Scottish girl and her kooky family move to the States in 1981. Hilarity ensues. She grows up and marries a nice Jewish boy. Hilarity ensues. They adopt two awesome girls from China. Hilarity ensues. She writes a blog. Hilarity ensues?
Sunday, February 12, 2006
The Rights of the Born
A few days ago I read a truly thought-provoking article in the LA Times about the right to choose--that of course the good people at Sozadee linked to right away before I could get my linking mojo working.
Great link, E. So much to say. So often, opposition to legal abortion resides in misogyny: women shoudn't have been messing around in the first place. Then, too, there's the issue of proper sex education, and access to safe, legal, affordable, effective bith control. We really haven't aced that problem yet. And until we do, what recourse is there? Send girls and women to back alleys? The right to choose hurts the fewest people. I have a friend who works in a family planning clinic for low-income women. She says that though it is sad, she is never kept up at night worrying about the young women who have come there for abortions, or their fetuses. But she is worried about the many who carried their pregnancies to term, into drug-addicted, unstable and abusive homes, with not enough knowledge or money or kindness to give that child a decent life. That's what keeps her up at night.
There are no happy, good solutions to the problem of unwanted pregnancy. So let's all work together to stop the problem where it starts -- let's advocate for 100% effective, safe birth control, which is affordable and accessible to all women nationwide. And let's make sure every woman knows it exists, and is informed about her sexual health from the time before she becomes sexually active. Only when we are doing our duty on all those fronts, in complete and thorough good faith, should we talk about outlawing abortion.
3 comments:
Great link, E. So much to say. So often, opposition to legal abortion resides in misogyny: women shoudn't have been messing around in the first place. Then, too, there's the issue of proper sex education, and access to safe, legal, affordable, effective bith control. We really haven't aced that problem yet. And until we do, what recourse is there? Send girls and women to back alleys? The right to choose hurts the fewest people. I have a friend who works in a family planning clinic for low-income women. She says that though it is sad, she is never kept up at night worrying about the young women who have come there for abortions, or their fetuses. But she is worried about the many who carried their pregnancies to term, into drug-addicted, unstable and abusive homes, with not enough knowledge or money or kindness to give that child a decent life. That's what keeps her up at night.
There are no happy, good solutions to the problem of unwanted pregnancy. So let's all work together to stop the problem where it starts -- let's advocate for 100% effective, safe birth control, which is affordable and accessible to all women nationwide. And let's make sure every woman knows it exists, and is informed about her sexual health from the time before she becomes sexually active. Only when we are doing our duty on all those fronts, in complete and thorough good faith, should we talk about outlawing abortion.
Thanks, E.!
...and good comment, Miko!
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