What's So Funny 'Bout Peace Love and Understanding? Part One

This post may ramble a bit (what else is new?), but my mind has been jammed with a few tidbits over the past few days.

I posted, previously, about my partner's blogstalker. Enough said on her, as she continues to stealth on the blogs of primarily female, liberal, lesbian Episcopalians.

She's so conservative, she probably thinks Sen. Barry Goldwater was a 'bed-wettin' liberal. Hey, I can respect someone that doesn't feel the same way as I do on issues, but when they resort to hate tactics, it's hard for me to turn the other cheek, unless it's my buttocks' cheek.

Well, call it fascination with the macabre or weird, but I'll go to her blog once in a while, just to see what she's frothing at the mouth over (sorry for the dangling preposition).

Her latest opine-of-the-day is all about Abortion.

You know, that neutral subject that everyone comes together on, holding hands, singing Kum-Bah-Ya?

Guess how she feels about it?

She reminds me of one of those feverish individuals who would actually put a Depends on and crawl up the street, in front of an abortion clinic, crying out, "DON'T KILL ME, MOMMY."

She's the type that I'd like to be driving along and suddenly have a diabetic reaction to my meds, swerve and accidently hit her leg or something. Not completely maim her, of course, but just graze her and have to stop, as the TV newsmen/women hover over me, and she's sprawled out in a huge diaper.

Yep, she's the kind that probably fervently believes in the death penalty, would clap if she heard about an abortion clinic blowing up, or the murder of a physician who carries out the legal procedure.

In theory, I believe in the concept of Pro Choice on the issue of Abortion. This is something that is hard for a lot of people to understand. Personally, I would advocate abortion only in the rarest of instances, but I think it's a necessary evil in this country. How to put controls on it? I really don't have the answer.

Since the same individuals as the Canadian Conservative think that educating teens on ways to prevent pregnancies--condoms, birth control--is of the Devil, and that if we all just told teens, unmarried singles, etc., "Just don't do it, unless you are married" we wouldn't need abortions, it's really hard to have a dialogue with any of them.

Imagine my surprise, when I clicked on a link in one of her abortion diatribes, which led to an equally obnoxious blog (depending on your political-religious leanings), and I actually AGREED with their outrage!

It seems Ms. Magazine is publishing a huge article about women who are coming forth to tell their story, when it comes to having an abortion.

First of all, I understand the need for this article, because state by state, the legal right to have an abortion is falling by the wayside. If this happens, don't believe that magically people will stop having unprotected sex. What will happen is that your sisters, daughters, mothers, etc., will risk dying at the hands of card table "doctors" and we will return to a very dark age in Western society.

Will these individuals, such as the Canadian Conservative Catholic weep over those deaths, also? Probably not.

However, I was really shocked at the comments in this article, just as my conservative counterparts were shocked as well.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/10/03/D8KHAKIO0.html

It's these honest passages that really bothered me. Me; this EVIL LIBERAL.

Tyffine Jones, 27, of Jackson, Miss., said she had no hesitation about signing _ although she lives in a state where restrictions on abortion are tough and all but one abortion clinic has been closed.

Jones said she got an abortion 10 years ago _ enduring harassment from protesters when she entered the clinic _ in order to finish high school. She went on to become the first member of her family to graduate from college, and hopes at some point to attend law school.

"I wanted to do something bigger with myself _ I didn't want to be stopped by anything," she said in a telephone interview.

Another signatory, Debbie Findling of San Francisco, described her difficult decision last year to have an abortion after tests showed that she would bear a son with Down syndrome.

"I felt it was my right to make the decision, but having that right doesn't make the decision any easier," she said. "It was the hardest decision I've ever made."

Findling, 42, is married, with a 5-year-old daughter, and has been trying to get pregnant again while pursuing her career as a philanthropic foundation executive.

She says too many of her allies in the abortion-rights movement tend to minimize, at least publicly, the psychological impact of abortion.

"It's emotionally devastating," she said in a phone interview. "I don't regret my decision _ but I regret having been put in the position to have to make that choice. It's something I'll live with for the rest of my life."

I'm not sure that the intent of Ms. Magazine is really going to resonate with the Vox Populi. I really do not think that this is going to help people change their minds about abortion.

But here I am an "Evil Liberal," and even I am shocked and appalled at the above passage.

Maybe it's the callous way it's stated.

The first woman talks about not wanting anything to stand in her way of going to college and law school, however I didn't read about how the pregnancy happened. If she was old enough to be having sex, she was old enough to use contraception.

Maybe where I differ with most liberals is that I think a woman should know exactly what is happening when she has that abortion. Candy-coat it all that you want, but you are terminating a human life. The jury is still out, for me, as to when that group of cells split and becomes a human embryo, but in essence the doctor is going to vacuum your womb of any traces of that life. If you know that going in, and you've really searched your soul about it, then I still believe that decision is between you and God.

But to have sex, knowingly, without protection and then say "oh whoopsie," after you become pregnant and act as if the abortion is on par with your weekly beauty salon appointment really bothers me.

As well, someone who was actually PLANNING a pregnancy, purposefully gets pregnant, but the child isn't what she wanted--Down Syndrome--and gets an abortion really bothers me too.

It should bother us all, no matter where we stand on this issue.

What's next? "Well, the doctor told us that she'd have a club foot, so we decided to abort."

Again, I'm not sure that Ms. Magazine's point was to point out the self-centerdness and careless behavior of some of these women, since it seems that they are hailed as heroines, but as someone who has marched to have the "choice" to terminate a pregnancy, it really makes me rethink the issue.

Feminism, to me, isn't what it used to be in its pure form. I'll post on that at some point.

I don't know what the answer really is to this issue. I think it should be legal and safe, but I also think it should be a choice that is made after all other options are considered. It should never be used as birth control. Sadly, it seems that's becoming the norm.

I want all women to have access to a safe abortion, but it should not be something that is done so blithely. Of course, that is just my opinion. It should be there, primarily, for those who have been raped, who are poor, a stupid teenaged girl who doesn't know better, when the life of the mother is in danger, or for victims of incest. I don't think it should be there to be accessed like putting on your make-up every morning.

The woman who decided to terminate her pregnancy, because the child had Down Syndrome? I understand the implications, but we start on a slippery slope if it's okay to terminate a pregnancy because a child is not going to be perfect.

So, I guess the Apocalypse is near, since I share the outrage of my ultra-Conservative brothers and sisters on this particular issue.

I'm troubled by this issue, as well as the RU486 pill too. I'm just not sure how to put controls on it, or what those controls should be, so it doesn't become the 'hip' thing to do, in order to not have to use condoms or other contraceptives.

I'll save the rest of my stream of consciousness for the next post.

It just bugs me that if you don't think that the Vagina Monologues is THE feminist play of the last century, or if you dare to point out that certain brands of 'feminism' smack of a very dangerous self-centerdness, that you risk the ire of women's groups across the US.

My views on feminism are like those of modern social philosopher, Camille Paglia. I don't agree with everything she spouts forth, but for the most part, she is right on. She's one of those individuals that I'd like to have at the ultimate dinner party.

Here is an exerpt from a Playboy interview she did in 1995. I don't agree with her stance on NAMBLA, but on most other issues I agree.

Brilliant and honest take on modern feminism.

PLAYBOY: Are you a feminist?

PAGLIA: I'm absolutely a feminist. The reason other feminists don't like me is that I criticize the movement, explaining that it needs a correction. Feminism has betrayed women, alienated men and women, replaced dialogue with political correctness. PC feminism has boxed women in. The idea that feminism--that liberation from domestic prison--is going to bring happiness is just wrong. Women have advanced a great deal, but they are no happier. The happiest women I know are not those who are balancing their careers and families, like a lot of my friends are. The happiest people I know are the women--like my cousins--who have a high school education, got married immediately graduating and never went to college. They are very religious and they never question their Catholicism. They do not regard the house as a prison.

PLAYBOY: But what about the women who stay home and are still suffering?

PAGLIA: The problem is the alternative handed to them by feminism. I look at my friends who are on the fast track. They are desperate, frenzied and frazzled, the most unhappy women who have ever existed. They work nights and weekends and have no lives. Some of them have children who are raised by nannies.

PLAYBOY: What's your point? Do you want women to go back to the home?

PAGLIA: The entire feminist culture says that the most important woman is the woman with an attached case. I want to empower the woman who wants to say, "I'm tired of this and I want to go home." The far right is correct when it says the price of women's liberation is being paid by the children.

PLAYBOY: Are you siding with the far right?

PAGLIA: No. What I'm doing is pointing out the bind the women's movement has created not only for women but for the culture as well. Children are abandoned. There is no doubt that it's better for kids to have contact with mothers for those early years. When I go to work in the morning, I see black women and Hispanic women pushing strollers filled with rich, white babies. These women provide the best human contact that those kids have. So we have gone back to the mammy. It's Gone With the Wind again.

PLAYBOY: What's a better solution?

PAGLIA: Women should be free to choose. For the ones who decide to work, child care should be provided. The problem is that only large corporations can afford to have on-site day care. Mothers can visit their children during coffee breaks and lunch, which is wonderful. Other women are in difficult positions, and the feminist movement offers nothing except scorn if they choose their children's well-being. Of course, the other thing the women's movement has done is caused a destructive division between the sexes. Men are in a terrible position.