cultural and political

Although I keep all things political in my other blog, cultural items are fair game for here, and this falls under that category but also political in that one division in our country wants to make the following more common while the other stands for the right of the individual to make their own decisions. You can guess which is which.

Return to back alley abortions with restrictive new state laws

It is funny about conservatives, never mind from which party as it's a conservative mantra, that freedom of the individual is a cornerstone of our country. That is right up until it's the right to commit suicide, in the above case the right to end a pregnancy, or in some states (8 of them) like [Louisiana] they are trying to ban birth control pills. Those who thought that the attack on Planned Parenthood was just about abortion (which is a minor part of what it does for women), kid yourself no longer.

For all those who smugly say then don't get pregnant, guess they don't recognize that wanting to get pregnant and getting pregnant aren't the same thing. With the desire to also make many of the most reliable birth control methods illegal, this bunch are leaving women with one choice-- abstinence or pregnancy.

If someone believes abortion is morally wrong-- don't have one. If they believe ending their own life is morally wrong, don't do it. Freedom means you have that choice; but about the only freedom I can see some people valuing is allowing the oil companies to have monopolies, charge anything they want for their product, abuse the environment, AND still get subsidies from our taxes. When you want to press your moral views onto others, it's hypocrisy to say you are the party of freedom. The right has become the party of serfdom!

It claims it will do one thing, for instance get jobs or cut the budget, but once it gets in, all those social issues suddenly are sneaked through. Party of honesty my foot!

What the article describes, what is happening to women across this country, is what many of us feared would happen if the laws to allow women to end pregnancies in the early stages of their pregnancy were rescinded. Arresting women, killing doctors, all to save an innocent baby for which those same people want no help once she/he is born. no food stamps, no public education, no housing, no doctors. Is this ironic or what! Free to be born and then they don't give a damn.

I can tell you from my personal experience. There is nothing in this life so wondrous as to be pregnant and have a baby born that you want. Look at all the emotionally powerful, positive experiences in my life, and I've had a lot of them, it's at the top of my list. The key word there is a baby I wanted.

What I know from talking to many women, from reading articles, that when a woman already has three children and finds out a fourth is on the way, it can be a disastrous problem for herself and the children she already has. When she is pregnant and facing being an unwed, single mother, where there is so much stigma and where poverty is likely the result, it should be her choice what she does about it if it's early in her pregnancy. No way do I defend partial birth abortions and see no case ever where they are needed as if the life of the mother is at stake and the baby can survive out of the womb, they should do a c-section.

Freedom of choice is what the left wants. That's what I want. Not to force abortions onto anyone but to make it a real choice which is what Sarah Palin said she made when she learned she was pregnant with a Downs Syndrome baby. I support totally her right to make the choice to have that baby and have a society that will help her and women like her, with less financial resources, who have a special needs child to raise.

When states make it harder and harder to have a legal abortion, more and more expensive, when women have to walk past demonstrators yelling horrible things, when doctors are scared out of doing abortions because of threats, when they attempt to ban birth control methods that are commonly used, the options are purposely being taken away from women little by little. That is the agenda of a group of people in this country and they run under the banner of one party that is proud of it.

Even someone like Romney, who once spoke of believing in freedom of choice, politically has had to change his talk to fit the right wing agenda (and probably his Mormon religious dictates although how he got by with being for choice when governor of Massachusetts, I have no idea).

When I was coming into womanhood, abortion was illegal where I lived. There were girls with whom I went to high school who did have illegal abortions, and they never were able to have children later. This is what Americans want again? It won't stop abortions. It will just make them unsafe. It will possibly put in prison women who had one. Oh yeah, we need more people in our prisons.

So keep voting for the party that talks about freedom except where it comes to women, and it's yours! They are trying to make the coming election be about the economy, then will get in and put in place all kinds of regulations and rules to end individual freedom. Eventually they will get that fifth Supreme Court Justice, who will, despite Roberts talk of being a modest jurist, tell women they once again have no control over their own body if they become pregnant.

I understand a lot of people don't vote on this issue but frankly it's a very big one for me as a woman, as a mother, and as a grandmother; and it's hard for me to imagine voting for anyone who didn't want to keep abortions a safe and legal option.