro-abortionists, that the contents of
the uterus cannot be called anything but a human. So the next principle
adduced in favor of abortion is that society cannot legislate morality. It
is true that society cannot legislate oneıs attitude, but it can certainly
legislate oneıs behavior. We are prohibited by law from murdering, from
evading income taxes, from driving recklessly or drunk, and much besides.
Would an enslaved black, a dispossessed Native American, a disenfranchised
woman, or a child in a sweatshop agree that society cannot legislate
morality and should not attempt to? Is morality a private matter, a matter
of conscience? My attitude maybe private, but my behavior is not. Martin
Luther King Jr. had it right: ³A law may not make a man love me, but it
can stop him from lynching me.²
Seven states now have fetal homicide laws that consider even a nonviable
fetus a person for purposes of claims for wrongful death arising from
criminal assault or auto accidents. Yet federal law allows the same mother
who can claim wrongful death of her unborn baby to kill that unborn baby
herself if she chooses. So we do legislate morality, and yet it seems we
legislate it not with integrity but in deference to persons who can
dominate those unable to claim personhood on behalf of themselves.
The next defense of abortion is that it is a liberal principle, a
principle of personal and civil liberty. The truth is quite the reverse.
Indeed, the erosion of true liberal principles that is so evident around
us was given great impetus by Roe v. Wadeıs abandonment of the unborn.
Abortion expresses a worldview based on control and domination, not
inclusivity and equality. The true liberal principle has always been to
include and to defend, as equal members of society, those who are weak and
exploitableNegroes, Jews, Native Americans, women, and children. To
abandon the unborn to the power of those who would extirpate them is to
abandon liberal principles, not to enact them.
True liberals know this. A law professor and former board member of the
American Civil Liberties Union, Barry Nakal, recognized early on the error
in the ACLUıs support for the Roe v. Wade decision. Nakal wrote, ³Instead
of protecting the right to life, in Roe v. Wade the Constitution protests
the right to take life. Things are a little backwards here.²
Today many organizations, conservative and liberal, are seeing the
necessity for a consistent ethic of life. Democrats for Life is expanding
into new states, and Feminists for Life of America is the fastest-growing
womenıs group in the country. This brings me to the most fundamental and
yet most specious argument for abortion: that abortion is a feminist
principle, that it means the liberation of women, and should be a right of
women.
The first response to this is that, without exception, our popular
feminist foremothers such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
opposed abortion. As Stanton said, ³When we consider that women have been
treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our
children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.² These women
understood abortion as a symptom of a society that valued them. Alice
Paul, the first women to run for President said in 1923 that abortion was
the ultimate exploitation of women.
The second response is to point out the effects of 25 years of abortion on
demand. The abortion license granted to women has created an adversarial
situation not only between women and their children, but also between
women and men, and between women and society. By calling the fate of the
unborn a womanıs prerogative, we have allowed both men and society to
disclaim responsibility for the woman and the child. Womenıs cry to leave
them alone with their pregnancy decision is heard clearly by a society
only too eager to really leave them alone. Some ³fathersı rights² groups,
upset that men have little or no say in the decision whether to abort, are
fighting child support legislation. If the man canıt get his child
aborted, then he doesnıt feel he has any responsibility to support that
child. Equal rights have become equal wrongs.
Childhood hunger, single motherhood, and the feminization of povertythe
problems that proponents of abortion claimed would be solved by
abortionhave only gotten worse at every level of society since Roe v.
Wade. Instead of a right to choose, abortion has become a womanıs right to
lose. As human rights advocate Gracie Olivarez has said, ³Poor women cry
out for justice and the United States offers them an abortion.²
Whether Bill Clinton will be known as the ³womanizer President² is yet to
be seen. But it is certain that he is the ³abortion President.² The two
concepts, the two vices, are related. Hugh Hefnerıs Playboy Foundation was
an early supporter of abortion rights. Under the guise of freeing women,
this mentality gives men the freedom to vacuum out a womanıs body and then
use it over again as if it were a rental car.
Jesus warned that if we live by the sword we will die by the sword. There
is wisdom too in the old words of Chief Seattle: ³All beings are
interconnected. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand
in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.² Violence begets
violence begets violence. Countries participating in war have markedly
higher homicide rate after a war. Roe v. Wade was decided during the
Vietnam War. Was our culture desensitized to taking life? Women after
abortions and soldiers after combat suffer remarkably similar symptoms,
what psychologists call post-traumatic stress disorder.
Recent polls reveal three astonishing facts after 25 years of abortion on
demand. First, over half of those polled thought that the number of
abortions in America each year was under 100,000 when in fact it is
1,500,000. Second, only one in 10 Americans can accurately describe the
extent of the abortion license allowed under Roe v. Wade and its companion
Doe v. Bolton. Most people think there are some sorts of significant
restrictions when in fact these two rulings, decided one day apart,
created a nearly unrestricted private license to abortion at any time of
pregnancy for any reason. The third revelation is that poll after pool
reveals that 90 percent of Americanıs disapprove of 90 percent of
abortions. The reasons most people cite as acceptable for having an
abortion (rape, incest, the life of the mother, and fetal deformity) are
not the reasons why the vast majority of women actually have abortions.
Why, then, is unlimited abortion still with us?
A decade ago The Wall Street Journal reported that already the number of
people arrested at abortion clinic sit-ins was two-and-a-half times the
number of activists arrested during the civil rights movement. The
abortion industry and its friends took measures not just to contain this
activism, but also to pummel pro-life people to the ground, with laws like
RICO and FACE. A moderate estimate of the result is that in the past 10
years from 30,000 to 60,000 pro-life people practicing traditional acts of
nonviolent civil disobedience have been fined outrageously, imprisoned or
have lost their property. The persecution they are suffering may help
pro-life people win protection for the persecuted unborn. As one reporter
put it, ³When the score is Lions 4, Christians 0, you begin to root for
the Christians.²
And there is some good news:
* The abortion rate has dropped for the fifth consecutive year. And the
number of children aborted is down from a high of 1.6 million to 1.3
million.
* Forty states have enacted some regulations. Parental consent, waiting
periods, and particularly Womenıs-Right-to-Know legislation have provided
modest protection for women and their unborn children.
* Today there are more pregnancy help centers in the U.S. (3,200 to
3,400) that there are places to get an abortion (2,380 clinics, hospitals,
and offices).
* Planned Parenthood reports it has closed 38 of its clinics and lost
4,000 staff and volunteers.
* In an 11-year period, 614 hospitals stopped doing abortions. Hundreds
of abortionists and young medical students are rejecting abortion.
Sidewalk counseling and public demonstrations at clinics are playing a
role in abortionistsı re-evaluating their industry.
* Two young women in the landmark abortion decisionsNorma McCorvey, the
Jane Roe in Roe v. Wade, and the Sandra Race Bensing Cano, the Mary Doe in
Doe v. Boltonhave publicly rejected abortion and are active in the
pro-life cause. Thousands of others are refusing to participate in the war
on the unborn:
* The owner of a Minnesota incinerator company refused to sell equipment
to Planned Parenthood to be used for fetal disposal.
* A police officer in Nevada decided he couldnıt in good conscience
arrest pro-life demonstrators at a clinic; instead he sat down and was
arrested with them.
* A lawyer from Maine, the former chairman of the American Bar
Associationıs Committee on the Federal Judiciary, resigned rather than
compromise his professional integrity over the ABAıs support of abortion.
* Students at the University of Minnesota petitioned the university and
succeeded in removing from their college library a picture of Planned
Parenthoodıs founder Margaret Sanger.
These people demonstrate what the abortion issue is about: a people trying
to recover their integrity, a people hating a forced march into oblivion
to let their souls catch up to their bodies. Enemies of the pro-life
movement have in their bag of rhetorical tricks another word besides
³extremist.² They call this a single-issue movement. They call us
single-issue people. To that we say, yes, the single issue is whether all
human beings are equal under the law. The single issue is whether we will
allow violence in the name of individualism. The single issue is whether
power will yield to truth and love for one another.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Some of my thoughts:
"Abortion expresses a worldview based on control and domination, not
inclusivity and equality."
People can debate the morality or legality and not bring up issues of
control and domination, much less not fly into paroxysms of indignance
about issues of control, but when the issue becomes abortion, pro-choicers
shoot back "you just want to control..." Pro-choicers' reflexive
criticisms of pro-lifers are by no accident reflexive of the cause in
which they've immersed themselves.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Recent polls reveal three astonishing facts after 25 years of abortion
on demand. First, over half of those polled thought that the number of
abortions in America each year was under 100,000 when in fact it is
1,500,000."
Boy, Planned Parenthood sure is derelict in educating the American
people about abortion! What is the government paying these guys to do?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"The owner of a Minnesota incinerator company refused to sell equipment
to Planned Parenthood to be used for fetal disposal."
If a pro-choicer tells me this doesn't make them wince, how can I
expect they're truthful about anything else?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Lastly, two achingly beautiful slam-dunk sentences:
"Womenıs cry to leave them alone with their pregnancy decision is heard
clearly by a society only too eager to really leave them alone."
"As human rights advocate Gracie Olivarez has said, 'Poor women cry out
for justice and the United States offers them an abortion.'"
--
ROBERT CAPONI: The man who with the | "Akhtar didn't come here to
power of his brain plumbed the depths | live the American dream, he
of the mysteries of the Universe. | came here to kill you."
|
http://home.earthlink.net/~tagutcow | -- local political ad
.
|
|
| User: "Ray Fischer" |
|
| Title: Re: Great article by Carol Crossed. (Pro-lie propaganda) |
26 Aug 2004 12:13:53 AM |
|
|
Sports Pants <tagutcow@earthlink.net> wrote:
(Google for other articles by Carol Crossed, she's an exceptional writer.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
A Woman's "Right to Choose" is a Woman's a Right to Lose by Carol Crossed
Carol Crossed is a hypcorite and an idiot. There is so much wrong
with this crap that I'm not going to deal with it all.
This year marks the 25 years of the regime instituted by the Supreme Court
decision in Roe vs. Wade, a regime in which, contrary to the civic
inspiration of American and in betrayal of our ideals and tradition, we
have treated a whole class of persons as non-persons.
That's a bald-faced lie. Fetuses have NEVER in human history been
considered to be persons. That Crossed wants them to be treated as
such does not justify lying.
Deep in my bones is some knowledge of what it is to be a non-person, for
my great grandmother was a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee, and in
1838 this whole people was removed from its ancestral home in Georgia and
marched to a reservation in Oklahoma a thousand miles away. Their
possessions in their arms, their infants on their backs, the old and ill
in wagons, guarded by federal troops under the command of General Scott,
the people went on foot across the Tennessee and the Great Smokey
Mountains and Kentucky, with many dying along the way.
And yet they still were persons.
And one day the people simply stopped. General Scott ordered them forward,
but no one moved. The story goes that the General sought out the elders
and told them to order their people onward. The elders simply sat and
shook their heads. The General was angry and adamant. One wise old woman
looked up at him and explained. ³We cannot move forward. You see, our
souls have not yet caught up to our bodies.²
Just as women refused to let themselves be made into breeding
machines, forced to produce babies for those arrogant hypcorites
who think that other people should be made to suffer and die for
their own good.
[...]
Was the Dred Scott decision wrong and is slavery evil? Yes, we all agree.
Except those who want to make pregnant women into slaves, forced to
provide the use of their bodies for the benefit of others.
[..]
But the question whether an embryo or a fetus is a human being is not a
dogma of religion. It is a fact of science.
That's another lie. "Human being" is not a scientific term. It is a
social and legal term.
The humanity of the fetus is
not derived from the Bible; itıs in your college textbook in embryology.
A book which Crossed never read.
[...]
The next defense of abortion is that it is a liberal principle, a
principle of personal and civil liberty. The truth is quite the reverse.
Forcing people to obey really is making them free.
Indeed, the erosion of true liberal principles that is so evident around
us was given great impetus by Roe v. Wadeıs abandonment of the unborn.
Abortion expresses a worldview based on control and domination, not
inclusivity and equality.
LOL! Freedom is slavery! Slavery is freedom!
Only by such doublespeak can the pro-liars justify their immoral
ideology.
--
Ray Fischer
rfischer@sonic.net
.
|
|
|
| User: "John Savard" |
|
| Title: Re: Great article by Carol Crossed. (Pro-lie propaganda) |
26 Aug 2004 11:33:46 AM |
|
|
On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 05:13:53 GMT, (Ray Fischer)
wrote, in part:
But the question whether an embryo or a fetus is a human being is not a
dogma of religion. It is a fact of science.
That's another lie. "Human being" is not a scientific term. It is a
social and legal term.
If that's the case, then neither the Trail of Tears, nor Negro slavery,
nor the Holocaust, can be criticized as wrong.
If right and wrong are ours to make up as we go along, whichever way
suits our whims, then there is no right and wrong.
Right and wrong are only meaningful if they are pre-existing and not
subject to human will, like the laws of physics and mathematics.
The next defense of abortion is that it is a liberal principle, a
principle of personal and civil liberty. The truth is quite the reverse.
Forcing people to obey really is making them free.
No.
Forcing white people to obey "do not own slaves" is making black people
free.
Forcing born people to obey "do not have abortions" is making fetuses
free.
Thus, the contradiction you identify is not present.
You may, if you wish, argue that characterizing fetuses as persons,
unlike characterizing adult members of ethnic minorities as persons, is
invalid because of characteristics of fetuses, just as we can argue,
based on their intellectual capacity, that characterizing horses as
persons is invalid.
But the arguments made here are invalid, basically because they either
assume their conclusion or are without any substance.
John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html
.
|
|
|
| User: "Ray Fischer" |
|
| Title: Re: Great article by Carol Crossed. (Pro-lie propaganda) |
27 Aug 2004 12:21:04 AM |
|
|
John Savard <jsavard@excxn.aNOSPAMb.cdn.invalid> wrote:
On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 05:13:53 GMT, (Ray Fischer)
wrote, in part:
But the question whether an embryo or a fetus is a human being is not a
dogma of religion. It is a fact of science.
That's another lie. "Human being" is not a scientific term. It is a
social and legal term.
If that's the case, then neither the Trail of Tears, nor Negro slavery,
nor the Holocaust, can be criticized as wrong.
Of course they can, idiot, as has already been explained to you
countless times. But if you're going to be a dishonest ***** then
you really shouldn't try to pretend any knowledge of morality.
If right and wrong are ours to make up as we go along, whichever way
suits our whims, then there is no right and wrong.
Because you say so?
The next defense of abortion is that it is a liberal principle, a
principle of personal and civil liberty. The truth is quite the reverse.
Forcing people to obey really is making them free.
No.
That was Crossed's argument.
--
Ray Fischer
rfischer@sonic.net
.
|
|
|
|
| User: "Paul Anderson" |
|
| Title: Re: Great article by Carol Crossed. (Pro-lie propaganda) |
26 Aug 2004 01:03:35 PM |
|
|
On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 16:33:46 GMT, jsavard@excxn.aNOSPAMb.cdn.invalid
(John Savard) wrote:
On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 05:13:53 GMT, (Ray Fischer)
wrote, in part:
But the question whether an embryo or a fetus is a human being is not a
dogma of religion. It is a fact of science.
That's another lie. "Human being" is not a scientific term. It is a
social and legal term.
If that's the case, then neither the Trail of Tears, nor Negro slavery,
nor the Holocaust, can be criticized as wrong.
Native Americans, the Negro Race, and the Jews were all human beings
and held to be human beings at the times involved with the above.
Thus it is not the case that they can be criticized as wrong.
You strike me as being reasonably intelligent, yet you constantly post
obvious lies. Why?
If right and wrong are ours to make up as we go along, whichever way
suits our whims, then there is no right and wrong.
Right and wrong are only meaningful if they are pre-existing and not
subject to human will, like the laws of physics and mathematics.
Right and wrong are not ours to make up as we go along. There is a
solid basis for right and wrong. Right and wrong are not made up on
whim. Nor is right and wrong pre-existing like the laws of math and
physics.
.
|
|
|
|
| User: "Matt Pillsbury" |
|
| Title: Re: Great article by Carol Crossed. (Pro-lie propaganda) |
26 Aug 2004 03:11:12 PM |
|
|
jsavard@excxn.aNOSPAMb.cdn.invalid (John Savard) writes:
[...]
Right and wrong are only meaningful if they are pre-existing and not
subject to human will, like the laws of physics and mathematics.
You're lumping two totally different things together there. As a
result, your argument makes about as much sense as talking about, "the
colors of quarks and stoplights".
[...]
--
Matt Pillsbury
pillsy[at]mac[dot]com
.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
