For John, BLUF: A life terminated is a life never lived. Nothing to see here; just move along.
It seems that Chelsea Clinton wishes she had never been born.
How else to interpret her remark about her maternal Grandmother:
From the stage at the recent Women Deliver conference, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s daughter Chelsea revealed that her much-admired maternal grandmother was the child of unwed teenage parents who “did not have access to services that are so crucial that Planned Parenthood helps provide.”The thing is we are all unique and if THAT sperm doesn't fertilize THAT egg, our moment on the stage never comes. There are no substitutes. No Hillary. No Chelsea. No President Bill Clinton.
Hat tip to the Instapundit.
Regards — Cliff
NB: The title is from Poet and Soldier Robert Graves, in a different context.
21 comments:
The cure for cancer may have been....or still might be......flushed down the toilet as an unwanted inconvenience. This is what happens when man presumes to be wiser and greater than God.
History will one day show that America....Americans.....were the most brutal, barbaric society to infect the earth. We are so into self absorbed, instant gratification we are unable to perceive, let alone understand, the importance/significance of the next minute in our narcissistic lives.
300,000 + lives a year (YES.....there IS a fetal heartbeat) is by any measure, a form of genocide almost unparalleled in history.
This post SOOO profoundly misses the point. Planned Parenthood is NOT about abortions, and making this mistake explains much about why those opposing abortion are so confused about others sticking up for Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is about education and healthcare for women who are all too often in needful circumstances. 3% of PP's services are abortion-related, and all the wishing by its opponents that this is a "fudge" cannot make it any different than it is. Here's a pie chart from the Washington Post that provides more background: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/what-planned-parenthood-actually-does/2011/04/06/AFhBPa2C_blog.html.
What Chelsea is so obviously saying is that she wishes better for her maternal grandmother and others like her maternal grandmother who are forced by mean circumstances to have to face pregnancy without adequate education, healthcare and support.
I think, hidden underneath, there is an animus on the part of some because of the whole Margaret Sanger/Eugenics thing. (Trying to avoid that whole Godwin's Law thing).
Here is a lively discussion of this issue over at the Althouse blog.
At any rate, given their lack of success in working the parenthood issue, maybe they should change their name (perhaps Unplanned Motherhood) or change their business model.
Regards — Cliff
Educating women, and giving them access to quality healthcare, including contraception, is one of the bedrock foundational elements of our wealthier society. Paranoid paternalistic theologies and ideologies that effectively hate that women aren't to be left illiterate, barefoot and birthing babies for their men like chattel, have been left grasping at this last straw: Oppression of women is now waged via proxy (the war against PP), and, when faced with the good that PP does, resorts to a desperate referendum on abortion rather than face the larger truth.
Of course, the rationale will be that I exaggerate and sensationalize, and that opponents of abortion who are opponents of PP aren't intending to oppress women as a gender and a class of citizen, but that's the point: Planned Parenthood is one of the few organizations in existence which effectively advocates for women's reproductive health and is out there making a difference reducing the rates of unwed motherhood, teen pregnancies and, in the end, because of these things, poverty itself. Eliminating it IS oppression
Telling teenage girls to just go back home to Daddy and his church and "bear their shame", or, worse, to just marry the guy who coerced them into having sex, is NOT the answer. That people fear educated women with birth control is a sorry state of affairs, but that's the effective bottom line here. And I say "coerced" because that's what it is when sexual activity takes place without education and full, informed consent.
Planned Parenthood is not about abortion, except in the words of those who lack the grounds to otherwise justify their oppression of women. Plain and simple.
And, I should add, to the list of unwed motherhood and teen pregnancies, sexually transmitted disease.
PP isn't about abortions?
Um, yeah.
Out of the million abortions in the US, they performed a third.
Your primary can do a pap smear and order a mammogram at the local hospital. A pediatrician can prescribe contraception.
As a woman don't lecture me on oppression. The answer to my freedom is not the ability for an abortionist to vaccuum out the life of my unborn child.
“When we consider that women are treated as property it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton
I'm glad you have a primary. I think Chelsea's point was that her grandmother did not.
At the point where we achieve true universal healthcare, the need for PP ceases. Those compelled by 3% of PP's service to women in need, and the prioritization of zygotes over the women in whom they are conceived, would do better to address the void necessitating the other 97% of PP's service to women than incurring the righteous indignation of those, like me, who see the necessity of it.
Too many women lack "primaries", pediatricians, and basic reproductive care. That's the problem Chelsea illustrates with her example, NOT the other thing that opportunistic ideologues insist on dragging into the discussion. You and I will agree all day long that better respect for life is needed. You and I will also agree all day long that engineering an end to the practice of abortion will be a better day for humanity. Now, please: Stop fighting things that ought not to be fought (reproductive care for women in need) and taking the shotgun approach to a 3% target which requires obliterating the other 97% to achieve it's aim. That's bad politics first of all, but it's also oppressive to those women who have no other access to care.
And, not for nothing, but if 3% of PP's business is 1/3 of a million abortions, I wonder what THIRTY TIMES that amount of service equates to in terms of STD's treated and/or prevented, cancer screenings made, prenatal vitamins made accessible, etc. etc. etc.?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/11/23/surprise-the-abortion-rate-just-hit-an-all-time-low/
Abortion rates in the US are steadily declining, and the #1 contributing factor is presumed to be effective contraception. (Part of that pesky 97%). It could be viewed that PP contributed 300,000 abortions, or it could just as likely be posited that PP PREVENTED untold millions of them via better education, care and contraception services.
Of course, that will enrage certain ideologues who opposed birth control, too.
And we're back to the subject of oppression...
I understand "reproductive health" but I am unable to use its need as justification for murder. Having an STD is a bit less traumatic than having forceps thrust into the embryonic brain of a living fetus.....or simply severing their spinal cords. And before we nominate PP for good guy of the year, perhaps an explanation might be offered as to why PP trashed Susan Komen Foundation...to the point of driving them out of business. So much for respect for women's reproductive health rights. They may do SOME good things....but they are also a bunch of power drunk ideologues with an agenda. BTW....those who disapprove of PP are not some rag tag whacko minority.....they are rapidly growing into a majority.
Murder is murder.
If you didn't notice it above, Neal, I'll repeat my agreement here again: Engineering an end to the practice of abortion will be a better day for humanity. You've chosen to sensationalize the relatively rare instance of late-term abortion (something I also oppose) and you posit that this damns everything that PP stands for. I say that's BS.
If you want to rid the world of abortions, you need to rid the world of the circumstances that compel people to seek them.
Mortality stats related to abortions (a dozen women a year die these days while receiving one) show that many times that number used to die from back-alley versions of the practice when it was illegal--meaning we used to have both dead fetuses, and dead mothers. I posted a link showing that abortion rates are steadily declining. My point, and the one you refuse to acknowledge, is that the efforts of organizations like PP to offer education, STD screening, reproductive health care, contraceptives, prenatal vitamins and other services is making a difference in reducing the number of abortions and improving maternal survival rates. (The year after abortions were legalized in NY state, maternal mortality rates dropped 45%).
As for the Susan G. Komen Foundation: First of all, the Susan G. Komen Foundation is not out of business. Second of all, let's first recognize that the vast majority of members and supporters of SGKF made the decision to become so based on their interest in breast cancer research, and their belief in the importance of breast cancer screenings. So, when SGKF's charter focusing on breast cancer was violated by holding cancer screening at PP facilities hostage to an unrelated political agenda, it's not hard to figure out why and how a majority of those members and supporters balked and redirected their support to the means by which cancer screenings were being made widely available. And it was dramatic--within 24 hours of the SGKF announcement, through no effort whatsoever on the part of PP, SGKF top staffers resigned, and PP received almost $1M in donations to replace that lost funding so that women could continue to receive cancer screenings. Because that is what it was about. Not abortions. Cancer screenings. As in, when a breast cancer foundation refuses to make cancer screenings available to a large number of women, their members will find another way to do what it was that they supported SGKF for in the first place. Yet abortion ideologues want to misunderstand even this, and they somehow contort this simple situation--many women and men find breast cancer screenings to be so important that they will not abide them being held hostage to politics--to find some sort of evil pro-abortion conspiracy in an overwhelming tide of support for breast cancer screening.
BREAST CANCER SCREENING. The moment SGKF suggested it would get out of the breast cancer screening business, the people who joined and supported the SGKF for breast cancer screenings moved their money to where those screenings were being made available. It's not a sinister abortionist plot. It's yet more evidence of the importance of 97% of PP's business to a large number of people regardless of their stance on abortion.
Because here I am, as are so many others--don't like abortion, but like PP. Try to see why this is not a contradiction. 97% is bigger than 3%. And if you want to trot out the "every life is sacred" argument and say that even one life lost to abortion is too many, than I would remind you that far more lives would be lost were it not for all that PP does, and maternal mortality rates are just the tip of the iceberg.
Kad, you might have missed my comment that I get the need and value of all the preventive services we have now grouped under the heading of "women" reproductive health." AND.....if PP dropped its abortion on demand service, they would be much more acceptable. Abortion is murder. There is no debate on that point. The provider commits it and the mother pro tem is a premeditated accessory.
That we have become a society that condones......invites...abortions and wraps them in a false cloak of acceptance by calling them "women's reproductive health" only serves to debase our value of life. By standing by and justifying 3% by claiming the good of 97% makes those claimants co-conspirators in the fraud.
Abortions now have become a tool of convenience. You speak of changing the circumstances that "cause" the need for abortions. Well, drive up disposal of an inconvenient pregnancy underlies those very circumstances. Today, 12 year old kids can copulate knowing that they can easily take care of the "problem."
Aborting a fetus should be necessary only as a well defined medical necessity and be attended by a defined review process. In the instance of any other abortion, the mother...as well as the abortionist....should be charged with First Degree Murder.
BTW...I've lost family members to breast cancer......so I am a rabid supporter of any organization that supports not only screening...but research.
I absolutely reject any proposition that would suggest that 12 year old kids not educated or enlightened enough to use birth control are somehow doing their "copulating", as you put it, based on an expectation for on-demand abortion. Seriously?
That kids of age to reproduce are not prepared by either their parents or their community (I also reject suggestion that the community has no standing to impart the information regardless of parental effectiveness or inclination to do so) to understand the serious life consequences of their behavior is, in my opinion, the overriding concern here. The important life issues of commitment, disease and pregnancy MUST be understood by ALL kids related to their sexual behavior. And--critical here--sexual behavior must be judged by history and statistics to trump even the most ardent fundamentalist's insistence that abstinence can be effectively taught. It can't. Sarah Palin's pregnant teenage daughter ought to be enough of an anecdote to underscore this...
In the end, though, the Fourth Amendment gets in the way. It is not acceptable that the State be invested with the power to determine the reproductive state of it's female citizens. (Necessary to determine the crime of which you are accusing parties to an abortion). Besides, it's being proved more effective to extend efforts to educate in reducing the incidence of abortion, and this is where I find myself unable to buy your "1 is too many" argument. If, indeed, 1 is too many, which I will agree with you it is, then the answer cannot be trying to chase down and criminalize people for the act, because this does not work. Our "war on drugs" similarly DOES NOT WORK. However, like with drunk driving, if the efforts are social, they can have a profound effect on the incidence. No, we have not eliminated drunk driving, but that's the point: penalties for drunk driving are severe. But it is the campaigns like "MADD" and "SADD" that are making the difference.
Stop demonizing PP--it's neither the problem, nor the solution, unless you count their efforts to educate and provide better care to women who desperately need it, like Chelsea suggested her grandmother did all those years ago.
Seriously. Kids who are twelve may not focus on abortion per se, but they've been trained by society AND parents that pleasure has no down side....no consequences. You can always get a do over. PP's fault? No...not by itself....but if it REALLY wanted to respect women, it would campaign demanding that respect, rather than "dabble" in life and death. Had Ben Carson's mother decided to abort him, the world would have never had Dr. Ben Carson, pediatric neurosurgeon extraordinaire. Which was Cliff's point.
You are using the Robin Hood excuse....."Yeah, they commit robbery and kill folks....but look at all the good things they do."
Let's not forget, PP is a multimillion dollar a year business.....with only the appearance of even a shred of altruism in its persona. They sell goods and services...and to do it...they have to have a market....and the broader the market need...the better. It doesn't hurt in the slightest that their "market" is also a white hot emotional hot button serving the needs of a wide range of agendas. Today, the news features how black churches are proclaiming pro-lifers to be racists. That sort of rhetoric sends PP's market viability into high space orbit.
PP's "business" is abortion in the same way that Johnson and Johnson's business is KY Jelly. You may object to personal lubricants as a product category, but that would be a ridiculous reason to attack their provision of insulin pumps, contact lenses, mouthwash and what have you.
Among PP's very committed membership are those who do not view abortion as you and I might, who see themselves, and who ARE, in the business of offering a complete range of reproductive health services to women who can't get them by other means. YOU choose to make it about abortion, not them. I don't know a single PP person who favors abortion. They may feel strongly that it's not their place to dictate to others, and may even feel strongly that giving women the right to choose it trumps the tragedy of it, but that is not the same thing as "making a business of it", or even close to what you are inaccurately portraying them to be.
This argument will never be settled to the satisfaction of either side--abortion opponents refuse to take any quarter or see any alliance with the efforts of PP to reduce the circumstances under which abortions are chosen. That, to me, is a tragedy of the highest order.
You are quite right about the issue of aborting human beings never being settled. The stakes are two high....the emotions even higher. My morality or ethics are not yours...nor should they be or should I have a right to expect them to be. The only tragedy in this national issue is that folks entrench and demand that their viewpoint is tantamount to settlement.
I have a viewpoint.....an opinion....but I am not narcissistic enough to believe that I have the final solution.
I just wish, when I read something like this post reading "abortion" into comments that are so clearly not about abortion at all, that people would put aside their emotions for even just a moment to try to hear what the other side is saying. PP is saying that women are under-served vis a vis reproductive healthcare. "Pro-lifers" are saying that abortion is murder. There is no hope of any compromise while the conversation is about two different things. Everybody insists that *their* priority trumps the other.
And I would say that the other tragedy is that many (most?) on both sides, as far as I can tell, favor working towards a day when abortion is no longer considered a meaningful option, and can cease as a human behavior. And, rather than reach across to see where common effort can improve the areas in which both sides see value, everything devolves instead into a rhetorical no-win argument over something everyone wishes did not have to be. If PP did not feel threatened, they would likely relax a bit more about their mix of services, and wouldn't it be wonderful if funding could be increased for cancer and STD screenings and prenatal care for women, like Chelsea's grandmother, eager to bring a healthy baby to term?
American sign language for abortion.
http://cdn.ebaumsworld.com/mediaFiles/picture/218923/83379759.gif
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