What a most compellingly thoughtful post, Christy.

Were “empathy” seen (and encouraged) as a asset, with “understanding others” its objective, what a more rational, sane, and humane world we would all inhabit.

Rigid “belief” systems (of ANY sort) are, truly, the bane of humanity …

So often, the discourse on choice is a sort of cut and dried nastiness which doesn’t reflect the real difficulties inherent in the shades of gray that lead anyone to that point in their lives.

The longer I live, the more I realize that whatever wisdom I have gained through my own experiences, it isn’t nearly enough to cover everything. And that I cannot know the mind of God — only my own, at any given moment.

These are conversations that ought to be private ones, not publicly judged, for that reason. How can we know what was intended in any individual circumstance with any certainty? We can’t. All we can do is the best that we can in the moment — and show compassion to others who are trying to do the same. At least, that’s how I see it, anyway.

Amen.

Of course, it’s probably asking too much for people to actually have compassion for one another rather than digging in their heels and shouting. But a girl can dream…

Thanks, Christy. This is an area where the concept of personal responsibility, so often the mantra of the hard right, is thrown out in favor of pre-determined rules. As you point out, those rules can rob people of making decisions that are best for their families.

Thank you for a very thought-provoking post.

Good Morning Christy and Pups
This is an extremely tough issue and I appreciate your honesty.
The other night on Lisa’s thread there was a discussion on abortion. I commented that I really didn’t want to hear what “you guys” have to say about this and I was slammed. Here’s a clarification of what I meant. It is such a personal choice and issue that if I care what one person thinks, then I have to care what everyone thinks. And, I disagree so strongly with the Pro-Life folks. I still hate that term, as if the opposite is Anti-Life. I am a huge pro-choice advocate.

The anti choice people hold their views dogmatically. No amount of reason, understanding, empathy or compassion is going to break through the barriers.

Pre-determined rules make it easier to ignore the tough issues surrounding so much of this, including poverty and abuse. But tackling the poverty, abuse mental health support, and violence issues, especially, would yield much better results in the reduction of abortion — and crime, for that matter. But that would make too much sense, eh?

When you think about it from their perspective: that their very soul and their connection to God depends on their dogmatic viewpoint as promoted by their religious leadership — even when that is done not from religious reasons but from political/power/control ones for that self-same leadership — you can see where the dogmatic viewpoint comes from, can’t you?

It doesn’t have to make sense, it comes from a position of faith — warped though it may be from my perspective — where they are taught that science takes a back seat to their interpretation of God.

But, from my point of view: God gave us brains and independence of thought for a very good reason, and we give that up at our own peril.

G’Morning Christy !

In my line of work, I get to meet a lot of aspiring and inspiring young people and I can say that, with each generation, society as a whole embraces compassion and equal respect for all.

Mind you, my work is mainly in Canada …

I completely agree with you.
And, in response to Christy’s point of not knowing the mind of God, it has been my experience that many fundamentalists believe they do understand God and that somehow God listens to them more than other people.

Thank you for this heart-felt thought provoking post, Christy.

You are most welcome. I think with this issue especially that a pause to take a deep breath and really think is most helpful for understanding.

Some folks are, sadly, incapable of doing that, though. Which leads to things like Dr. Tiller’s murder.

In psychiatry we call those communications “hallucinations.”

(((demi)))

It’s tough to get your point across on teh toobz some times … if men could have babies, abortion would have been entrenched in the Bill of Rights … and Priests would be truly celibate ;-)

Good Morning Christy and Pups.

Thank you Christy. I read this, and your earlier post that you link.

I have no patience with and little understanding of those who would heap more misery and heartache on those going through such a rough experience as having to end a pregnancy.

All aspects of such a condition and treatment should be left to the patient, her family and her doctor. Neither government nor anyone else should have any right to interfere. Those who would legislate or lobby, much less threaten for anything less have no respect for life, but rather, exhibit stunning arrogance and callous stupidity.

I am just sick over the loss of Dr. Tiller, and the continuing harassment, no doubt, of other patients and their doctors. A truly caring, brave man was lost. My heart goes out to his family, patients, and friends. Let us not lose any more.

Thank you for dreaming that dream, Christy, and working to make it real for others, and for having the courage to try again for your own little family. Beautiful Peanut has a wonderful, truly special set of parents. ;->

Thanks, Petro. Oops. I guess I do care what you think. *g*

{{{{{demi}}}}}

You speak for many of us. Thank you. ;->

I’m kind of on the page with foothillsmike at 6:20am. The anti-choice people will not compromise, no matter how many moderate Democrats want to bleat about working out our differences.

There is no deal to make, other than giving the antis everything they want.

Wow, you’re the first one ! *g*

With regard to more misery and heartache, here’s a sad and personal tale. About twenty years ago, I got the phone call that my youngest sister had gone into labor very prematurely. We raced to the hospital and the doctor told me there was nothing they could do to stop labor and the baby was too small to be viable. I’m the one who had to tell this to my sister. Poor thing, she cried and cried and told me that the doctor told her she was going through this because she had previously had an abortion. Talk about adding insult to injury. I stayed with her through the delivery and that’s the only thing that kept me from doing or saying something dangerously stupid to her doctor.

(((Adie)))

How’s things ?

Could you please clarify? Are you advocating just caving in to harassment by ignorant, arrogant bullies?

I can’t remember any time when such a strategy produced any fruitful result.

The more evil they are, the more they control they will want over other people’s private lives. No?!

Good Morning, Christy and all.

I am a survivor of childhood sexual assault. I blamed myself. There was no one to talk to b/c it was “my fault.” I was never pregnant, but I lived in terror that I would become pregnant–I did not understand that a “seed” could not grow inside me at any time, particularly after “the change,” did not have good info nor any means to get the understanding I needed to know that it could not happen.

But the damage was done and the wound was psychically deep and lasting.

People who see the world in black and white, who judge others, who want “God’s will” under these kinds of circumstances are inhumane, at best.

Everything I have heard about Dr. Tiller goes to my core, he “got it.” He is terribly missed.

Howdy! We’re just great, just great. walled into our house and surrounded by hundreds of boxes, and i have to produce clean floors and a “staged” house ASAP. Humbug! I’d rather hang out with the gang here. ;->

O/T … if you haven’t seen Obama’s speech today at Cairo Univ., it is a must see. There is a link on HuffPo … sorry but I am not able to post links.

BO stood there and spoke more clearly and honestly than any other statesman has ever dared to do.

You’re a wonderful sister. The doc was horrifically ignorant, in spite of all his medical training. I’m sorry your sister and you had to go through that. I guess medical schools failed to teach compassion, if indeed that’s their job.

Oh my. I hope you have come through it so you don’t suffer too much now. You’re brave and generous to speak up. I share your views.

Induced labor = abortion

Is this really the hospital’s policy?

Both of my daughters arrived through induced labor in the 9th-plus month. They are healthy and in their twenties.

The loonies have now infected hospital administration apparently.

I gotta go gang. I’m getting “that look” from my already busy honey. Sigh. Boxes or clean floor, boxes or clean floor? hmmmm. omg look at the top of the frig!?! *groan….*

Religion is a personal matter and not something you can or should impose and anyone, even a child and certainly not a stranger.

Ending a pregnancy is the decision of those involved and not outsiders… any outsiders, end of story.

This is a horrible situation and has caused way too many deaths needlessly.

This is amongst your best writings.
Absolutely true and amazingly argued.
Gratzi

Mornin’ Christy and Firedogs,

The loonies have now infected hospital administration apparently.

more than most of us know

as shown in the video Jane posted yesterday, it’s not enough these families are suffering as they endure heartbreaking circumstances – oh no, the Kansas loonies insisted on inserting language in medical release forms wherein these women (and their partners if present) must acknowledge the fetus’s state of development and so called viability (movement of limbs, beating heart, etc)

they have managed to insinuate themselves in to what should be a private consultation btw doctors and their patients

cruelty defined

I believe the Bible supports “Pro-Choice”, and most other liberal “agendas”. First off – I choose to say “PRO-CHOICE” deliberately, as Pro-Choice is not “Pro Abortion” – nobody I’ve ever met who is Pro-Choice believes that the ONLY choice should be abortion, and that anyone who gets knocked up should ride the rusty coathanger, but that the CHOICE should be available to and ONLY between the family involved and their medical professional. That said, let us start first in the book of Genesis, where God puts in the middle of the garden the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Note that God did not place these trees in the far corner of the garden, covered up and inaccessible. No, they were planted SMACK dab in the center where they were visible and easily accessible. Andit isn’t the TREE OF LIFE that is going to be a problem. The tree that will cause problems is the tree of THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL. God did not take that tree away and put it somewhere that was hidden and unreachable. No, he put this tree in the CENTER of the garden.

Take a minute here and think about this. God did not make this decision FOR the man. He told him not to do it, but He didn’t make it impossible to do. He gave the man FREE WILL to obey or to make his own mistakes. To CHOOSE. It is obviously ENTIRELY important to God that the humans have free will. That they are given the right to CHOOSE whether to do what He tells them, or whether to do as they wish, or are persuaded to do by snakey acquaintances.

Adam and Eve had no prior experience to tell them that God would toss their butts out of the garden and make them work for a living and all that. They had to take His word for it that eating from that tree would be bad. There was nobody shown as an “example”. God seems to have felt that these choices need to be based on trust and respect and free choice – not based on fear.

We also note that God did not decide to allot the punishment to other humans – he banished the pair from the garden on his own.

It is also notable that God did not set Himself up as the government. So if the Bible itself preaches against a Theocracy, and God Himself has decided that even given the possibility of a less-than-desireable outcome it is MORE IMPORTANT that men and women be given Freedom of Choice – then how can the Fundies possibly go so far wrong by trying to enforce their morality through legislation?

Ergo, “Right to Life” groups are setting themselves up as Gods – and I believe the bible warns rather stringently against that. (Chapter and verse available for citation on any of the above)

I was listening to an NPR news broadcast of the protests at a MS clinic the other day. THe broadcast said something I could not believe – that the clinic was the ONLY one in the state and that if it was forced to close over concerns about Tiller-like assassinations and ongoing protests, then there would not no way to get an abortion legally in that state. The only one? In the whole state? Are there states where you simply can’t get an abortion at all?

When I was getting married, the dr. telling me about birth control rec. the “ol’ fashioned way”", which was “keep your feet in a bucket.” Later, I thought his being Catholic may have informed his view…..

Our local paper published a thoughtful essay about abortion and choice this morning. 45 million voices have been silenced, afraid to speak out…and yet that is the only way to say what you have, Christy, that those who play God and the compliant media who megaphone their absolutism must not be allowed to control this discussion any longer.

these extremists choose selectively between the Old and New Testaments, non-canon writings, and a good mixture of their own tribal biases and customs in decided what their gods want. They aren’t Christians… any more than a tribal Pakistani Taliban who advocates throwing acid onto women’s faces and the killing of fallen daughters is a Muslim.

Thanks, Christie. I always held that life begins at conception. And I think that people need to be responsible for their actions. But I realized I didn’t know much about the issues of choice and abortions. After reading this post and others on FDL, I feel I know more about the issues. I don’t know about life anymore. But I do think that women must have the choice of their life and their body. And that choice needs to be well-informed. People need to have all the information about safe-sex, abstinence, birth control, supportive agencies, medical advice, as much as is possible to give. And then the woman must be free to make her choice.

Thanks for the enlightenment.

Just the other day I shared this with Elmore…..

It was 1998…. I was living on a rural farm on the Island of Crete, didn’t have a car but a bus that ran during the day and evening but at night we are stuck 13 miles away from the military base……. I went to Greece with a 4 month old infant….. my precious Jason was my 4 pregnancy and three previous miscarriages.

In January I stopped having periods …. the docs kept saying you should not have them while breast feeding …. well guess what… I did….. finally got the blood work to show positive in March…..

Here is the hard part…… at that time I would of been flown to the base in Germany and stay at least 2-3 months waiting for delivery because they considered me high risk. WITHOUT my baby……. Two babies 15 months apart, I just could not see how I could handle this….. I would deliver alone, fly home via medivac with a new infant to another infant who might not remember me. It has been a struggle to handle one baby and then to deal with another…….

Crete in 1978 was very rural, not a lot of services, the base BX would be out of diapers, their was different brand of formula each month and many times it was expired. Yes I breastfed but there was NO source of milk for the older child unless I bought and milked a goat…… roads were crude and at night unless you have a friend who has a car, then you are stuck dealing with a sick child.

We made that hard decision…..so hard….. in a younger life I had envisioned a nice family of 3-4 children….. this was not the right time, the right place, and the stress on my family would be beyond what we could handle.

I remember every March 26th…. Greek Independence day…….

This issue for progressives should be about a woman’s right to privacy, and the ownership of her own body. If we are ever to be “equal” to the males, we must have that control of our decisions. Males would not stand for this sort of nonsense re their own bodies.
When a girl or a woman chooses (or must have) an abortion she has the right with no questions asked. It’s time for women to be truly free.

there were once 10 clinics in MS. the last remaining one is regularly subjected to intimidation and vandalism – the local good ol boy law enforcement will not lift a finger to help them.

Frontline did a piece on the Jackson facility to be found here

firedogs can go to this page, pick their state (upper right corner) to see the current restrictions

well.. “thou shalt set no gods before me” – the aspiration of humans to godhead is, in most Mainline (Liberal) Protestant theologies, the single greatest possible sin (read anything of the adult books by CS Lewis, for example). I grew up enscounced in Protestant theology and there was another, somewhat more esoteric but related concept that’s important here as well: the notion that it is wrong to presume on the silence of God. If God is silent on an issue, even an issue that is deeply important to cultural or tribal norms, then it is well within man’s ability and right to form one’s own moral view, but one should not presume to say that this view is from or sanctioned by or consistent or inconsistent with God’s teachings. In my view, this is what fundamentalists, of all religions do.. by extending divine “law” into the space of God’s silence.

Hear ! Hear !

Excellent framing, Twain … a woman’s right to privacy, ownership of her body and total control of her decisions !

I agree…… no man except the father has any right to open their mouth over what a woman does ….. just STFU….

Unless you are a direct relative of the patient…. you have no right to but your nose into their business…..

Until these wingnuts become informed and KNOW what goes on during these decisions …. STFU….

hehe.. hilariously, I clicked on the link and was immediately redirected to a corporate security screen that said that the website was restricted. Usually, there’s a message explaning why a site is restricted (”social networking” or “bandwidth limitations” or whatever). In this case, it simply gave the one word reason “abortion”. The ban was dated from Monday.

In a world where there is so much going on….. TeeVee can only go on about some family with 8 and their saga….. people are loosing their homes, woman have to drive across state lines to obtain services, in our city there are two hospital systems, Catholic and not, what if your plan only pays for the Catholic system? you pay out of pocket for services?

I am so tired of the triva becoming so important…..

frankly, it isn’t the wingnuts we should be concerned with (although I wish local and federal law enforcement would get a fuckin’ clue)

we need to concern ourselves with our family, friends, co workers, neighbors who by any measure are not mouthbreathing lizard brains – but have fallen for ‘icky! baby killer memes – or did y’all miss Blitzer’s “may be emotionally disturbing” bullshit yesterday ?!?!?

pushback ‘dogs, recommend they watch or read these families stories – speak the truth to them about the circumstances that would lead a woman to a Dr Tiller – help them see they have been played by the crazies and TradMed

call me foolish, but I believe Americans are empathetic and should be given a shot at “the truth”

The pretense to pro-life among the anti-choice multitudes is just that insofar as they enthusiastically support the war, pestilence, famine, and death that invariably deprives each living soul from birth of the necessities of a functional life.

tell me your state if you are so inclined and I’ll post the restrictions for ya

btw, fabulous to see (((you ))) here and typing away

don’t worry about it.. I’ll look it up later, when I can do it on another PC. I just thought it was amusing that they’d be so concerned with possible controversy that they actually banned the site after the killing. Speaking of which, did y’all know that FDL (along with dKOS and a few others) is specifically banned on public PCs in American Airlines’ Admiral Clubs lounges. Conservative websites are not.

I just don’t understand people who make absolute judgements on what is right or wrong, not only on this issue but many other none of their business issues and want to impose their beliefs on others. It’s a different story when some judgement people actually experience tough life events first hand & discover that real life doesn’t follow their rule books. I don’t get why it is so difficult for them to imagine themselves in other’s situations.

Thanks again for sticking up for me the other night. I would think that this site would have more people allowing others their own opinions.

We need to stress again and again that the abortion issue is a “separation of church and state issue” and any attempt to shut down abortion clinics is directly unconstitutional and unamerican. Not only is the decision none of other people’s business, it is a matter of strangers trying to insinuate themselves between a person and their god. Not everybody believes the same way when it comes to abortion, and since we are a pluralistic society, we need to stress that tolerance is imperative and anything less is illegal.

Amen.

I went to the NARAL link and checked a number of states. I was shocked at how many there were where over 90% of the counties had no abortion clinics. I was also surprised at how many states restrict insurance plans for covering abortion services.

So many states have made it so hard, expensive and stressful that it’s almost back to an underground activity.

Thanks for that update. Shows the true importance of Planned Parenthood.