3.01.2006

Re: South Dakota

I must direct you all to the work of two bloggers. Both speaking out about the travesty in South Dakota, with personal accounts of the issue as it relates to them. In addition to on their respective personal blogs, both can be found in the top two BIO posts.

They are none other than Pia Savage and Miz Bohemia. Read what they wrote. Link to them. If you have story to tell, please share it if you are able. It is time to be heard.

I doubt I have anything to say about the issue that hasn't been said more effectively by the two of them.

However I feel I must put one caveat on my support.

The result of the ruling in Roe V Wade was the right one, but the ruling itself was a mess. Its assertion that life begins at conception is directly responsible for the federal ban on funding for stem cell research. The decision that the right to abortion despite that finding has allowed for abortions to take place when the fetus has reached a stage in development at which it is able to feel pain as it is terminated. I believe that there needs to be a line drawn (of course, taking the health of the mother into account) . My gut says that the obvious place is when the fetus has its own heartbeat, but I can't claim to be knowledgeable enough to say so definitavely.

I believe that the very real danger of the nullification of abortion rights is causing some to react over-zealously to such limits (for the record, I believe that it was right to overturn the ban on partial birth abortions for the given reason). I may, as always, be wrong. But I feel I'd be remiss not to speak up.

3 comments:

  1. This could get ugly.

    The hearts technically beats at something like twelve days, brain waves have been picked on encephalogically at forty days; this makes it quite complicated for some and I hold to the belief that if you believe life begins at 12 days, forty days or at implantaion and you feel it wrong to terminate an egg with a beating heart then so be it. If you however believe that life begins when it is actually sustainable outside the womb or if you believe it doesn't matter because it is the right of the person carrying that thing inside her to decide than so be it. Either way for me it should be no ones decision but my own.

    The problem is hat even today men rule the rulings. That is what has to change. You canbe sure if men were h aving those babies it would.

    ReplyDelete
  2. My belief is this... I DO NOT believe in abortion being used as birth control over and over again. I know women who have had several abortions... it was natural for them just to say "oops I'm pregnant lets head on over to the abortion clinic" THAT PISSES ME OFF! OTHER THAN THAT... I'm all for women having the right to choose...

    Let me ask you this... if you were a woman and raped... found out you were pregnant by your rapist... would you want to carry that child? I honestly can't say what I would do... but at least I would have that choice to make that decision! Slowly that choice is being taken away!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Alice: I fucked up. I thought that the heartbeat began far later than that, and I've explained that in my latest post.

    I never wanted to make any decision for anyone. I just thought that the discussion on all of this was overwhelmingly black and white and that some important issues were swept under the rug.

    I'm sorry.

    Shayna: Same goes here. I don't know what I'd do either. I never meant to undermine anyone's choice, and I don't think that I suggested that in my post, but due to the fact that I, as I said, fucked up, the burden is on me.

    I'm sorry.

    ReplyDelete