This could be a fun game: Count the euphemisms in a really strident pro-abortion article. We’d need look no further than RH Reality Check, or, for example, this article from Feministing.
Start with “Abortion care.” It’s like the author and headline writer grew up in an Orwell novel.
This creeped me out and made me laugh at the same time. I have no idea why OB wants to apologize to me, but there ya go, I fell for the gimmick and put in my name. This one’s for women, although a man putting in his name would be pretty funny too.
What am I talking about? Click here.
We create laws because certain acts violate the moral and ethical codes of a society. Abortions based on sex and race violate the moral and ethical code of the majority of people in the US and Canada, so why hasn’t it been banned?
NEW YORK — The practice of sex-selection abortion, usually targeting a female fetus due to parental preference for a son, has few defenders in the United States. Yet a proposed federal ban is drawing vehement opposition from liberal advocacy groups who call it a veiled attempt to undermine broader abortion rights.
The Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act, sponsored by Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., would outlaw abortions done on the basis of gender or race. Women who had such abortions would not be penalized but those who performed them — or pressured a woman into having one — would face up to five years in prison.
I like this picture and slogan, because it’s true. And it’s pretty similar to our People for the Ethical Treatment of People line of t-shirts (Because you wouldn’t treat a dog like this). The environment, trees, animals–all get a higher level of concern/empathy than the unborn child.
According to this poll by Angus Reid, Canadians (as compared to Britons and Americans) are more in favor of controversial sexual education topics in classrooms and that it should occur at a younger age. Lucky Canada, eh?
This article from CNN is difficult to read, you might even be unable to look at the written words of rape survivor Masika. But what I hope you will see is that the situation in eastern Congo is beyond war-time, it’s beyond temporary, and it’s a humanitarian crisis of horrific proportion. Fiona Lloyd-Davies writes,
Rape has now become generational.
Davies has spent 10 years in this region, and her recount of her time there illustrates just how unimaginable life has become for these women. Women in the west, thankfully, have never walked in these women’s shoes, and our priorities simply do not apply here. In no one’s mind should abortion access be at the forefront after reading this. Abortion will not make the Congolese women “on par” with their male counterparts. Abortion will not promote equality, and it will not save lives. What the women in eastern Congo need is help, whatever we can give them, as much as we can give and as soon as possible.
The pressure to be sexually active comes at us all from various angles. The ads we see each day run the gamut from subtle ads for “performance enhancing” drugs to use later in life (when some of us may not even want to be all that sexually active) to the more aggressive ones, continuously targeting younger and younger audiences. You can’t escape these images, they’re on bus stops, locker rooms, in a banner on a website, in fact they’re so common that they hardly seem to stand out. As adults, maybe our life experience can buffer some of this imagery, but what about kids, teens who are in the process of figuring themselves out as people? A survey by ESSENCE magazine revealed that,
Black youth report considerable pressure to have sex, according to a new survey of 1,500 Black youth ages 13-21 released by ESSENCE Magazine and The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. Of those who have had sex, 47% of those 13-21 (including 21% of those 13-15) say they have been pressured to go further sexually than they wanted to. […]
Overall, the survey found that almost half of Black teens ages 13 to 21 reported that they have lied to get out of a sexual situation, and 54% of Black males said they feel pressure from their friends to have sex.
But some of the findings in the survey are hopeful. Nearly half of younger children (13-15) say they value their parents’ opinions and that their parents influence whether or not they will be sexually active. This gives parents an opportunity to express to our kids that they’re not expected to have sex.
On November 30, Jamiel Terry died in a car accident. He was the adopted son of Operation Rescue founder Randal Terry, and he happens to have been an out homosexual. I’m posting this today as my thoughts are with the Terry family during their time of loss, but also because Jamiel was an example of how a person’s sexual orientation doesn’t define them as a person. No one can assume your beliefs or political views based upon it, and I hope that everyone in the LGBT community is aware that no one expects them to be one monolithic group of people. Anyone can be pro-life.
Mr. Terry states:
“We are all in a state of shock, and unthinkable grief. I loved him dearly; we all did.
“Jamiel had a brilliant mind, and was a gentle soul. And as anyone knows who has spent time with him, he was funny, articulate, and a formidable debater on many topics.
“I thank God that Jamiel and I spoke regularly, and texted each other about a wide variety issues, frequently discussing and debating elections, politics and policy, to which we have both dedicated our time and talents.
“While we remained irreconcilable on the issue of ‘homosexual marriage,’ Jamiel remained firmly pro-life, and recently helped convince a young woman to not kill her child by abortion. There were many other issues that we kicked around — with laughter and good humor.
“We had recently agreed to hold joint speaking events at colleges and other venues, to discuss and debate the issues that are dear to us as a ‘father and son’ lecture team. I wish to God we had been able to do even one of them. […]
The thought has crossed my mind that one might get slightly more sympathy for being a pedophile than for espousing virginity until marriage. Read this infantile editorial and decide for yourself. The blog they are referring to is here.
I haven’t read much of the blog yet, but I will say this: Those are four brave women, taking on an untouchable topic. They are overtly religious about it, from what I can tell. As if there weren’t enough purely secular reasons out there to abstain from sex. I’ll never forget my decidedly non-Christian, non-virgin of a family doc, years back, wryly commenting how she had had it with meaningless sexual encounters and had practiced a newfound virginity of sorts with her now husband. It shocked the pants off me (not literal) because she was quite a curt, down-to-earth, very professional, non-emotional, and again, I’m quite sure, non-religious woman.
The hostility to four women who are not “telling you how to live” but rather providing an example of how one might consider doing things differently without growing an additional head beggars belief in an era of pain over misplaced, misused, misappropriated sexuality.
This sad case of “self-abortion” from New York, where two out of every five pregnancies end in abortion, seems to illustrate the effect of legislation when what is legal and common in clinics is done at home. Charges are usually dismissed, but unfortunately these women don’t end up getting any kind of help, psychiatric or otherwise. It’s okay if the term “self-abortion” upsets you, because of course the woman isn’t aborting herself. However, I do appreciate the tone of this article from the NY Times.
A superintendent in Washington Heights was tying up a garbage bag on Tuesday evening when he felt an errant piece of plastic. He reached into the bag to put it in the recycling bin, and to his horror, he said, “that’s when I saw the baby.” […]
The police said Thursday that they had charged Yaribely Almonte, 20, who had lived in the building, with self-abortion in the first degree, a misdemeanor charge that has been used only a few times in New York State. Although it was unclear how old the fetus was, the charge applies when the abortion occurs after 24 weeks of pregnancy, when it is legal only if a woman’s doctor says her life is in danger.
“When I found the baby, I didn’t know if it was real at first,” said the superintendent, who declined to give his name. “It was so bad.
“After that happened, I just stayed in my apartment for a while because I didn’t feel well.” […]
“This woman has my sympathy,” Greg Pfundstein, executive director of the Chiaroscuro Foundation, an anti-abortion group, said Thursday. “This appears to be a clear case of desperation.
“I wish she had known there are people who would have helped her through this, including the New York Catholic Archdiocese.”
He added that the archdiocese, through Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan, “recently renewed its pledge to help any woman who finds herself pregnant and in need.”