discussions
So, on Tuesday I was walking through campus to my first class, and I see a sign. It's positioned so the big text (orange on black b/g) is about head high, and the sign itself is probably 4 x 2 foot. It says, "Warning: Graphic Pictures Ahead". Now, I'm not really interested in what "graphic pictures" are ahead, but I'm sort of annoyed by that sign. That annoyance turns to terrible, terrible anger when I keep walking and there's a huge display of pictures of aborted foeti, with statistics (did you know that 1.3 million pregnancies are aborted every year in the U.S.? No, and I don't think I should, because pregnancy is one of the most personal things that happens to a woman -- literally INSIDE of her! -- and it's none of my business, and definitely none of yours!!), with arguments about how uncaring and unloving we are towards fellow humans. The display was about 30' tall, in an equilateral triangle of panels, each 25' or so wide. I could not have avoided that, short of turning around, going to one end or the other of campus (it was arranged so it could be seen from most of the central buildings) and walking around.
I clenched my fists and walked on by.
Wednesday, it was still there.
Thursday, it was cold and rainy. I walked by that same display, and god, it still enraged me. But I felt pretty proud, pretty interesting, and when I left my first class (after which I have an hour off), I walked back to the display and confronted a few of the men standing around it. By the way, I'm terribly curious (and can't find any stats online) what proportion of pro-lifers are men -- you know, the sex that can't get pregnant and would never be forced to make a decision concerning abortion. So I started off saying that I wanted to hear their viewpoints. I knew that of course they'd try to convince me of their viewpoints. One of them held his umbrella over me, which was rather kind of him, but felt a bit patronising.
I brought up a few "hypothetical situations" that I've heard tell of actually happening, that I've considered and thought about. In one of them, I asked what they'd think if a woman who was mentally ill, manic depressive (yes, like me), got pregnant. Now, most psychiatric medications have a prim, small-print warning that says, "Women who are pregnant or planning to become pregnant should consult their doctors before taking this medication." This is because many medications, psychiatric or not, cause rather disturbing birth defects (missing limbs, missing brains, that kind of thing). It's a good idea for anyone who swallows any pills regularly to consult a doctor about medications interfering with pregnancy. So, we'll say that this semi-hypothetical woman is taking a medication that is known to cause severe birth defects. However, without this medication, she will literally go insane. Psychotic mixed episodes (which are the worst, in my experience, because you are simultaneously uncontrollably energetic and uncontrollably depressive), delusions, paranoia, the whole gamut. She might start drinking or use drugs to self-medicate for her madness, which would be just as harmful as taking the medication. So, I asked these two men, "Would you say that this woman should carry through with the pregnancy?"
They told me that she should stop taking the medication.
By the way, that is not a very hypothetical situation. I have wondered if it would happen to me, as it is definitely not impossible. I'm not taking very many medications now, in fact, I'm only taking one and I'm on a low dosage, for now. My mood disorder is rather mild in comparison to my "hypothetical situation" woman, but I know hormonal changes -- such as those brought by my menstrual cycle -- bring out the worst in 'me' (? I don't know if my moods, disordered as they are, should be called "me"...).
I've also been reading a blog by Seaneen, an Irish woman who is far more severely affected by manic depression than me, and her entry here more clearly, although less concisely, communicates the situation: Fear is the best contraceptive.
It insulted me and terrified me that they would say such a thing. To condemn a woman and subsequently her child to demons that they could not begin to imagine, let alone comprehend?
So, I played a bit of Devil's Advocate.
It actually amused me, when they tried to draw comparisons to slavery (white guys who owned slaves thought that it was right, too, so my thinking that abortion should be "right" is comparable*) and the Holocaust (which I could use in an example for the opposite argument, if I had a moment to think about it and write it down). When they tried to say that all life (especially life that has human DNA, even if it has no other human characteristics) should be preserved, and drew the comparison out to "would you kill a 6 year old child?", I said "I personally wouldn't, but I don't believe that that six year old has an unconditional right to life." I said it to be argumentative more than anything.
* As a note of clarification: I don't think abortion is "right", and I definitely don't think it should be the first option to be considered, and I believe that very, very rarely is it an easy choice to make. However, I cannot understand those who say it should not be a choice, that the option should not be available to those in need.
Eventually, we ended up agreeing to disagree. In my experience, I've usually heard their arguments "spun" to ridiculous levels of implausibility by their opponents. I wanted to hear their arguments from their own lips. Unfortunately, they argued themselves to ridiculous levels of implausibility, at least to my ears.
The bottom lines that those guys saw were that all life, especially (possibly arguably) human life, should be respected and legally protected. What I'd call "possibly arguably human life" (a foetus which might or might not have developed a heart beat and/or a noticeable brain) should be considered equal to "definitely unarguably human life" (the woman whose uterus said foetus occupied). They said that our over-sexed society had made "babies," a word which, in a very loose definition, also includes two-cell zygotes, "disposable".
The bottom line I see is quite simply summed up in a rather liberal-minded quip:
Against Abortion? Don't have one!
In many cases, women choose to keep their children. In some cases, women choose to abort their pregnancies. That choice, though, belongs to the woman alone, and anyone she cares to choose it with.
I'm still angry, although I think that discussion was worthwhile, just to see their point of view. I just wish I could make some of these 'pro-life'rs consider my point of view.
I clenched my fists and walked on by.
Wednesday, it was still there.
Thursday, it was cold and rainy. I walked by that same display, and god, it still enraged me. But I felt pretty proud, pretty interesting, and when I left my first class (after which I have an hour off), I walked back to the display and confronted a few of the men standing around it. By the way, I'm terribly curious (and can't find any stats online) what proportion of pro-lifers are men -- you know, the sex that can't get pregnant and would never be forced to make a decision concerning abortion. So I started off saying that I wanted to hear their viewpoints. I knew that of course they'd try to convince me of their viewpoints. One of them held his umbrella over me, which was rather kind of him, but felt a bit patronising.
I brought up a few "hypothetical situations" that I've heard tell of actually happening, that I've considered and thought about. In one of them, I asked what they'd think if a woman who was mentally ill, manic depressive (yes, like me), got pregnant. Now, most psychiatric medications have a prim, small-print warning that says, "Women who are pregnant or planning to become pregnant should consult their doctors before taking this medication." This is because many medications, psychiatric or not, cause rather disturbing birth defects (missing limbs, missing brains, that kind of thing). It's a good idea for anyone who swallows any pills regularly to consult a doctor about medications interfering with pregnancy. So, we'll say that this semi-hypothetical woman is taking a medication that is known to cause severe birth defects. However, without this medication, she will literally go insane. Psychotic mixed episodes (which are the worst, in my experience, because you are simultaneously uncontrollably energetic and uncontrollably depressive), delusions, paranoia, the whole gamut. She might start drinking or use drugs to self-medicate for her madness, which would be just as harmful as taking the medication. So, I asked these two men, "Would you say that this woman should carry through with the pregnancy?"
They told me that she should stop taking the medication.
By the way, that is not a very hypothetical situation. I have wondered if it would happen to me, as it is definitely not impossible. I'm not taking very many medications now, in fact, I'm only taking one and I'm on a low dosage, for now. My mood disorder is rather mild in comparison to my "hypothetical situation" woman, but I know hormonal changes -- such as those brought by my menstrual cycle -- bring out the worst in 'me' (? I don't know if my moods, disordered as they are, should be called "me"...).
I've also been reading a blog by Seaneen, an Irish woman who is far more severely affected by manic depression than me, and her entry here more clearly, although less concisely, communicates the situation: Fear is the best contraceptive.
It insulted me and terrified me that they would say such a thing. To condemn a woman and subsequently her child to demons that they could not begin to imagine, let alone comprehend?
So, I played a bit of Devil's Advocate.
It actually amused me, when they tried to draw comparisons to slavery (white guys who owned slaves thought that it was right, too, so my thinking that abortion should be "right" is comparable*) and the Holocaust (which I could use in an example for the opposite argument, if I had a moment to think about it and write it down). When they tried to say that all life (especially life that has human DNA, even if it has no other human characteristics) should be preserved, and drew the comparison out to "would you kill a 6 year old child?", I said "I personally wouldn't, but I don't believe that that six year old has an unconditional right to life." I said it to be argumentative more than anything.
* As a note of clarification: I don't think abortion is "right", and I definitely don't think it should be the first option to be considered, and I believe that very, very rarely is it an easy choice to make. However, I cannot understand those who say it should not be a choice, that the option should not be available to those in need.
Eventually, we ended up agreeing to disagree. In my experience, I've usually heard their arguments "spun" to ridiculous levels of implausibility by their opponents. I wanted to hear their arguments from their own lips. Unfortunately, they argued themselves to ridiculous levels of implausibility, at least to my ears.
The bottom lines that those guys saw were that all life, especially (possibly arguably) human life, should be respected and legally protected. What I'd call "possibly arguably human life" (a foetus which might or might not have developed a heart beat and/or a noticeable brain) should be considered equal to "definitely unarguably human life" (the woman whose uterus said foetus occupied). They said that our over-sexed society had made "babies," a word which, in a very loose definition, also includes two-cell zygotes, "disposable".
The bottom line I see is quite simply summed up in a rather liberal-minded quip:
Against Abortion? Don't have one!
In many cases, women choose to keep their children. In some cases, women choose to abort their pregnancies. That choice, though, belongs to the woman alone, and anyone she cares to choose it with.
I'm still angry, although I think that discussion was worthwhile, just to see their point of view. I just wish I could make some of these 'pro-life'rs consider my point of view.