| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"stoney" |
| Date: |
02 Jul 2005 01:46:50 PM |
| Object: |
Bat abortion tells a story of shame and sexual guilt |
http://www.detnews.com/2005/metro/0506/30/C01-232991.htm
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Bat abortion tells a story of shame and sexual guilt
By Laura Berman / The Detroit News
In the strange case of the boy who hit his pregnant girlfriend
with a miniature baseball bat, surprisingly few stereotypes apply.
He's a decent high school student, eager for a career in law
enforcement, a volunteer at the senior citizen center, and a member of
the same high school creative writing club as his girlfriend. She's a
Miss Armada runner-up, college-bound, intent on a career in psychology
or teaching.
And yet, when she got pregnant, and -- her lawyer says -- couldn't
find her way through the dense thicket of rules devised for unlucky
minors who want to end a pregnancy, the couple were desperate enough
to try to physically dislodge the fetus.
Now he faces assault charges, as a juvenile, under Michigan's
Fetal Protection Act for hitting her in the abdomen with a down-sized
souvenir baseball bat and intending to cause a miscarriage.
It's a tale out of the 1950s -- sexual guilt and shame in
small-town America leading to violence -- that would be almost quaint
if a young man's life weren't hanging in the balance and a 26-week-old
fetus hadn't wound up buried in the field behind his mother and
stepfather's farmhouse.
And this sad and strange case gets to the unsettled core of the
decades-long wrestling over access to abortion.
"They had plans for their lives," says his mom, Tracy, who has
auburn hair, a warm smile and a Harley tattoo on her left arm. (She
and the boy's father agreed to be interviewed if their last names were
not used, to maintain their son's privacy.)
Three decades after a Supreme Court decision paved the way for
legal abortion, an energized Right to Life movement and conservative
legislatures created an obstacle course for teens to maneuver around.
And in places like Armada, on the north exurban fringe of Macomb
County, navigating the barriers is far tougher than in the city.
"Think about being 16, having to have four days when you can be
away from home," says Miranda Massie, who represents the boy, now 17.
Armada is 45 minutes from the county courthouse and worlds away from
big-city sophistication.
Nobody argues that the girl was hurt in any way -- medical reports
showed no bruises or other injuries. Nobody argues that the boy acted
against her will.
To Macomb County Prosecutor Eric Smith, the criminal charges
aren't about these kids, but about the life that was growing inside
her.
They may be "and they seem to be fine young people," he says, but
"someone needs to speak for this fetus, this unborn child. That is our
job."
By law, the girl is at once old enough to consent to sex, old
enough to raise a child -- but not old enough to decide whether she
can have an abortion. Not old enough to give her consent to what
happened.
Under the law, she's a pastiche of conflicting parts -- part
woman, part should-be mother, part girl.
Part vessel.
So yes, I am sympathetic to the girl and to her boyfriend. Theirs
is a sad story of sexual ignorance, fear, shame, guilt, bad judgment
-- and of the baseball bat that's become today's stand-in for the wire
coat hanger of yore.
Laura Berman's column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday in Metro.
Reach her at (248) 647-7221 or lberman@detnews.com.
© 2005 The Detroit News
--
Contempt of Congress meter reading-offscale.
Hello, theocracy with a fundamentalist US Supreme
Court who will ensure church and state are joined
at the hip like clergy and altar boys.
America 1776-Jan 2001 RIP
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president
represents, more and more closely, the inner soul
of the people. On some great and glorious day the
plain folks of the land will reach their heart's
desire at last and the White House will be adorned
by a downright moron." --- H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
Religion is the original war crime.
-Michelle Malkin (Feb 26, 2005)
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| User: "Divin Marquis" |
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| Title: Re: Bat abortion tells a story of shame and sexual guilt |
02 Jul 2005 07:00:01 PM |
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Le Sat, 02 Jul 2005 11:46:50 -0700, stoney a écrit :
"Think about being 16, having to have four days when you can be
away from home," says Miranda Massie, who represents the boy, now 17.
He shoudl have enlisted. HE would have been shipped to Iraq, and he would
have been asked to kill real, born people.
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