It could resolve the issue, once and for all. I personally have never felt closely linked to the abortion issue. My wife and I are DINKs (Double-Income, No-Kids), but it has been a big issue to a lot of people since Roe v. Wade.
Personally, I think the whole thing is about power. If the Pro-Lifers really cared about children, they wouldn't be so quick to send them off to dumb wars. But, it all hinges on who gets to do what.
See, there are two camps. There are those whose handiwork in the backseat produced more than they expected. Billy Bob and Susie Q come up pregnant and they feel honor-bound or guilt-ridden or shamed into doing "the right thing." It could be argued that Billy Bob and Susie Q are simply so egotistical that they think their progeny matters (how "special" can your blessed event be, when there are 6 billion others just like it?), but that's another issue. Suffice to say, they proceed to throw away their chances at a successful, productive future doing what they want to do and end up in the unwinnable race for "respectability."
In the other camp are those who also found their fertility to be more pronounced than they expected. They, however, have the good sense to realize their mistake and choose not to perpetuate it. They fix the problem while it is fixable; they cut their losses and move on. The people in this camp get to pursue their educations and go into careers they care passionately about and live lives that make them happy.
Needless to say, the folks who have ended up on the losing end, because they did "the right thing," are sore about it and want everyone else to share their misery. The losers want to become winners and, in the process, send those uppity single women to the back of the line. So, they bomb women's clinics. They chain themselves to fences. And, now, according to the latest issue of Mother Jones, they've started using fronts (just like organized crime) to buy women's clinics and turn them into horror houses, to scare women into not getting abortions, which translates into lives of poverty and added costs to social services for you and me.
And, apparently, the Pro-Lifers have begun to assemble an army of women who have had abortions and who are now publicly mourning and grieving the "murder" of their unborn children.
So, OK; let's take them seriously.
The way the law is set up, if you are a participant in a crime and a murder occurs while in commission of that crime, you are considered as guilty of murder as the one who pulled the trigger. So, let's start sending police officers and District Attorneys to the homes of these grieving women. Let's start taking their confessions to murder. Let's start prosecuting and convicting them of 1st Degree Murder. Then, we can sentence them to life in prison or, where applicable, to the death penalty.
Then, we'll see a backlash. Women will start saying it was legal for them to abort their fetuses. And, the issue will be over.
www.sushituesday.com
Tim Hooker is an English professor in Tennessee. He is the author of three books: "Rocket Man: A Rhapsody of Short Stories," "Duncan Hambeth: Furniture King of the South," and "Looking For A City." His politics are progressive liberal; his religion is Catholic Humanism. He is married, with four cats.
Sir:
I am Professor Emeritus Peter Bagnolo. I write here for OPED and many other news services, some for pay, some free. Your smug, quick solution mentality is worthy of the Bushite mindset. Your broad generalization about those who stand in the Culture of Life is insulting to those of us, who served our country, who supported Liberal Democrats, including heavy donations, gave heartily to private and public charities including orphanages, risked walking with ML King, worked for JFK, wrote at great risk against those who encroached on our freedom, and even in our case housed and fed several unwed mothers, throughout their pregnancy.
Those who stand to the left of Fascism are supposed to stand as a unit, not attack one another, as you thoughtlessly have just done. Millions of non-violent, Pro-life, Catholic, men and women voted for Clinton, Gore and Kerry, and in my state for Obama and Durbin.
You list yourself as a Catholic Humanist, yet I see no difference in your language and tone than I do in Cheney's or the other Neo-cons. I am simply a Catholic. None of the people I know who are pro-active in the support of LIFE have ever done violence to anyone, especially anyone who was misguided/victimized enough to believe that avoiding responsibility and indulging selfishness, was somehow noble. Selfishness and MEFIRSTISM is the approach in which the Neo-Cons delight. I see no difference between murdering criminals, who may or may not be guilty of a "capital crime" murdering Iraqi's and destroying fetuses, with or without souls.
I am/was/have wrote and was active against; Capital Punishment, Torture, Preemptive war, solvent/pesticide/herbicide use for cosmetic reasons, abortion, as public policy/use of public funds and other issues of life, like environmentalism. To me all the things God made with or without souls are sacred and attacking any of them is spitting in the eye of, and displaying contempt for the living God. That's G-o-d, GOD. Excluding any of the above is brazen hypocrisy.
If you are Catholic, where is the compassion? I saw none in your writing. Everything is simply cast off in a snotty tone. Should we judge you for living in Bill, The Fascist Frist's Home State, as a colleague of his? Shall we also generalize, and lump everyone who comes from Tennessee as a Red-Stater?
You sir are not a team player.
Punishing the misguided and the confused, is a misguided idea and so is prosecuting them, who under the pressures of pregnancy of which they are not happy, are confused. Don't lump all of us who revere the God who made us, and the life he gave us, who never supported Fascism or war mongering, who risked our necks while others stayed home making judgments and playing with their cats, with loonies and murderers. Do you generalize Like the Bushites about everyone? I suppose you also hate anyone who has served in the military in the days of the draft or since. Generalization and vast Judgmentalism, is a sign of the fascist, not the Catholic, or the true American.
49% of Catholics voted the Progressive Ticket this fall, 43% did not. In the lst 3 elections, too many Catholics voted for the Bushites (a term I coined 7 years ago in a column) because they thought little about the repercussions about which I have been writing for pay and here free, for years.
Don't put me and my wife and children and friends, in your lynch-mob mentality with one-issue voters. And you know what, if you truly are Catholic, look up these words: Compassion, Judgmentalism, "Judge not lest you be judged by Your Father in Heaven as harshly as you have judged others (of which you know little)." and maybe learn the archaic languages, as I and others who love God and life do and do some biblical translations for yourself, as we do.
Wgy isa it that you pro-lifers feel that a woman becomes helpless and victimized just because this was the best option for her. One thing that Pro-lifers do is try to link other issues like Dr MLK Jr who was for social issues not about sex related matters. Since when do pro-lifers dont victimized woman. Do they not treat them like they are 10 year olds?? Dont they pass judgement on them by calling them baby killers?? And why do they assume that the GOD that you worship was silent on the issue like he was with homosecuality but yet you pro-lifers see moto always want to drag jesus into the whole debate, Woman have every right to get the right information without all this coercian and arm twisting. so many are so poor they couldnt take responsibility for themselves even if they wanted to. Some who have the money cant even get birth control pills so that they can take responsibility for themselves but like pro-liers they want to make any decisions that has anything to do with sex. Which is what this is really all about so you may know those who are kind and loving but the movement is really all about sex and the status of woman. And isnt unitl woman get equal rights to be left alone and not reated as they do not have any moral agents. You pro-lifers want be satisfied to these woman decide to become sterile in protest. This has to stop!!!!!
by
chip90043 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 60 comments)
on Friday, March 2, 2007 at 7:07:54 PM
Peter, you are much to judgmental and harsh with Tim Hooker. Back off.
I know right to lifers who threw blood on young women and pieces of what they called "unborn babies". I know ministers who will not speak out againstt the wrongness of bombing clinics and shooting nurses and doctors. Clinics have been bombed, doctors have been murdered.
Granted the violent ones are a very small minority in the right to life movement, but they are there, nonetheless. When the violent minority do evil things in the right to life movement, it is up to the right to life majority to put them in their place in no uncertain terms. It never happens. They defend them much as the anti-Israelis defend the terrorist groups like Fatah, Hezbolah and Hamas by making excuses and blaming the Israelis. There is no excuse to murder civilians-- ever!
Do no give me this stuff about what you did forty-five years ago. I was there. I marched. I was not jailed only because there was no room for all of us. I am sixty-six years old. I know what it was to be in Selma the week after "Selma" took place. I am not Roman Catholic, but I am Catholic since I belong to the invisible "Body of Christ".
Tim is right on another mark, too. I find it inconsistent that the most harsh of the "do the crime, do the time" gang and who are the most demanding for the death penalty and the most willing to go to war as long it is some else fighting for them are the right to lifers. I have met very few of the right to lifers who are against the death penalty.
by
pratliff94 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 962 comments)
on Thursday, March 8, 2007 at 1:17:08 AM
If a person kidnaps and murders a five year old child, the justice system is pretty clear about the matter as I understand it. Anyone who contributed in any way is an accomplice to the act and will be charged with a felony. Anyone who knew the person was going to kill the five year old child is an accomplice to murder.
It simply means that all parents, boy friends, sisters, aunts, uncles, friends, nurses, doctors, hospitals would be guilty of murder in the death of a five year old child. When we equate the death of an unborn five week fetus with that of the five year old child, then all the above people would be doing prison time.
There are many in the right to life movement who would gleefully wish to press charges to the maximum of anyone who had anything to do with or knew anything about what they term "the murder of an unborn child."
The question boils down to one simple unknown factor: where does the average American adult stand on this whole issue of trying for murder those involved in an abortion?
I do not think anyone really knows.
by
pratliff94 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 962 comments)
on Thursday, March 8, 2007 at 12:50:27 AM
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