whose right to choose?

[fpb]

Believe it or not, I do not like to post about abortion. The subject itself makes me sick, and there is nothing to be gained by posting about it except the opposition and often the hate of those who are committed to it, and more rows and more fights.

However, a story I have stumbled upon is significant both because of itself and as a kind of strange, bitter comment to my articles on the Massachusetts mass pregnancy. There is a man in Kansas called George Tiller, who is a hate figure to anyone who opposes abortion. He has built a vast fortune on his willingness to abort anyone who asks, at any time; anti-abortionists call him "Tiller the Killer", both because of his eagerness to destroy viable babies in the last few months of pregnancy, and because the sloppy conditions in his clinics are said to be a real threat to the health of the mothers. However, Tiller is very politically active, and has made large donations to many leading political figures in the state. It is certain that he has Kansas' Governor, Kathleen Sebelius, in his pocket: she has fought an unprincipled fight that has lasted for years against a State prosecutor who had tried to apply existing Kansas law to Tiller's clinics, not only sacking him, but packing the state Supreme Court with cronies against him. (Whatever I may think of George Tiller, I loathe Kathleen Sebelius. I regard her as a female version of John Kerry, a repulsive, glass-smooth hypocrite who tries to use her supposed Catholic identity as an electoral asset while breaking every Church law she pleases, and whose use of power is as ruthless as it is heartless. Unfortunately, she is said to be a favourite for Barrack Obama's VP.)

Now the story has broken that Tiller's clinic has aborted the baby of an unwilling sixteen-year-old girl who had been dragged there by her mother. The details aren't clear, but it seems that both the girl and her boyfriend - also sixteen - wanted to keep the baby, and the girl's mother was the only one who wanted it dead. She used her power as brutally as Governor Sebelius, and dragged her daughter to Tiller's slaughterhouse; the father got there too late to prevent the killing.

Any pro-abortionist who objects to this is a hypocrite. Anyone who has studied abortion knows that a large share of abortions are "chosen" not by the mother but by her family, or even by her employers, as a matter of convenience. Things are rarely so cold and so brutal, but it comes to the same thing. However, the conscious resistance of mother and father and the fact that it was only an older person who wanted the abortion seems as though it might share something with what I read in the Massachusetts mass pregnancy.

Comments

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

*growl* The child should've had the "choice" if anyone could

[fpb.livejournal.com]

At sixteen, in most jurisdictions I believe it would be her legal right. This was pure bullying.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

I mean the little one.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

Like, the one who never got to breath air.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Yes, I re-read your comment and felt rather like a fool. However, you know I agree. Now see if you can get elskuligr and curia_regis to agree with us. And bear in mind that they are extremely unusual among abortion supporters - in having manners.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

Eh, I could've been clearer. To borrow from Tolkien, I talk in shorthand and then smudge it.

Trying to change someone's mind in this matter is kind of like trying to reason someone into a new political party-- it's so tied to world view that it takes something major to make a shift.

[geno0823.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, how would you get a fetus to register its choice? Slide a little note and a pencil up there? "Would you like to be born, yes or no?" I don't think its little undifferentiated masses of cells would be able to hold a pencil.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

By letting them grow up.

Same way everyone here typing got to make choices.

[geno0823.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but if the child answers, "Yes, I should have been aborted, my mother doesn't want me and my life sucks," you can't go back and retroactively abort it. I mean, you can kill it, but that doesn't prevent the mother from having had permanent damage to her body from the pregnancy and spending her time and resources raising a child she didn't want or wasn't ready to have.

Unless you have a time machine?

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

So, on the vague chance that the kid MIGHT become suicidal, we should just kill them all.

That's right up there with that woman who drowned her kids so they wouldn't sin....

[geno0823.livejournal.com]

Sure, why not? Everyone dies eventually anyway.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

To be consistant, then anyone who agrees with that should simply kill themselves-- and leave others to do so or fail on their own.

[geno0823.livejournal.com]

But why would I want to deny myself the pleasure of a world devoid of humans?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

...said in a ringing chorus Adolf Hitler, Al Capone, Henry VIII and the mugger down the street. And Cain added: "What am I supposed to be, my brother's keeper?"

[geno0823.livejournal.com]

Their killings were based on prejudice and the lust for power, which is bad. (Or, in the case of the mugger, poverty and desperation, which is caused by prejudice and the lust for power in many cases.) I'm not like them; I'm not prejudiced and I don't want power. (I am poor, but I'm not about to mug anybody.)

[fpb.livejournal.com]

And you ever heard anyone say any such thing? I never did, and I am involved in the disabled movement. I met people born without legs or arms, spastics, Down's Syndrome, blind, deaf, autistic, tetraplegic, every kind of dreadful condition. And some were good and some were bad - being disabled does not prevent you from being a crook - but all enjoyed life. No sane human being wishes never to have been born.

[geno0823.livejournal.com]

Hey now, I've met plenty of suicidally depressed disabled people, and plenty of perfectly abled people who were suicidally depressed. Being disabled doesn't prevent you from wanting to die, either.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

So the cure for depression is to give in to the depressed person's morbid imaginings? I cannot think that too many people would agree with that.

[geno0823.livejournal.com]

Not all depressed people are suicidal either!

[lottieviola.livejournal.com]

Like the choice of whether to have a baby or not!!! :):):):):)

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Like the choice of whether to have a fuck or not.

[lottieviola.livejournal.com]

It'd be great if all guys respected that choice. :(:(:(:(:(

Luckily, there's always oral and dildos and lovely, lovely gay sex. And condoms and the Pill!

[fpb.livejournal.com]

And as an end to all that, the local abortion clinic. But then, you are familiar with all those things.

Jeeezuz H. Christ. Are there really people like this, who cannot think of anything more important than fucking?

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

To echo FPB's point-- the choice to have a kid was made when the deed was done.

The baby is there. Murdering it doesn't undo anything.

[lottieviola.livejournal.com]

And as an end to all that, the local abortion clinic.
I don't know anyone who got pregnant from oral, using plastic toys, or same-sex fucking. But when I do, I will be sure to let you know.

But then, you are familiar with all those things.
Intimately! And my life is much better for having known them.

Are there really people like this, who cannot think of anything more important than fucking?
Like the guy who raped me and impregnated me against my will? Yeah, sorry to say, there are.