This is not about farming or hydrofracking or pollution. This is about politics.
This morning I was listening to a report by Rachel Maddow on the attack on Planned Parenthood, and abortion providers in general, by the right wing of our political spectrum. Christian (?) radicals who believe it is alright to threaten, injure and kill doctors and nurses and patients who participate in abortions.
A new law has been proposed that would allow a hospital or practitioner to refuse to perform an abortion and, to refuse to offer a referral to woman – even if her life is in danger. A hospital, or practitioner, could allow you to die, rather than send you to another facility, because their personal belief system, disapproves of a legal procedure.
(It should be noted that federal funds are not used to pay for abortion services in the US. Not at Planned Parenthood nor anywhere else. So this is not about your tax money paying for them. (Though my tax money does pay for the viagra that may be contributing to the need for abortions.)
When I was a child a man was running for President who happened to be Catholic. A Christian man, but from the wrong denomination. There was a brouhaha about how if he was elected the Pope would be running our country.
He was elected. It didn’t happen.
Some of those people are now screaming about Muslims. They are afraid our President is a secret one. They are afraid we will have Sharia law running rampant in the countryside. Yet, they are pushing for their religious view, to rule the nation. And not just about abortion rights.
Now – personally I am against abortion except for certain cases such as rape, incest, and detriment to the mother’s health. I also think those decisions are best left to the woman and her Doctors.
I also feel that it is important to protect the rights of those against abortion to *peacefully* and *legally* protest.
What I’d like to say to those radical family values extremists, who block roadwys and clinics, and threaten the lives of practitioners and their families and their clients…..
“What have you done to make abortion unnecessary?”
Have you adopted or fostered a child whose mother was unable to care for it? Have you worked to pass programs that would provide financial and nutritional assistance to families without means? Have you taken a young woman into your home who has been thrown out of her home because she’s pregnant? Do you support agencies that do?
Men – do you practice safe sex, and take responsibility for pregnancies that might occur anyway? Are you monogamous? (I’m particularly irritated at politicians who scream family values while having a honey or a prostitute on the side) And of course – are you not incestuous?
If you have. Thank you. That still does not give you the right to advocate or commit acts of violence.
Great article, Ana! I used to know a guy who was raised in the ‘Christian Science’ faith. His family’s particular strain of CS said that if you became sick, it was because you displeased God in some way, and the only way to get well was to pray for forgiveness. They didn’t believe in drugs or doctors to cure disease. Naturally, their members didn’t become doctors, nurses or pharmacists — it would have been an apostasy and they would have been bounced from the church.
Similarly, why don’t these abortion fanatics stay out of careers where they might be called upon to offer advice or assist in procedures that abort a fetus? I know that’s asking a lot of these busybodies, but abortion is legal and, as you say, it should be a private matter between a woman and her doctor. Strange that they get so enraged about the govt inserting itself into the doctor/patient relationship, but want draconian Big Brother laws in this one area. Also scary that some pharmacists and right-wing doctors and nurses don’t even want to provide info regarding birth control pills or even condoms, and they are fighting the ‘morning after’ pill. Ye gods!
As has been said before, this would not be an issue if men got pregnant — they would be fiercely demanding their right to an abortion, and govt-subsidized child care for the baby, to boot.
I always thought it a mistake that PP got involved in actually doing abortions. Not that I don’t understand why, considering the crazies who have done all they can to shut them down: even committed murder to stop what they consider “murder.”
I had just started to go to the UU church in P-cola when I was on my Southern tour when the doctor and a nurse was murdered at the clinic in Pensacola. It devastated the community: made them more pro-choice.
Success! Not.
I agree with my wife, if we had transporter tech like in Trek and could simply transport the fetus out I might be more for restrictions, but in the end it is the body of the live, already born, woman that is at issue. Having choice is crucial. Otherwise the State essentially owns the woman until birth. Unacceptable.
Re: “but abortion is legal ”
Murder is a legal term, defined by law. Religion certainly has had input over the years: far too much in some cases, IMO. But it is still a legal term. What they think their God says about is immaterial, just like if some faith’s deity said abortion is a holy activity. Immaterial.
This is not a theocracy, but too damn much of the Right is pushing for that.
I don’t like abortion. Margaret Sanger declared it, at best, a poor method of birth control. Of course during the time of Jesus there were abortions, we simply didn’t understand the birthing process as much as we do now, so things they did then that would encourage the loss of a fetus were done innocently.
Then unborn should never rule over the born.
Stephen Colbert had a funny bit last night where he made the point that the neocons don’t want to pay for pre-natal care to make sure the kid is born healthy, nor anything afterward, but for that 2 seconds when the head is crowning as it is born, the baby is precious and sacred.
To be fair, I have met some ‘liberal’ Catholics who are against abortion because they believe human life is sacred, but at least they were also against war and the death penalty, and for social programs that helped the mother and child before and after he or she is born.
I am sick and tired of the ‘pro-life’ blowhards talking about how precious they think human life is, and then turning around and refusing to foot the bill for some unwed mother or fund proper care for poor children, while they blather about murdering Muslims and drool at the prospect of the state killing some sick bastard on death row. Their blatant hypocrisy is the open gate to hell.