Featured Posts – Page 24

Lashing out at people who “keep their kids”

September 29, 2015 by Andrea Mrozek 8 Comments

This family has been called “selfish” because they didn’t kill their son in the womb when he had a bad diagnosis. He’s now 13 months and doing well. They cherish every day they have with him and never want to lose him. But others are calling them “selfish” for “keeping” their child.

I have this theory that when people lash out in strange ways, it’s because they have made some life choices they are uncomfortable with. (Another reason is because you are a jackass, but we’ll leave that be for now.) So one reason why you would do this cruel thing to a family is because you yourself killed your child in the womb, and you struggle with it. People want to feel better, not worse, about their choices, even bad ones.

It is I, Captain Obvious: It’s not selfish to keep your kid. I could go on a neat little rant about this, but I’ll spare you for today.

This is Jaxon, 13 months old in spite of a terminal diagnosis.

On mercy killings

September 21, 2015 by Andrea Mrozek 2 Comments

This mother wants us to hear her story. I read it in full. I confess I read it and wanted a mercy killing for me for the sheer frustration of it all. Is there a different world I can go to where compassion is defined as caring, not killing? Is there a place I can go where people look for and seek out the miraculous? Where people support a mother and her child with a terrible diagnosis? Is there a place where doctors are not given the final say, because they are so often wrong? Is there a place where how we feel about hard circumstances is allowed to be expressed without altering the realities of life? Is there a place where we don’t try to “kill death” as if we could all live problem-free forever? (She basically beat death to the punch.)

No one is claiming her circumstance wasn’t hard. It is. I just can’t see how her course of action is better, more honourable, or even easier for her than carrying the baby to term and letting nature take its course.

The disabled feminist analysis of the abortion debate

September 21, 2015 by Faye Sonier 2 Comments

The writer of this piece is no fan of the pro-life movement. Her article identifies another tension within the feminist movement, and how it responds to abortion and euthanasia:

Euthanasia and abortion are often depicted as relating to the quality of one’s life. Our status, and indeed our bodies, are held to ransom in a complex orbit. Part of our history as disabled women has been a hushed legacy of forced sterilisation. Although many disabled women are mothers, a large proportion of us are often silenced in the conversation on reproductive and sexual health issues. […]

In the right-to-die debate, the point made about terminal illnesses can too readily segue into stereotyped characterisations of the perceived worthlessness and horror of disabled lives. Pride, self-esteem and achievement for people with disabilities often comes in small compromising individual and collective milestones. […]

Abortion is a difficult conversation for all women. As a feminist with a disability, my politics and values are constantly evolving. I will not negate my own experience, that brings a pride in being part of a rich form of human diversity. In supporting women’s rights to terminate their pregnancies, there is also a need to advocate for rights and adequate resources for people with disabilities.

Fact checking the fact checkers

September 18, 2015 by Andrea Mrozek 3 Comments

I’m glad Carly Fiorina held her ground about Planned Parenthood and the macabre business they run in the Republican debates last night (which I didn’t watch).

Needless to say, folks are saying she is lying, and they claim to have fact checked it all too.

So my friend Glenn Stanton fact checked the fact checkers. Guess who is right?

Former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina speaks during the Women’s Conference of Florida luncheon held in Tampa, Thursday, March 19, 2015. Fiorina is founder of the Unlocking Potential Project a conservative based political action committee. (AP Photo/The Tampa Bay Times, Octavio Jones)

How awkward

September 18, 2015 by Andrea Mrozek 1 Comment

This photo and post has gone viral. She mentions something–of course we’ll probably never know if she is talking about abortion or infanticide–but I note none of the experts are commenting on that:

I was feeling sad that people kill babies, like on purpose…”

It is “sad that people kill their babies on purpose.”

An “unwanted pregnancy” does NOT equal an “unwanted child”

September 14, 2015 by Faye Sonier 6 Comments

I love the honesty of this post. I’m not Catholic but there is much to appreciate in this blogger’s words:

Some of us may be tempted to feel like we are ‘bad Catholics’ if we aren’t feeling over the moon when we see those double pink lines of a new pregnancy. Then when we get around to announcing the baby, and people say “Congratulations!” we are thinking cynically: Yeah, really. But we can’t express our misgivings. We smile politely and make some joke about God’s sense of humor while inwardly feeling devastated. Our fears may be physical, mental, financial, emotional… whatever the case may be, we do NOT want to admit to our good, Catholic friends—much less to our hostile non-Catholic family— that the idea of more children is gut-wrenching.

So we all move along in this faux reality of a Catholicism where being open-to-life means everyone is giddy about being pregnant when it happens.

[…]

How can we testimony to women who are experiencing fear or doubt over an unwanted pregnancy if we are afraid to empathize with them? So often women just want to feel like they aren’t alone. They want to have hope that it will indeed be okay. How can they know that if we aren’t open about living it? As far as they can tell, if you aren’t thrilled about a pregnancy, you will never want your child. What pity! What a lie!

What a little honesty can do…assure us we are not alone…and hint that things may in fact get better.

Legalese on consent, torts and “punishing women for having sex”

September 11, 2015 by Andrea Mrozek 1 Comment

Folks who persist in believing that pro-lifers in general and me in specific want to “punish women for having sex” are alive and well. (Just see Huff Post commentors on any pro-life post for unhinged and unjustified canards.)

That this doesn’t even remotely connect with the pro-life mentality is clear.

For starters, pro-lifers don’t view a baby as a punishment. It’s fanatical pro-choicers who do. Abortion gets rid of this punishment, this raining on their parade by an angry lightbolt throwing god.

Secondly, there is not any concept of “punishing women” in the pro-life movement. When there is responsibility to be taken, pro-lifers want men and women to share it equally, understanding that sex is not done alone.

Pro-lifers are guilty as charged when it comes to being realistic. We understand–and accept–the basics of the world. If dark clouds cross the sky, it is likely to rain. If the car runs out of gas, it is going to stop. If we add baking soda to vinegar it will make one of those volcano science projects you did in grade school. If sperm meets egg at a particular time of the month for women, it may make a baby.

This is no one’s fault. Neither is it anyone’s “punishment.” It simply is.

That’s why I like this legalese post from Secular Pro-Life Perspectives. It’s smart. It’s reasonable. It’s the opposite of Huff post commentators. Read and enjoy.

This is why we’ll always have an abortion debate

September 10, 2015 by Andrea Mrozek 4 Comments

It’s so hard to truly conceal what abortion actually is and what it does:

Immediately, I was: ‘I’m going to do this, I’m going to carry all three,’ because I didn’t want to kill a baby,” Smith recalled. “(But) as soon as I sent (the couple) the email that there were three heartbeats, he said ‘We need to find out about reduction right away’ … They absolutely didn’t want three babies.”

Bold is mine.

The Globe supports graphic images

September 3, 2015 by Andrea Mrozek 6 Comments

I agree with their assessment. For the migrant crisis, which is indeed a moral crisis, as for other crises:

In a world filled with graphic horrors, the Western media have become increasingly squeamish about showing what war, famine or death actually look like. There is an understandable fear of upsetting the audience, and a well-founded reluctance to be seen making a market out of the suffering of others. But some upsetting images demand to be seen, precisely because they are a true representation of reality. They show us the world as it is, its cruelties exposed, and not the world as we would wish it to be. And by the shock to our eyes, our conscience may be stirred.

That said, I cannot re-post the picture of that little boy. My conscience is finely tuned, it is very stirred, and I cannot stop seeing it. I know PWPL readers share this disposition.