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Showing posts with label abortion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label abortion. Show all posts

Saturday, September 30, 2023

*Famous Fetuses


Norma McCorvey was the sine qua non of the Baby Boomer Generation.  She was the Roe, in Roe v Wade, the Great American Abortion Case.  Wade was the Dallas DA.  The fetus (in this instance a kind of "daughter") that was not aborted became Shelley Lynn Thorton, born as a human being on June 2, 1970, currently age 53.  McCorvey would have been aged 21 at the time of the fetus's conception.  She had previously endured two live births, and an unknown number of dead ones.

During a telephonic communication in 1994, McCorvey informed her (the person with the mature uterus) biological offspring that she (the offspring) should thank her (the person not allowed to have had her [the person "not allowed" (certainly NOT the "person" not allowed to have become a person)] abortion).  (Huh.  You can see we're having pronoun trouble.)  Replied the non-aborted now-human being, the daughter (because she became human by having been given live-birth), to the mother (person who has not, in the specific instance, had an abortion, which is a matter between a woman [either a person with a uterus slash ovaries, and slash or a vagina slash birth canal, or, by declaration slash feeling] and her abortionist [pardon all this slashing]), "What! I'm supposed to thank you for getting knocked up...and then giving me away?"  Well.  That's harsh.  She (the post-fetus in question) stated that she (ibid) "would never, ever thank her for not aborting me".  
Shelley Lynn Thorton, c 1988
Gloria Allred (attorney) & Norma McCorvey ("Roe"), c 1989
McCorvey published her autobiography in 1994.  The following year she was baptized and became an anti-abortion activist.  

In another place, long ago, I wrote the following:
Norma McCorvey. Do you recognize the name? Perhaps you know her by another name. Jane Roe. Of Roe v. Wade – the Supreme Court case that struck down all regulation of abortion in the US. Sometime around '94 I saw her interviewed by Tom Snyder on his late night interview program. She was working at an abortion counseling center, and Operation Rescue, a pro-life Christian group, had moved into the next office. I recall she laughed and sneered at their hammering on the walls, pretending to be hanging pictures when it was so clear to her that they were just trying to harass the pro-choicers. I remember she made allusions to her wiccan faith or the goddess or some such. I remember Tom Snyder encouraging her, ending with, “Don’t let the bastards get you down.” She smiled and said, “Oh no, I won’t.”

Some months later I heard that she had become Christian, and was working with Operation Rescue. It is a secret, but I’m a passionate guy…don’t spread it around. And I sat there and sobbed like a little girl.
So.  That's one famous fetus.  There are three others.  The one in the film, Rosemary's Baby. 
It's fictional, but all fetuses are fictional, in that they're not real and don't matter yet.  

The final two are those that would evolve into the well-known second cousins, Jesus of Nazareth and John the Baptist (cf Luke 1:41-44).


J



PS - I skimmed this.  I cannot bear to read it.


J

Wednesday, March 22, 2023

Three Fifths Equals One Third

Just off the top of my head I can think of two decent Democrat presidents.  Men that I like, or who loved the Constitution, or were pragmatic or competent in a way I could respect.  Two.  Truman and Cleveland.  

Going back to Jackson, 1828 -- 1829, really, but elected. Jackson was a monster of egotism, like, I'd argue, TR.  Huge and forceful personalities.  TR never fought a duel, but he did love a strenuous life that included charging up a hill not named San Juan, as it was not named Bunker.  But TR was mentally healthy.  

Van Buren invented, crafted the spoils system, which turned into the civil service, which has turned into the bureaucracy we have now, appendage of the apparatchik state.  So, smart, crafty ... what did they call him?  The Red Fox.  Red hair gives us the red, but the fox is from his character.  

Polk was notable, but not good, not good.  But up to a certain point, that's inevitable.  Democrat is the party of slavery.  No Democrat could be good.

Is this Presentism?  I don't think so. That Party had a platform, and slavery was at the heart of it.  You can never wash off that stink.  They don't even have the decency to change the name.  

All but actual Abolitionists had problems with african heritage.  Lincoln said he wouldn't marry a black woman.  To have a problem with that now is Presentism.  Mere ignorance or lack of experience is not the same as the positive assertion that the black man "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect" -- you know, the Democrat position.  The Republican Party was founded on anti-slavery.  Biden's party called us the "Black Republicans" ... the ultra MAGA Black Republicans.  

All Klansmen were Democrats. No Republican was a Klansman.  But I'm being Presentist.  How dare I remember and hold the Democrats to the stink of their hateful heritage.   I should pay them a fine, a sort of reparation. 

Buchanan you should know about already.  The Biden of the Nineteenth Century.  Prince of Chaos.  

Wilson's favorite film was Birth of a Nation, KKK I mean AKA The Clansman.  (The Nation was the CSA.)  (Fun Fact: Hitler's favorite film was King Kong -- he also loved Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.  Which of these three is not like the others...)  

Wilson and FDR were disasters for the Constitution.  JFK was smoke and mirrors, and LBJ was like Jackson -- a monster of ego with only emotion to guide him.  Inept Carter, disgraceful clinton, anti-american BO.  Biden barely exists.  We know where he is by listening for the derisive laughter.  

It's this slavery thing.  Not an american problem -- human.  There's an idiot movie glorifying some african warrior women somehow.  Couldn't they find any african women who were really heroic?  Instead of making these slavers into role models?  How Bidenesque.  In this context I can't say black is white, but down is up and wrong is right. 

So how could there have been a United States without slavery?  Not possible.  There is a United States because of the three fifth compromise.  Certain non-citizens were to be counted as 3/5 of a citizen for purposes of House representation.  It's so inconsistent that it's crazy.  But it's the only way the South would accept the Constitution.  Because of the South's, the Democrats', Peculiar Institution.  

Tough beans.  That's how history works.  But I was wondering about the alternative, the only actually honorable alternative.  No compromise.  So, from the start, a United States, and a Confederate States, in whatever year that would have coalesced, 1789ish.  No President Washington -- not for the North, and he wouldn't have served the Slave South.

The North would have been industrial and commercial.  The South would have been agricultural and slave-based, and martial and expansionist.  Both would have moved westward.  The North would have had no great principle to defend -- the great principle of the Constitution.  It would have tried to keep slavery out of the Northwest Territory.  But an equivalent of the "popular sovereignty" doctrine would have prevailed -- there would have been no "Union" over which to fight a "civil war".  

The South had a military ethos unknown to the North.  So North America would have been mostly slavelands.  Bye bye Mexico.  Louisiana Purchase is a non-starter, given Jefferson was a southerner.  And so on.

With all our enlightened modern principles we don't even know that a human fetus is human.  So why can't a human being be a slave.  If you don't know -- that thing about a fetus -- I'll leave it for you to puzzle out.  You probably know that a human being can't be a slave -- to think otherwise is politically incorrect, and actually incorrect.  No human can be a slave; all fetuses can be aborted; therefore I won't bother to formulate this into a syllogism.  

The outcome of polling data depends on how the questions are asked.  The Civil War was about States rights -- the right to own property ... most notably slaves.  During our current Cultural War, it's about a woman's right to choose ... most notably abortion.  

Finish the euphemism ... moron.  

If there had been no three-fifths compromise, there would have been no need for Hitler.  You know, to create the Nazi Party.  It would have happened many decades sooner, in North America.  And, to be parsimonious with our diction, the Party would have been called Democrat.  

I mean, grand Nazi Party planks like eugenics and euthanasia, and other eu- things ... well, we here in america, some of us, have euabortion and eutranz and euequity and eutolerance and I could go on and on because it's ease once you get the idea.  The idea is, label your things doubleplus eugood, and their things ultra maga supremecist.  

These armbands © are hard to find.  




The point is that it's complicated.  Purity isn't the virtue we were taught that it was, when we were idealistic and naive children, or adolescents, or sophomores, or educators, or bureaucrats. We all start out as abortable clots of globby goo, not to say viable young-ones with fully developed nervous systems including higher brain function.  But we outgrow that embarrassing awkwardness, and we gain, somehow, human worth, with nuance and gravitas, and suchlike yeswecans.  Tolerance, did I say?  

And somewhere along the way, somehow, we have to suppose that in this best of all possible worlds (because it is the only world, and a good God would not allow needless suffering) even such a vile three-fifths of a compromise as tolerating slavery is tolerated, until maturity is suffered to come unto its full term.  

What trimester does 3/5 fall into?  Somehow that math makes it seem like a fetus is 1/3 of a person.  

Somehow this became about abortionism.  Or do you prefer euphemisms. 


J

Thursday, August 12, 2021

*MoveOn dot MeToo

YT


They're too young to remember it, mostly.  Or in fading early middle age, old people puberty, decline combined with self-righteousness.  They've always been self-righteous, entitled, empowered, esteemed.  Proud heirs to the participation trophy, the triumph of will, ascendant upon the mountain of the universe -- vast in the equality of poppies, their vaginas are powerful, their penises a handy leash.  The decline was from birth, born into twilight, and hell is murky.  

The Left wanted us to move along, forget about it, that clinton thing.  Get over it.  Move on.  So what if the male president groped a boob or grabbed a mons pubis.  Trump, clinton -- well it mattered with Trump, but that was different.  Vulgarian.  Cigars, blue dresses, semen stains, flowers, troopers. Who can remember.  Class. 

Like a glimpse of stocking.  Something shocking, from a long-ago generation.  Passé. We have evolved.  This is what maturity looks like.  Virtue signals and cancel culture.  Signal cancels -- a failure to communicate.  What you are allowed to do, say, think, feel.  

Best watch yourself.  

It's never been okay.  And if women finally get the courtesy they were, several generations ago, nominally due -- holding a door open, standing when she enters -- well such formalities didn't prevent scum from abusing the power of position.  

And abortionism had its price.  Women stopped being female.  They are men with breasts, as men are women with back hair.  What they are pleased to call 'gender' is all about, and nothing but, bulges.  Everything is entirely superficial and phenomenological.  Shave down an adams apple, remove breast tissue -- presto change-o.  Déclassé.  

It's an idea I may go into, sometime.  But transgenderism is an anti-abortion argument.  There is a spirit, they suppose, male or female, in the wrong body.  So, there is a spirit in a body.  A human spirit, in a human body. Thus, abortion is homicide.  

Don't blame me.  My position is consistent.  I've changed in hardly anything.  There is no longer an America -- that was hard to accept.  My brazen serpent, Nehushtan, a useful thing that became an idol.  Nun sheath -- ashen hunt.  Now it's not even useful, america.  Nothing but the richest slave.  A fun fact known from ancient Rome (and everywhere else): slaves make the cruelest masters.  It's all they know.

What is the first human emotion?  You'd think hunger, but that's just biology.  Hot or cold or itchy, or boredom, the same.  The first human emotion is the need for connection.  Intimacy.  It's why babies stare.  They look at everything.  They stare at mommy.  As I have said, it is the nature of a personality to want to be known -- to reveal itself.  Human life is about contact.  Sartre is mistranslated: hell is [needing] other people.

This explains it all.  

Move On.  Me Too.  They're almost anagrams.  Move onto me.  Like OJ, there's just too much love.  


J

Friday, March 2, 2012

After-birth Abortion

There are such things as "morally irrelevant" human beings. No, we do not mean sadistic monsters, or genocidal despots, or sociopathic megalomaniacs, or medical ethicists. Certainly not, the idea is risible. We mean "babies", who are not "actual persons" and have no "moral right to life."

This fact is self-evident, and only “fanatics opposed to the very values of a liberal society” could object, avers Journal of Medical Ethics editor, Herr Doktor Professeur Julian Savulescu, director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. Double threat! How could such a personage possibly be in error? Like, there are no Ethics as correct as Practical Ethics ... far more reality-based than, say, Moral Ethics or Human Ethics or Parental Ethics. Ethics are highly adjectival, utterly modifiable, mutable and relative. As a charming young gay man just told me at the Trader Joe's checkout, "There is no ri
ght or wrong, just different." I find that comforting. I wonder what he looks like naked.

“The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual.” They can't be talking about white babies, surely? They should write more carefully ... someone could get the wrong idea.

“Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’." Ah, good to know. Note to self: not all humans are persons. Good. Lets me off the hook re the duct tape, coroner's saw and heavy-duty garbage bags in my trunk. "Human" bodies hold a lot of moisture.

“We take ‘person’ to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her.” One may have supposed that to love something is to increase its value, but no, we have just been informed, that would be a mistaken belief. Personhood is reflexive, real only when it is self-attributed. Again, good to know ... only forebrain activity need be considered when evaluating humanity.

Therefore, it is “not possible to damage a newborn [human non-person] by preventing her from developing the potentiality to become a person in the morally relevant sense”. Furthermore, I add, we can harvest her organs, enjoy intercourse with her, feed her to dogs ... the list is limited only by your imagination and capacity to suppress the gag response. She is incapable of being damaged. As the crows observed of Dumbo, so we are given to understand that you can't hurt her, she's made out of rubber. Therefore, “what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled”. Disabled, dismembered ... splitting hairs.

As for the really undesirable, like Down's Syndrome "babies" -- you know, Mongolian idiots -- “To bring up such children might be an unbearable burden on the family and on society as a whole...” Well, might be. Unbearable, like having your '82 Chateau Haut Brion Pessac-Lognan served at 15°C. Hey, stupid: seventeen degrees, bitch ... se-ven-teen. We can't be wasting precious resources on crippled babies. There are abortions to pay for.

And "it is reasonable to predict that living with a very severe condition is against the best interest of the newborn..." Clearly, clearly: not living at all is clearly clearly better than living with a severe condition. That's how I feel a lot of the time too ... I just don't see the purpose of life. I'd be better off dead too. Who will free me from this body of death. After-birth abortionists? Practical ethicists? Damn these intrusive laws. There is entirely too little killing going on nowadays.

The retards are next.

I should submit this to Kos or The Huffington Post. One of my better essays, non?


J

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

The Center for Non-Reproductive Rights

My conscience has been tormenting me, about how small-minded I am, and self-righteous and hypocritical, so I finally decided to stop being such a coward for a moment and actually tried to slightly lessen if not overcome my probably invincible ignorance. I am speaking of course about the The Center for Reproductive Rights, which I am pleased now to inform you is a legal innovator seeking to fundamentally transform the landscape of reproductive health and rights worldwide, and which has defined the course of reproductive rights through their victories in regional, federal, and local Courts around the world, as well as at the United Nations, and also influences the law outside the courtroom, by Reporting on Rights and Engaging policymakers to promote progressive ideas and defeat proposals that are discriminatory, punitive, or dangerous to women's health. Why, The Center is expanding the world community of knowledgeable, committed reproductive rights champions. It sponsors Conferences and Trainings for lawyers and other advocates. And their Law School Initiative is revolutionizing the way reproductive rights law is taught in the U.S.

Okay, I admit, nay, affirm that I just cut and pasted a lot of that, with maybe some changes in pronouns and concomitant grammar. I wanted to preserve the raw, the authentic style -- not entirely conforming to the conventions of standard English usage, you may insist, but that would be paternalistic. We're talking about women here, and their Reproductive Rights, and you want to quibble about capitalizations and dashes. Pathetic. What a hater. The Center people are such committed reproductive rights Champions! Hooah! We shall overcome! They are rights Champions, thrice so, Champions of the Third Right, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of ... no, wait ... ah, liberté, égalité, fraternité, except not fraternité cuz that's phallocentric ... sororité ... Reich Champions, I say, Aryan heroes I mean heroins, and not Aryan, Venusian, who are reproductive!

Understand that by "reproductive" is meant "non-reproductive." Cuz we're talking about abortion. Burn baby, burn. What is the word? Sterile? Let's see ... re, pro, duce. From "produce," a section of a supermarket; see "duct," from the Latin, ducere, to lead (c.f. Il Duce, a one-time leader of Italy); "product," to lead forth ... re pro duct, to do so again, generationally, from "generation": the process of creation (c.f. Genesis). "Abort": to interrupt a process. "Process," from the Latin processus, a going forward, root, cedere, to yield, surrender. See "pro-choice," favoring the negative; antonym: "pro-life," opposed to the right to choose.

So that's that. Clarity has been achieved. I feel so much lighter now that I've opened my mind. It was getting crowded in there, what with all those trapped words.

And on The Center's webpage we find the satisfied smile of a lovely young woman of color,
content in the memory of a job well-done. Minorities after all are the major beneficiaries of the right to choose reproductive services. Oh! LOL! Minorities are the majority!!! Haha! That's funny. If there were more of them, they'd be majorities! Hm. I wonder why there's not more of them. It's a puzzlement, a Mystery Rite to Choose, git it? Almost like somebody doesn't want too many of them, these minorities. But that would be racist, and we know who the racists are.

And The Center's webpage also had a cartoon caption contest, and here's a winner:
Right on, man. Word. Cuz the Man is so like that. Ho! Stop, in the name of the Law! Unhand that damsel, you blackguard! Man, that Perry and all those Republicans. More like, um, ReFascisticans. Yeah.

Oh! That cartoon's by Jack Chen! I wonder if it's the same Jack Chen who did such stellar work for the Peking Review (one, two) back in the mid-60s.
See how "Uncle" Sam (the United States) is making that little man jump through hoops? Looks Irish. Imperialistically oppressing Ireland. Looks like Jack got the dollar sign backwards, but he probably didn't really speak English so much in those days. Oh! It's John Bull! Ha ha. Who's the imperialist now, little man?

And here's the Reptile of the North, oppressing Latin America in the 60s. Take that, and that, Serpent! Those gringos are always trying to sneak into the south. Here's a video about Jack Chen, CIA agent who follows the case for six years...!
Babe is hot. Jack must be a double agent, secretly fighting for the People's Republic and Justice for the Common Man and Women's Rights.

Is Jack still alive, fighting the good fight? Must be. Keep on truckin', comrade. You rock for an old dude.

And here's another The Center cartoon (not by Jack though) caption winner:
Oh, that's rich, baby, rich. Situation comedy, dude. Laughter is the best medicine. You can't make this stuff up. So. When you're a winner you're a winner. Wit like this, it's, um, cutting.

Just thought I'd share my new perspective. Death to the unwanted fœti! We shall overcome their persistent and inconvenient impositions and so-called "lives". Nothing but organized mucus. Fuck 'em.


J

Saturday, January 16, 2010

How to Avoid Needing Abortions

This, bumped up from two years ago:


I really don't want to write this. But what am I for?

An opinion piece on Abortion. From two collaborators of La Times ... oops ... the L.A. Times. And I meant writers, two writers. Shall I quote it? Very well:

Abortion means many things to many people. It is a very good thing. To some, it seems bad. To others it seems good. It means many things. Many people have different ideas about it. Some think it is good. Others think it is bad. It means many things. People like it, while other people do not. The different ideas that many people have about it mean many things to them. There are many opinions. Many people have opinions about this. It is a very good thing.
I kid. You know that's not from the LA Times, because it's so even-handed. There is only one opinion about abortion: it is a good thing; what those who disagree with that fact have is called a bias.

"Thirty-five years ago, the Supreme Court affirmed in Roe vs. Wade that women have a fundamental right to choose abortion without government interference."

"...affirmed..." Self-evident things are affirmed by reasonable people. What actually happened was that the court imposed its will on America, subverting the democratic process in a move that even Ruth Bader Ginsberg affirmed was ill-advised: the matter should have been decided politically, thus avoiding the rancor of the following decades.

"...a fundamental right..." How odd. One would presume that fundamental rights had been affirmed in the Constitution, at the time of its establishment -- and one would assume and affirm that no right would be affirmed and assumed that was alien, abhorrent and indeed anathema to the Framers. Can there be such a thing as a new fundamental right? Would this be an example of Evolution at work? I'm not a man who refuses to affirm it when he's been wrong.

"...to choose abortion..." Choice. It's such an American word. A synonym for freedom. How can having a choice be wrong? It can't be. It's just the thing that is chosen that might be wrong. The thing? Abortion? I have to point out the sad oversight of the opinion-piece writers. They didn't actually mean to say "abortion." Abortion is such an unsightly word. It needs a pleasant-sounding alternative. Like, say, choice. They meant to say that "women have a fundamental right to choose choice." Ah, that sounds so much better. As we know, there are no wrong choices. Only different choices. Oops. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say "different." I meant diversitous, because diversity is what America is all about. Whereas differences are bad. Why else is there Affirmative Action? It will make us all even, after a while -- a few centuries or millennia -- Evolution will decide.

"...without government interference." What else is it that governments do but interfere? The question is, where and how. The Left supposes that drug-use and baby-killing are morally neutral choices, while extorting taxes on threat of imprisonment or death to support social engineering is a good thing. The Left has no qualms about wielding government power. As long as the Left can choose the victims -- babies, mostly.

Well. That takes care of the first sentence.

Oh God I can hardly stand it.

...that landmark decision...” Gravemark. Except medical waste doesn’t get buried -- well, maybe in a landfill.

“...the United States has some of the most restrictive policies on abortion in the developed world.” Yeah. The developed world, developer of mustard gas and death camps, and partial birth abortion. We should be more like the developed world; as it is, we’re the only developed-world country with a non-shrinking population. Damn those restrictive policies.

“...the U.S. forbids the use of federal funds for abortions...” Here, can I get you some more crystal meth? Maybe help you insert that gigantic vibrating phallus into your anus? Cuz that’s what I’m for -- providing resources for your vices -- facilitating your degradation.

“...the Supreme Court has upheld state laws that require parental consent or notification...” Draconian. A word closely related to Dracula, notorious drinker of the blood of the innocent. “...mandatory waiting periods...” Gun purchases should require a waiting period, but abortions for minors should not. Cuz, uh, guns kill people. And stuff. I guess. “...and antiabortion counseling.” The gall! Sex education obviously works so well for teens, but only the “have it” kind ... I mean the “have sex” kind. Don’t have “it”, the “baby”. That would be restrictive.

“The court's 2007 decision on so-called partial-birth abortions was an unprecedented infringement on physician autonomy.” Y’see, here’s how it works. A doctor knows that when a woman is in labor but doesn’t want to be an actual mother, cutting up that baby in the womb is a better medical choice than, say, a C-section. Giddit? And even if s/he doesn’t know that, h/er/is autonomy shall not be infringed. It says so right there in the Second Amendment. Unprecedented. Simply unprecedented. Like when Lincoln sort of threw out the Dred Scot decision, and infringed the slave masters' autonomy to whip the niggers to death.

“...public opinion has been relatively stable and favorable to legal abortion.” It must be true. The abortionists who wrote this opinion piece have been accurate on every other point. “Early efforts to overturn Roe failed miserably.” And the fact that the body which might have done the overturning was the same body that imposed the ruling in the first place? I’m sure my question must be illogical in some way. Us Bible-thumpers are so irrational, after all. And we just know that if that same body hadn’t invented this new right, it would have arrived anyway, being a historical inevitability, like Communism. Inevitable I say. Aren’t we after all appealing to popularity right now? Nevermind those other popular laws -- the ones that so vilely as we have seen restrict abortion -- those ones that the rubes in the square states are shoving down our throats like some horrible thing that belongs to a male chauvinist pig, and you know what I mean, sister.

“...the anti-choice movement changed tactics...” “Twenty years ago, being pro-life was déclassé.” Where’s a mad bomber when you need one.

“Three-dimensional ultrasound images of babies in utero began to grace the family fridge.” Ahem. “Babies”? Your slip is showing. “Fetuses underwent surgery. More premature babies survived and were healthier. ...These trends gave antiabortionists an advantage...” Y’think? I have found that, as with sex, it is easier to kill someone when I don’t have to look them in the eye. That’s too intimate.

“Advocates of choice have had a hard time dealing with the increased visibility of the fetus. The preferred strategy is still to ignore it and try to shift the conversation back to women. At times, this makes us appear insensitive...” No comment. No comment needed. Okay, one comment. It makes them appear insane.

“To some people, pro-choice values seem to have been unaffected by the desire to save the whales and the trees, to respect animal life and to end violence at all levels.” My, that’s an awkward sentence. Let’s rewrite it. Some people think abortionists enjoy a bizarre disconnect, worshiping whales and trees and animals and vermin and cowardice and feckless passivity, on the one hand, while ... while, uh ... well, they don’t quite open up that other hand, for us to see what’s in it. Just something pulpy, I would suppose -- a sort of red paste.

“Pope John Paul II got that, and coined the term ‘culture of life.’ President Bush adopted it, and the slogan, as much as it pains us to admit it, moved some hearts and minds. Supporting abortion is tough to fit into this package.” They speak a human language, these opinion piece writers. I’ll give them that. If only humanity resided in words. Odd, though, this, uh, choice of words. It pains them. Everyone knows pain has no place in a discussion about abortion. Everyone knows fetuses can't feel pain.

“In recent years, the antiabortion movement successfully put the nitty-gritty details of abortion procedures on public display...” Nitty-gritty. Itsy-bitsy. Teenie-weenie. Okie-dokey. Hokey-pokey. Helter-skelter. Willie-nillie. Silly-willy. Wee wee wee all the way home. Fee fie foe fum. Grind his bones to make my bread. If I should die before I wake. “...increasing the belief that abortion is serious business...” People believe the funniest things. “...and that some societal involvement is appropriate.” Time was, all the societal involvement we needed in abortion could be found in a back alley. Maybe I’m thinking of another sort of society. And another sort of involvement.

Those who are pro-choice have not convinced America that we support a public discussion of the moral dimensions of abortion.” I’m a little confused. The words, “moral” and “abortion” in such close proximity -- it’s like mixing bleach and ammonia. Semantical chaos. She-all did it before when she-all used the phrase "pro-choice values".

“Likewise, we haven't convinced people that we are the ones actually doing things to make it possible for women to avoid needing abortions.” Cf. the preceding paragraph on sexual education, which education so clearly outlines the methods most approved “to avoid needing abortions.” Oh, it's so good, that phrase -- "avoid needing abortions". Hey! -- that’s gonna be my tattoo! I AM THE ONE WHO CONVINCES PEOPLE THAT I AM THE ONE ACTUALLY DOING THINGS TO MAKE IT POSSIBLE FOR WOMEN TO AVOID NEEDING ABORTIONS! All Gothic and shit, with skulls and blood dripping from the tips, all across my belly. Way cool! How to avoid needing abortions? I suggest -- per the state-mandated educational curricula -- mutual masturbation, blowup dolls, oral sex, sodomy, bestiality, necrophilia, and intercourse with the extremely aged or with prepubescent children.

“Let's face it: Disapproval of women's sexuality is a historical constant.” Me too! I’m afraid I’ll fall in.

“So our claim that women can be trusted still falls on deaf ears.” Women are trusted to be mothers, one of the two most important jobs ever. Men make better executioners.

“And when the choice movement seems to defend every individual abortion decision, rather than the right to make the decision, it too becomes suspect.” Question: what could these writers ever consider to be a wrong decision? Because if there is no wrong decision, is there a decision at all? -- any more than the tide decides to flow in, and flow out? And if there is a wrong decision, is it sufficiently wrong to remove the option?

“If pro-choice values are to regain the moral high ground...”

Regain the. Moral. High ground. And this is where we must stop.

Words, it seem, do not retain humanity.


J

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Truth Unsupported By Evidence

A certain Dr. Jessica Stern of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government was overheard to opine about the typical American bigoted hypocritical double-standard duplicitous hypocrisy of Americans: Islamic clerics are condemned for their understandable and prudent silence regarding their coreligionists, whereas those stinking Jews and phony Christians get a free pass about all the violence committed by them all, the pigs.

I quote from memory. Oh bother. All right then, I'll look it up. Sheesh. Quoth the sage, "I've heard a lot of bashing of Muslim clerics for not stepping up to the plate and condemning extremist violence. But Catholic priests are not stepping up to condemn those who kill abortion doctors … [and] rabbis are not condemning the violent settlers' movement." Hitching up her bluestockings, she continued with the shocking, simply shocking revelation that "all three major monotheistic religions have produced violence."

Well. QED. Who can contend with the overwhelming power of such reasoning? I am bowled over, brought low, made as nothing upon the earth. My name shall be dust.

When pressed and pressed again for some specific example of these famously violent Jew settlers, she cited the infamous Yigal Amir, who in 1995 assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin. Alas for the etiolated Harvard logothete, Amir's crime was condemned by every segment of Jewish society -- Knesset politicos, rabbis Liberal, Reformed and Orthodox (both Ultra and Regular-flavor), kosher butchers, mohels, accountants, agents (both entertainment and real-estate), pawn brokers, diamond merchants... Oy. Endless, the list is. You know ... Jews.

(A more apposite example of Jew violence -- the citing of which would have required actual informed opinion rather than visceral bias -- would have been that of Dr. Baruch Goldstein, who on Feb. 25, 1994, entered the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and gunned down 29 Moslems before killing himself. Good riddance. Um ... universally condemned.)

Maybe Ms. Stern is onto one of those intuitive truths, though, that we know must be true even if the evidence doesn't quite entirely favor it. That's the trouble with Western Civilization. It's so linear. Something a little more ... oh, I don't know ... arabesque might be in order.

As for the Catholics, well, they're all so primitive, with their idols and incense and prayer and suchlike. Islam only has four gods, Allah and his three daughters. That's much more logical than all them demiurges them Papists got. But I digress from the pure-flowing stream of Ms. Dr. Stern's crystalline logic, as when she reminds us of how the streets flow with the blood of abortionists, shed by the Christian ravening extremists which is most of them.

Bill Donohue, however, of the Catholic League, has taken the bother to point out a few annoying facts. Dang those pesky things. Facts, I mean ... but Catholics too, no doubt. Donohue -- sounds like a dirty mick to me. Anyway, this drunken potato-eating paddy points out that the last abortionist per se to be killed in the US was in 1998. Well, he said this before this year's May 31 dispatching to Hell of George "Babie" Tiller, the Olympic-level abortionist.

But prior to Dr. Killer, it had been, let's see, 13.5 million abortions enjoyed for your protection. Of such killings -- I mean of abortionists, not abortuses -- Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles stated that they make "a mockery of everything we stand for." Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston also denounced them, and ordered a moratorium on sidewalk protest vigils outside abortion centers. In New York, Cardinal John O'Connor said, "If anyone has an urge to kill an abortionist, kill me instead." But they're Catholic priests, and therefore child molesters. Who are they to speak.

Forgive my sarcasm. I see that I 've become inappropriate, and off point. For the initial idea was that religious leaders of each of three monotheisms do not condemn the bad acts of those who share their confession. And we see that this is so easily refuted that the original statement amounts to a lie.

It may well be that the leaders of two of the three religions under discussion here feel safe to take such stands and make such public statements, because they feel no grave threat. Freedom of expression is so ingrained within us that our habitual forthright manner, adopted with such insouciance, in some other culture would be boldness. Freedom is the outgrowth of a Judeo-Christian root -- of Jews and Christians. We might try, out of politeness, to graft Islam into this monotheistic tree, but it is of a different order, as we know from its fruit.

Moslem leaders and laity dare not speak out against the monsters of Islam. Political courage is rooted out in that world. Yes, it's a sweeping generalization, and so untrue. But it's true. We must pity those who belong to societies that require either fanaticism or cowardice. But until such societies outgrow this adolescent stage, they cannot be judged by the same standard, and cannot be adjudged as the equal of mature cultures, which nurture healthy debate and tolerate obnoxious opinion.

No one is more dogmatic, arrogant and intolerant than a teenager. Except, of course, dogmatic, arrogant and intolerant adults. These, however, would be adults only in the sense that anal worms are adults -- capable of reproducing. How more pleasant, the world, if they didn't. Which brings us back to good Dr. Stern.

Opinion should be informed by fact. Social stature should be supported by integrity. The urge to fair-mindedness should be tempered by a demand for self-examination. It is permissible to be wrong. I'm wrong quite frequently. I must be. I invite correction, however. I expect it would be the same with you. We understand something of the complexity of the world. And we were sufficiently chastened in our youth, that now our conviction has been mollified by humility.

How surprising it is then to come across people, and so many of them, who burn with such assurance of their assumptions that they would burn, figuratively -- or literally behead -- another. I am a man of skewed but unshaken faith. I don't quite fit into God's scheme of things, but I know that's my fault. How sad, those who think that they share God's secrets.

Here's a secret I know: the universe barely exists, but it exists regardless of our belief or agreement. If this is so, there are only two acceptable philosophical imperatives -- of self-defense, and self-sacrifice. I find no place, here, for oppression, and none for moral equivalence. Not all things are equal. Of the three gods of the three monotheisms, at most only two can be the God of this place. I find no place, here, for jihad -- which is not self-defense, and not self-sacrifice. It is oppression.

So, Dr. Stern, I must disagree with your premise, of moral equivalence. Your axioms are alien to me. They seem dishonest and irrational. I cannot respect them, and because of that I cannot respect you. But you don't need my respect. You need my civility -- and if you count the calm expression of unpleasant opinions as falling within the category of things that are civil, then you have everything you need, and will get, from me. That, after a goodly measure of initial sarcasm, just by way of introduction.

As for my hateful name-calling, about those dirty Jews and those stinking Catholics, I'm sure my bigotry is much worse than Ms. Stern's. She, after all, is only a bigot against her own culture. That's much smarter and more honest than hating outsiders. Stern. Stern. Sounds like a Jew name. D'ya think she's a Jewess? That would explain so much.


J

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

The Negro Project

I generally just start writing these things. No apologies for the silliness. You wouldn’t want me to always be serious, would you? That would be great for you, benefiting from the pinpoint focus of my boundless intelligence, but what would I get out of it? I already know everything. So I get silly. But this isn’t a topic for silliness.

You thought I was kidding, didn’t you, a while back when I mentioned Sanger and abortion and the Negro Project. No joke. It’s like Holocaust jokes, although I don’t actually know any. Abortion jokes. All those dead Jews and babies are really funny though. Same deal with racist genocide. It’s funny when ... when ... well, it’s only funny when it vents some of the pain. Hardly ever.

The Negro Project. Nowadays, black women are three times more likely to have an abortion than white women, the overwhelming majority of said procedures provided by Planned Parenthood, which as a community service has made certain that 78% of their clinics are in minority neighborhoods. Blacks make up an eighth of the general population, but have over a third of the abortions. Affirmative action at work.

Why all these minority abortions? Well, in a way, the question answers itself. If it weren’t for all that aborting, they wouldn’t stay minorities. That would be calamitous, from a white racist point of view such as yours. And from the black perspective, think of it as a sort of economic release valve. Blacks earn less, so have less incentive to keep their babies? Well, no, the argument doesn’t quite stand up, when we understand that contraceptives are free for the taking -- generously provided for some reason or other to the underprivileged, then, by over-privileging them with population control mechanisms. Very generous and liberal of them, those abortion providers.

But let me be direct. Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist: eu meaning good, genicist meaning, uh, race. Inferior and unfit individuals and races such as Africans and Asians and South Americans and Indians of any continent or subcontinent and Australians and Middle Easterners and islanders and Antarcticans and I feel like I'm leaving a continent or significant landmass out, maybe swarthy Italians or Greeks and Spaniards who are practically Hottentots -- but they should all be exterminated. In her 1922 book, Pivot of Civilization, Sanger proposed sterilizing the “genetically inferior races” -- which I have thoughtfully just enumerated, as all save her own … you know, her own. But mostly it would be the race indigenous to sub-Saharan Africa. Exterminate. She was a Dalek.

To advance her philosophy, this pioneer founded the American Birth Control League and placed, for example, Lothrop Stoddard on the Board of Directors. Stoddard was the distinguished author of the opus, The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy; when Hitler rolled around, Stoddard was right behind him, or beside him, cheering. Funnily enough, Hitler was right behind or beside Sanger.

Fun Fact: Hitler’s eugenics program was modeled on experiments in California reported by Dr. Paul Popenoe in his article “Eugenic Sterilization,” published in Sanger’s Birth Control Review.

The American Birth Control League was renamed Planned Parenthood after the philosophy of eugenics lost some of its luster, post-Holocaust. Something about ovens will do that, take the glow off fine intellectual constructs that neglect to attribute full humanity to various individuals and groups. Somebody should investigate this phenomenon; it would make an interesting paper.

Her finest moment came in 1939, when Sanger proposed The Negro Project. She recruited black doctors and ministers to her aims by stressing the benefits of childlessness, guaranteed through contraception, sterilization and abortion. Accidents happen, after all, and no one as our lawfully elected President Obama has reassured us should be punished for an accident. W.E.B. Dubois signed on, as did Dr. Adam Clayton Powell -- big-time olden days Negroes ... you're so ignorant.

The purpose of The Negro Project? “The most successful educational approach to the Negro,” asseverated Ms. Sanger, “is through a religious appeal. We do not want the word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it occurs to any of their more rebellious members.” Those exasperating blacks. Well, who am I to contradict the NAACP? -- the National Association for the Abortion of Colored People. Speaking as a white and therefore Colorless Person, I have no right to an opinion. I wish I had a color. Be that as it may, in 2004 the just-referenced venerable institution officially endorsed abortion. Rah rah rah, gooooooooo ABORTION!

Upshot? Here it is, three generations later. Still a lot of blacks running around. But all is not lost. An analysis from 2000 showed that areas with a large black representation had a large number of abortion clinics, whereas areas with low black population -- Idaho, North Dakota, Utah, Wyoming -- had no Planned Parenthood abortion facilities. I suppose it could be a coincidence.

It’s just freaky weird. Here the liberals are, on the one hand doing everything in their power to insure a high black teen pregnancy rate, and on the other doing everything they can to abort the babies. Are they looking for business? Abortion is after all a multi-billion dollar industry. But that’s just stupid, it must be. There are easier ways to make a buck. Legalize drugs, for example. The lefties would be gazillionairs. Who says capitalism and socialism cannot co-exist? Look at MediCare. So it can’t be just about, uh, stimulating the economy. What other purpose could there be, in destroying the family structure by encouraging fatherlessness, in promoting promiscuity in impressionable and vulnerable youth, in setting up an endless archipelago of abortion mills that runs like an insane connect-the-dots spiderweb through black communities? What purpose?

I am urged somehow to summon up an image of Moloch, his sneering lips pulled back across brazen fangs, his huge gaping mouth drooling blood as the inferno in his belly grows even hotter with the spongy flesh of babies turned to charcoal. What purpose in it?

There are real conspiracies ... that coming together in the single breath of common cause which must not suffer the touch of sunlight lest their aim whatever it may be should wither with shame. I doubt if those behind it all even know what master they serve. There are no geniuses involved. Indeed, there is a point at which simple ignorance becomes Satanic. This is an instance where ignorance truly is no excuse. To call the tearing limb from limb of the unborn a choice -- it is unconscionable. These are just words though. Good lord. If the abortion can’t convince you, maybe the racism will. A lot of us don’t know yet that abortion is bad. We all know by now that racism is. Can you make the leap? Draw the connection between the two? Or is your imagination too frail, or your conscience too calloused.

Abortion? Do NOT click here, or here, if pictures of medical waste might disturb you. Are these babies and baby pieces black? One can hardly tell. It certainly could not possibly matter in the slightest. Well, look around for yourself. Here. Here. It’s not hard to find. Google “negro project”. Have fun.

I’ve been putting off writing this. I like to be silly, and this isn’t the place. I’m a passionate man, although I try to hide it. Time and the pain that it brings has matured me, and I can control my anguish over the unspeakable injustice that underpins every human institution and endeavor. We can deal with the vileness of life through simple coping mechanisms. Distraction. Avoidance. Transference. Intoxication. So I can live in a world of casual cruelty and toxic selfishness. The distance from murder to genocide is just a matter of who’s doing it, individuals or governments. Neither need unsettle me. I know what the world is. It is a place where black babies are killed, and white, and brown, and every other human color, wholesale, with the encouragement of their mothers, and preachers, and government social workers, and elected politicians.

There is a way to stop it, all this misuse of power. It involves a mere mental shift. It boils down to two simple precepts:

The innocent must be protected.
Humanity is inherent.

I can’t be any clearer than that.


J

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Late Abortionist

It really is a complicated question. Is it murder, killing a late-term abortionist? Of course it is, in the sense that it is unlawful. But the more precise term is assassination. Is it wrong, in that we are told to love our enemies? That Ehud (Jdg 3) is called a savior of Israel in the Bible, when he assassinated the king of Moab, well, that's Old Testament. Not a cop out. 

 Jesus gives us other commandments, as, to love our enemies. Does this mean, love the enemies of our children? Does this mean, allow enemies to kill our children? -- or any other of the little ones whom Jesus would suffer to come unto him? Are we told to defend the defenseless? I'm sure we are, somewhere, although that may be OT as well -- but uncountermanded.

Do abortionists kill babies? Once we get around the nonsense of defining what a baby is, the answer is, yes, they certainly do kill babies. Young humans, as yet unborn, but human in the sense that an eagle egg is an eagle, and its destruction is a felony. No mystery there, only embarrassment and inconsistency. Human in terms of DNA. Human in terms of the natural course of human development. Human in terms of the fact that it, the fetus, the child, is loved as a child, if it is loved at all.

Abortionists kill babies. So what's the big deal with killing abortionists? Rule of law? Laws must be just to be valid. Religion? God uses fierce warriors of righteousness. Ethics? What higher ethic, than to defend the defenseless. It is a complicated question, but it's not a difficult one. It's just a matter of how we respond to evil.

How is the assassin not just like the Taliban, since he imposes his morality through violence?  Likewise, how is our own abortionist law not like the Taliban's sharia, that socially approves the death of some unfavored individual, whose crime, which merits the death penalty, is simply to exist in its natural place, albeit where it is not wanted?

Tiller, the abortionist, personally and by hand terminated the beating of 60,000 hearts. He was a one-man Vietnam. Maybe he'll get his own wall. There's talk that this abortionist was the same as a Nazi. After all, Germany's laws allowed acts we all know to be vile. Abortion is vile, when we see it for what it is. 

 What then is a moral response to those who act lawfully but heinously? Civil war? As with slavery? Was the bloody eradication of slavery moral? Would the targeting of enemy generals have been moral? To save the lives of our boys? If the mass slaughter of battle is countenanced in such a cause, is assassination to be forbidden? Should Robert E Lee have been assassinated? Rommel? Hitler? Mao? Do we have the right to try, in abstentia, enemy monsters, and execute them through covert means?

Is self defense wrong? Is a pacifist to stand by and let his wife and children be, collectively, raped and murdered? Or is there some higher duty than peace? Is the defense of the innocent to employ deadly force, then? Which innocent? Our own children? Those we know? Strangers? Those targeted by the will of a parent and the parent's paid agent?

How important is order, within our society? Can we allow those who dislike our laws to simply ignore them? Is the urgency of saving babies a greater matter than acting civilly? Is it acceptable to sacrifice one's own freedom and future for the largely symbolic gesture embodied in the violent death of an abortionist? Are lives even saved by such an act, given that there may be some possible dampening or chilling effect, but there are always plenty of abortionists to collect the $500 and up they get paid for, what, 5 minutes of industry, or 10?

Is the public response to such an assassination likely to favor the pro-life cause? Or is disrepute brought to it? Are attitudes hardened against it, because of the apparent contradiction? Is the cause set back, by years or decades? Or is it a lost cause, with abortion always with us and the lines already drawn and sides already hardened? And what witch hunt might we expect now, from an abortionist-controlled administration?

What of the abortionist? He knows what he's doing. He sees the body parts and the still living baby, sometimes. He could take out his stethoscope and hear the heartbeat. He has certainly heard the breathing, and no doubt heard the cries. The face of a diswombed child, with newly amputated limbs, not anesthetized, not yet dead -- it must be a sight to remember. 

 It must be a sort of insanity, to convince oneself that this is not a human being. There must certainly be blood on his gloved hands. And God delays, so the flesh of yet another Herod is uninfested by the worms infecting his soul. Should we take this delay as yet more tarrying of the Lord, as a sort of blessing, or at least mercy, as a chance, prolonged ad extremis, for repentance? The life of an abortionist must be precious indeed, to continue at the cost of so much death.

What then are we to do, in this world, to protect the actual lives, the lives, of not quite born infants?


J

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

* Abortion

 YT & YT

Travail


Well.

Well.

Abortion.

I have no words to deal adequately with this thing. What shall I say, to those on the other side? You kill babies? They will say, “No, we terminate unwanted pregnancies.” I will say, by killing babies, and they object, “Fetus, not baby.” I respond that fetus is just the Latin for young one, and they reply that I am very erudite, but etymology is not a biological science.

And we have wasted words.

So I say there is nothing magical about air, that contact with it turns a fetus into a baby. They will say that it is, indeed, a difficult and controversial subject, and that viability is a good criterion – if the fetus is viable outside the womb, then it would count as a baby, but a fetus is not human life. I point out that anything that exhibits metabolism is alive, and they respond that tadpoles are alive. And the fact that these fetuses have human, not amphibian, DNA? --Well, fingernails have human DNA. But, I ask, do fingernails exhibit metabolism? They respond: Is a single cell a human ... are we yeast? I reply: Is yeast "alive," and does a human remain only a single cell? My point seems not to be understood, and is ignored. Instead we quibble about trimesters and technologies, and about hard cases such as anacephalism. There is no resolution.

More wasted words.

I say that we should err on the side of caution – if we are not sure, if there is any doubt at all, then we should count this entity as human. I give the example of a building scheduled for demolition: someone is saying that there’s a child inside, and the building must not be destroyed. Given the uncertainty, we should wait. Life is more precious than the schedule. They say the analogy is not valid, and add that a woman is worthy of mercy too, and the burden of unwanted motherhood outweighs the theoretical presumption that a fetus is a fully human life – that the "building" is "occupied." I reply that between death, and inconvenience, the choice is clear. They demur, and we cannot agree.

Futility.

I say that the fetus of John the Baptist leaped for joy in the womb, when it came into the presence of the newly-conceived Jesus. From this, I assert that everything a person possesses of spirit, he possesses at conception. “Oh, there are so many things wrong with that,” they scoff, observing that superstition has no place in a discussion about science. I take up that theme, pointing out that the system of cells, at any stage of development, has a unique genetic code, very quickly a nervous system, and in more than half the cases, a penis. I laboriously spell out the fact that a woman has only one genetic code, only one nervous system, and no penis at all – it is not “her body,” but rather another body, within her body. They respond that regardless of any other consideration, whatever goes on inside her body is solely her own responsibility. I consider an ethical response, but abandon it as useless.

Useless.

Nazis said some people are more human than others. Racists say that some people are more human than others. Because language is powerful, we strive to control it. I say Hitler murdered Jews, Nazis say he exterminated vermin. I say abortion kills babies, abortionists say choice terminates unwanted pregnancies. Nazis and racists believe in a continuum of humanity, up to a master race. Abortionists, too, believe that we evolve into our humanity – at conception, it is only potential, and we have not yet fully developed into it. Indeed, an infant is not viable, in that it cannot care for itself. A young girl is not fully developed, not sexually viable. Is she then not fully human? Personality is developed, but personhood is innate.

But such reasoning issues like heat into the void.

I recall myself saying as a callow youth in high school that babies were better off dead, rather than born to stupid parents. I was convinced otherwise by the simple thought experiment of picturing an abortion from the perspective of its object. Possessed as I am of some clarity of imagination, the image that rose up before my mind’s eye was sufficiently disturbing that I grew pale and faint, and had actually to leave the classroom. And I was convinced. It’s not right to kill babies. Even unborn babies. Regardless of any consideration about the supposed prospects, the potential quality of life, that may lay in that baby’s future. Babies have a right to a future. There is no appeal to reason, here. Words are useless. Either you get it, or you don’t.

That's all.


J

=====

Another Word



Abortion. Words are useless. Either you get it, see it, or you don’t.

That's all.

Well ... not quite all. Because it holds a strange fascination. I'm of an age where I generally possess enough maturity and self-restraint to simply walk away - but sometimes a thing just draws the eyes to it, and we stare, like innocence at the hint of depravity. So I return, briefly, to the subject again. Abortion. And again, my son of a previous decade teaches the lesson.

In fact, we were outside that self-same store. A health food store, as it happens. On the sidewalk was a fellow collecting signatures. "Would you like to sign a petition, protecting a woman's right to choose." I never did learn the details. How, in what manner, was a woman's right to choose being threatened, that signatures needed to be gathered? I haven't a clue.

There we stood, my little boy and myself, holding hands. And I, being me, just had to ask: "A woman's right to choose what?" Butter wouldn't melt.

He seems surprised, because I don't give the appearance of an ignoramus. "Why," he said, "why, the right to ... it's about reproductive freedom."

"Ah," I breathed. "You're talking about abortion." There's another word for it, you see.

"Uh, yes."

I didn't have anything planned, of course. That's not my style. A lot of my time is spent listening to the wind. I just felt like holding my boy, so I picked him up - him sitting on my arm - you know. I was looking at his hand, and I remembered him as a new baby, noticing his hand for the first time, thinking how perfect it was. Like a five-petalled flower.

"You know," I said, "this is my son. Look at him. Isn't he handsome? Look at how perfect he is." I said it smiling - joyfully, really. "Tell me, sir," I said, "when would it have been okay to abort him?"

Alas, that's where my little story ends. Memory fails, you see. I just don't remember what he said, or what I said after him. I know it wasn't anything dramatic. Again, not my style. I expect that he just moved on to another prospect. And I expect that he got nothing from the exchange. Because he was standing outside a health food store, gathering signatures to protect a woman's right to choose.


J

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Celling Out

The problem with birthdays is that they make us think our lives began when we were born. It's how old we are, after all. Rather an embarrassment for non-abortionists. That's the current preferred term for us, right? Non-abortionists?

Just watched a little science thing about embryonic stem cell cloning and the like. Someone's saying it's not an embryo unless it's in a womb with a woman who agrees to carry it. Hm. Sort of like it's not a baby unless there's someone who agrees to care for it. Like that Illinois case with the botched abortion, where the surviving, uh, baby? -- fetus? gasped out its brief, uh, life? -- for 45 minutes until it, uh, died? -- terminated? It's so hard to get the termination, I mean terminology right. That's probably why God called himself the Word.

Clearly it's not about agreeing whether or not life should be allowed to live. If it's life, it is meant to live. Even vermin, even monsters and criminals, are meant to live, whether or not they should. Regarding the research, someone has come up with the ingenious solution of doing the typical clone thing, placing a nucleus inside a modified egg, so that a whole cell is formed and can divide. The trick they've come up with is that they've altered the nucleus by mutating the gene that organized the development into an actual organism. This particular expression of a complete set of human DNA can never, never, ever develop into a human organism.

So is it human?

We return to the abortionist mindset, that says only whatever arbitrary degree of development can be diagnostic of humanity. Potential development doesn't count, with them. They persist in calling life, potential life. They mean mature life, but words are what they use to lie with. The reason I'm bothering to write this is that I realized it's not about potential any more than it's about DNA. We don't mind killing cancer cells, even though they are fully human cells. It's not about cells. It's about what they are meant to become. That includes the DNA, and it includes its development and its maturity.

Christians have an analogous idea, in the three salvations. There is justification, the moment of salvation; there is sanctification, the outworking in one's life of holiness; there is glorification, the judgment of reward and the receiving of a new body, the resurrection body. You know, the one that the abortionists would call human. Which is the important salvation? They are a trinity.

It's just an analogy. But another part of it is that there are all sorts of seeds. Some fall on rocks, some on the hard clay, some the birds get. Some are tares and some are wheat. We concern ourselves, or perhaps God concerns himself, only with the good seed. The rest are thrown into the fire.

See? If it never can develop into a mature life, because it never can develop at all, it's not human life, not human seed -- it's just human DNA. We're not talking about starting an embryo outside the womb and then destroying it. Location isn't what defines an embryo.

Does a simple mutation define the difference between human and not human? Yes. Just the same as a simple decision defines the difference between saved and not saved, Heaven or Hell. Should we be able to determine the fate of some cell's DNA, human or not? We broach the subject every time we have heterosexual sex, if we do. It's Hamlet's dilemma -- who refused to slay King Claudius at his prayers, lest he go to heaven. Human actions have eternal consequences.

I don't know if I'm right. It's just argumentation, based on reason and analogy. I don't really know much about life -- when we get our human spirit -- at conception or some time after. I say I don't know, because I haven't been told. I expect it's at conception. What then of a cloned cell? -- say, a nucleus of mine placed in a prepared egg. Does it partake of my own spirit, which grows with the cell in size but not in nature? So that my clone has the same spirit that I do, as it has the same DNA? Which develops spiritually in its own way, as epigenetics causes variations in the expression of its genes?

I think so. Don't have a problem with that, any more than I'd have a problem with my son partaking of the same percentage of my spirit as he does of my DNA, and the rest from his mother. As for some individual cell, its spirit, such as it is -- linked as it must be with its DNA -- I am not concerned with ethical considerations of its death. Such cells do not have the breath of life -- they terminate, they don't die -- thus the pre-Fall world had metabolism, but had no death.

As I say, I could be wrong. I'm open to instruction. But I think I'm right.

Of course I do.


J

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Forty-five Minutes

Let me be ugly. Let me be very very very very ugly. There's a part of me that enjoys it, almost, holding the world's nose to the stink of its actions. A little cruel, I know, but I think of my self-righteousness as integrity, and I'm too proud to apologize for it. And the world is so very big. It can take it. Doesn't even notice. Stink is what it loves.

David Freddoso writes of a ten-inch long baby boy, weighing perhaps half a pound, born four months premature, struggling to breathe through undeveloped lungs, dying after a lifespan of 45 minutes. A lifespan of 45 minutes, because we measure life as starting from birth. Isn't it funny though, this word, birth. And the word life, for that matter. Confusing too. LOL. Because, is an abortion a birth? This premature baby boy was aborted, and born, both at the same time. LOL. Can something that's aborted be alive?

The "family had wanted a baby, but when they learned that theirs would be born with Down syndrome, they wanted an abortion. For that, they went to Christ Hospital in the southwestern suburbs of Chicago, which is affiliated with the United Church of Christ." Look at how closely affiliated with Christ that hospital is. Christ: who said, 'let the little ones come unto me.' Hospital: a place to go in order to heal infirmities. Family: a word of indeterminate meaning.

"In 'induced labor' or 'prostaglandin' abortion — a common procedure at the hospital — the doctor administers drugs that dilate the mother’s cervix and induce contractions, forcing a small baby out of the mother’s uterus. Most of the time, the baby dies in utero, killed by the force of the violent contractions. But it does not always work. Such abortions sometimes result in a premature baby being born alive. Sometimes the survivors live for just a few minutes, but sometimes for several hours. No one tried to save or treat them — it is hard to save someone you just mauled trying to kill. But something had to be done with them for the minutes and hours during which they struggled for air."

That's a very emotional, values-laden and manipulative paragraph. I probably should not have quoted it at such length. Here at Forgotten Prophets Weblog we strive to maintain an equanimity and lightness of tone calculated to delight the very widest spectrum of readership. I would apologize, only I'm too proud to apologize.

Nurse Jill Stanek was on duty and observed the proceedings in their entirety. Her colleague was told by the medical professionals "to take this baby and leave him in a soiled utility closet. [Stanek] offered to take him instead. 'I couldn’t let him die alone,' she says." She cradled the baby or abortus in her hands for the remainder of his or its life or metabolic activity. That was a violation of doctor's orders. I wonder if she was reprimanded. Unprofessional conduct.

The Hospital called Christ "was doing nothing illegal under the laws of Illinois. Doctors had no ethical or legal obligation to treat these premature babies."

"On March 30, 2001, Obama was the only senator to speak in opposition to a bill that would have banned the practice of leaving premature abortion survivors to die. The bill, SB 1095, was carefully limited, its language unambiguous. It applied only to premature babies, already born alive. It stated simply that under Illinois law, 'the words "person," "human being," "child," and "individual" include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development."

There we go again, getting all confusing about the definition of words. I wish there was some other way of communicating. Like, with smells, the way insects do. The world likes smells, right? Of course it does.

The eloquent Sen. Obama had this to say, when he spoke against this Illinois bill but diplomatically voted present rather than nay:
There was some suggestion that we might be able to craft something that
might meet constitutional muster with respect to caring for fetuses or children
who were delivered in this fashion. Unfortunately, this bill goes a little bit
further, and so … this is probably not going to survive constitutional scrutiny.
Number one, whenever we define a pre-viable fetus as a person that is protected
by the equal protection clause or other elements in the Constitution, what we’re
really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds
of protections that would be provided to a — a child, a nine-month-old — child
that was delivered to term. That determination, then, essentially, if it was
accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean, it — it would
essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow
somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an
antiabortion statute.


Obama is a scholar of Constitutional Law, you know. So his argument must be very solid, very sound. For my part, I have not studied Constitutional Law, I've only studied the Constitution itself, so I'm not qualified to have a respectable opinion in so subtle and weighty and complex a matter. But there it is again, all that confusion about words. A "child," "a nine-month old" -- a "person." "Pre-viable." "Kill." And I'm not a very good speller either. But I just thought of a way to remember how to spell hospital -- it's like ho spit ... yeah, that should help. It's the i -- I'm always mistaking it for e.

Well, after this, Freddoso gets all boring and political. And anyway I forgot what my point was. Something about how some nurse disobeyed protocol, or the way insects love the stink of feces, or about all the things we could cram into 45 minutes. Funny how I can get so far off track. LOL.

The man who would be president said, "if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute." If this is a child, then this would be an anti-killing-a-child statute. LOL.


J

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Necessary Moral Evils

One of these things is not like the others. One of these things does not belong.

Linda Hirshman writes a piece for Slatedotcom, "Unnecessarily Evil", with a subtitle including the phrase "the morality of abortion". I can't tell if the author means that there are evils that are moral, or that there are things that are evil in a merely moral sense -- you know, in a way that has no real effect in the world, but just might bother someone in the still, sleepless hours before dawn. But that can't be it, can't it? Cuz there's things like, uh, cheating on your wife, which doesn't matter, since it's only about feelings, and there's, like, killing someone, which has a real, physical, permanent effect. But the author means the second one. Killing someone. So that can't be it.

Killing someone? Is that what the author means? -- in the same paragraph and or sentence as the word "abortion"? Yes. I'll prove it. The subject is of course abortion, the author is an abortionist, and the context is how the Democrats are reclaiming the high ground on this topic. So. Killing someone. Proof.

"The Democratic Party platform of 2008 finally dropped its old abortion language ("safe, legal and rare") .... [and] says instead, 'The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman's right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.' Should a woman desire to bear her child, the Dems advocate prenatal care, income support, and adoption programs to help her there, too."

There. Did you see it? The author missed it, inevitably. "Should a woman desire to bear her child, the Dems advocate..." There, did you see? "...bear her child..." "...her child..." "...CHILD..." It's not very subtle. How could the author have missed it? Abortion is about killing a child.

"Edward Lazarus, who clerked for the author of [Roe v Wade], Justice Harry Blackmun, called the decision "the Emancipation Proclamation for American women." But if Roe was Emancipation, the past three decades have felt like the Jim Crow South. Unable to repeal the decision itself, opponents made abortion as illegitimate as possible."

Lazarus. A name familiar to us from several biographies of a well-known Jew. Lazarus, who was called back out from the bowels of death itself. Now another Lazarus comes forth, to the sound of small bones cracking beneath his feet. He compares childbearing to slavery. He sees no difference. The author complains that abortion has opponents who do not see it as legitimate, and are therefore bigots. Lazarus. A man who is intimate with death. And is there some biblical character after whom the author might be named? Linda Hirshman?

Linda means lovely in the romance languages. Melinda means gentle one. Not helpful. Belinda means beautiful snake, which is probably meaningless. Odilia, somehow related, means in Hebrew praise god. This must be a coincidence. I can find no connection between a beautiful serpent and some god who demands praise. Hirsh- is Yiddish for deer -- gazelle or hind, a noble and graceful beast. Often hunted. And -man, made from dust, inbreathed with the spirit of God. Well. Such reasoning has brought us no insight. I see no relevance in any of this. A dead end.

The author expresses disapprobation at the thought that, of all people, Barack Obama "compared women's regrets over their past abortions to white people's regrets about past bigotry. This Clintonian compromise -- that abortion was a necessary moral evil -- had become the most progressives could hope for." Which the author sees as unfortunate, somehow unfortunate. Because "the emancipation of women may once again become a legitimate political position. It is time to revive the moral argument for protecting a woman's right to choose: Abortion is about the value of women's lives."

A clear statement. A shot across the bow.

The position is taken that pragmatics is a losing argument -- morality is what wins. Abortion as liberation. A slight reframing, and privacy is no longer "secrecy," but "autonomy." Some might characterize such a twist as equating freedom with irresponsibility. But that's why there are two sides to the issue. The Supreme Court is quoted with approval, thus: "at the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." They have failed to grasp that most fundamental concept inherent in liberty: it is inextricably bound up with responsibility. There is no morality, outside of the context of a society. God makes laws. We can define words and concepts any way we wish, and hope that we are understood. We must act rightly.

Well. I thought I could read all of that piece. I can't. Not without being paid to do so. I'll leave it at this: the left has ensured that there are laws protecting the eggs of endangered species -- turtles and condors and so on. It's a good thing. The left would, it seems, see the destruction of the Western way of life, rather than of any more rain forests. The left believes that abortion is about the value of life, of women's lives.

What is necessary cannot be evil. What is moral cannot be evil. What is necessary must be moral. What is moral, is necessary.

Turtle eggs, rain forests, human fetuses. One of these things is not like the others.


J

Friday, May 9, 2008

Vomit

Do not read this if you are of a markedly sensitive nature.

Most of what I play at here is just silly. Satire and absurdity and indignation. I don't deal in depth with evil. Yeah, outrage about islamist bombers, but that's pretty standard fare. Then there's Aliza Shvarts, an art major in her senior year at Yale, who planned as her contribution to a student art fair to "repeatedly artificially inseminate herself, then induce miscarriages, which she would record on video. She would build a four-foot-wide plastic cube and wrap it in layers of plastic. Between the layers would be Vaseline mixed with blood from the miscarriages. She would hang the cube at an exhibition and project video of the miscarriages onto four of its sides."

That actually seems sort of hard to follow. Would her numerous abortuses each be on display, perhaps in different states of incipient but not manifest humanity? And what's the vaseline for? -- some sort of oblique reference to vaginal dryness or the artificial nature of intercourse in the Post-neopost-postmodern Era? And a cube, why a cube? Hardly womblike. Better, I should think, some free-flowing organic shape, no? But no, that would be so derivative, so obvious, no? No, the cube is a playful pun, on pube, get it? See? And also on the mathematical concept of cube, suggesting the threefold oppression by "men" of women, as sexual objects, mother objects, and housewife objects. And violence objects. Of course. The cube then would be part of the artistic conception, tee hee, as it were. Wombs make a woman into a mere machine -- a sort of incubator. Yeah, that's good.

"For the past year," said Ms. Shvarts to the Yale Daily News, "I performed repeated self-induced miscarriages.… Using a needleless syringe, I would inject the sperm near my cervix within 30 minutes of its collection, so as to insure the possibility of fertilization. On the 28th day of my cycle, I would ingest an abortifacient, after which I would experience cramps and heavy bleeding. ... Because the miscarriages coincide with the expected date of menstruation (the 28th day of my cycle), it remains ambiguous whether the there was ever a fertilized ovum or not. The reality of the pregnancy, both for myself and for the audience, is a matter of reading."

"This piece," asseverates Ms. Shvarts by way of exegesis, "is meant to call into question the relationship between form and function as they converge on the body.... It creates an ambiguity that isolates the locus of ontology to an act of readership."

Ah. That explains it. We will overlook her imprecise diction; she is, after all, an art student, not an English major. Form does not converge on the body -- neither does function. If her meaning is that form and function converge, the preposition would be "within", not "on". But we mustn't stifle the creativity of our young people by foolishly imposing the rigors of such linguistic artifacts. Her vision is so much grander ... grander than gender -- that's good. You should quote me on that. Grander than gender. That's what I'm going to call this one. Grander Than Gender, by Jack H, famous internet blogger artiste extraordinaire.

For some reason the panjandrums of Yale forbad the inclusion of her piece. Pieces. A health hazard. Using unpublished and perhaps nonexistent evidence, they asserted that she had faked the miscarriages and presumably the medical waste, and stated the installation would not be included in the exhibition without a written disclaimer that no human was involved in the production of the mixed media. Shvarts stood strong, bolstering the integrity of her case by producing video of her bleeding vaginally into a cup. (This author feels that the Shvarts choice of a cup is flawed, as too closely evoking the receptive nature of the form. Better would have been a glass, illustrative of the fragility of the female condition in oppressive male-dominated Western society.)

As for the two faculty members who approved this artwork, Yale officials have announced unspecified "appropriate action". One cannot say the action is "against" them, since that would over-extend the facts in evidence. Perhaps congratulations were felt to be in order? Courage should be recognized, after all, even when the outcome is muted by reactionary birthist bigots? It would be that same sort of backwards thinking that deflated plans in 2003 to have two students complete coarse project requirements by enjoying intercourse in front of the class. So much for academic freedom. Hix nix prix sex kix.

Enumerated among Shvarts's "conceptual goals" was "to assert that often, normative understandings of biological function are a mythology imposed on form. It is this mythology that creates the sexist, racist, ableist, nationalist and homophobic perspective, distinguishing what body parts are 'meant' to do from their physical capability." Her aim was to demonstrate that "it is a myth that ovaries and a uterus are 'meant' to birth a child." You go girl. That's why I like sodomy.

Yep. Ambiguity. That's what I like. It makes me feel so artistic. I mean, didn't Sartre write about nausea? It's the meaning of life, practically.


J