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Wednesday, March 8, 2006

Letters, oh we get letters

Bob Black recommends an article at Slate.com which he says basically argues
(1) That the South Dakota law is just the latest in the back-and-forth abortion see-saw this country has seen for the last 30 years, and (2) we're well on the way to having medical/technological advances render the abortion question moot in a lot of circumstances, to the point where Roe may become irrelevant, or at least less relevant.


I find the prose style of the article's author, Will Saletan, to be all-but impossible to hack through, but that does, indeed, appear to be what he's saying.

Andrew Sullivan thinks it's a good piece, too. During the last election I went through a phase where I thought Sullivan was one of the good guys. I got over it, but you gotta feel for the guy. Sullivan is a hawkish, (neo) conservative, Republican...gay man. The amount of contortions he has to put his conscience through in order to clutch to the belief that his beloved President Bush thinks he and people like him are actual human beings is terrible.

Meanwhile, Jill at Feniniste brings up a good point about Saletan's article, and provides several good links on reproductive rights as well:
Guess what, Billy: You didn’t invent the idea that contraception prevents unintended pregnancies, and hence lowers the abortion rate. That’s exactly what the pro-choice side has always said, so cut the shit about “changing the pro-choice rhetoric.” You just used our rhetoric and claimed it as yours.


The Mahablog argues that "there is no correlation whatsoever between abortion rate and abortion law," and joins me in complaining incredulously about this notion that everything would be better if everyone just played nice.

I know I keep using that phrase; it's because I resent being asked to display a nobility clearly possessed by nobody on the other side.

Like, say, this fella-I'm guessing, but it does seem to be mostly the fellas who feel this way. He/she/it commented anonymously (but interestingly enough seems to hail from Wasington, D.C.), with some questions about my below post regarding abortion.



What is the difference between killing an unborn baby and killing a 1 year old?


A one year old is a human being. A fertilized egg is not.



It is easy to say outlawing abortion is denying a woman control over her body but it is female babies in China and India that are aborted at a vastly greater rate than male babies, what women are speaking up for them?


Well I certainly hope women (or men) in China and India are, if that's true. I live in the United States, and has so recently been demonstrated, we can't impose freedom at gunpoint.



What about long term studies of the psychological affecs of aborting your baby?


What about them? I don't think anyone has ever seriously suggested that the choice to abort a fetus was not a terrible decision to have to make.

Outside of the fantasies of the pro-life lobby, that is. They seem to have this image of women blithely skipping through life as if they're on a permanent spring break, fucking and fucking and fucking indiscriminately. Only stopping occasionally to have pesky fetuses sucked out of them as they would wipe mud from their shoes.

I've known enough women who have chosen to have abortions over the years (and read about others) to believe that is never, or at least rarely, the case. I rarely if ever knew a woman who felt she had to do so who took the issue anything but seriously.

It's a terrible decision to have to make-so terrible, that no one should make it except (in a perfect world), a combination of the mother, the father, and an ethical, competent Doctor. In the case of a tie, the mother has the veto.



I am not allowed to use illegal drugs, is that a violation of my right to control my own body?


Many would argue, in fact, that it is. I've never used any illegal drug in my life but I've yet to see a coherent argument for why tobacco and alcohol are okay because they're legal and pot or 'shrooms aren't because they're not.

Please don't hesitate to write if you have any further questions.

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