Some choice words

Renew America ^ | 6/2/04 | Liz Lyons

[Nasty McPhilthy]

Some choice words

Liz Lyons June 2, 2004

Today, the Associated Press reported that U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton has ruled that the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act is "unconstitutional." By doing so the San Francisco federal judge declared that this act, which sought to prevent abortions from being performed after a critical 26 to 28 week viability point in the course of pregnancy, interferes with a woman's elective right to protect her health when it is jeopardized by that pregnancy. The report goes on to say that there are three lawsuits challenging the Bush administration's 2003 legislation and that this ruling today materially affects the activities of abortion practitioners organized through Planned Parenthood, among others, who would presumably stand to lose millions of dollars were these laws to stand.

As a life long child advocate, this leads me back to the core issues of marriage, family, traditional values and the selfishness of post modern society. Do we sincerely believe we are a child-oriented culture? Take a closer look at what is really going on and what we as a collective are doing to inflict the most insidious form of abuse on the young. My thesis is this: far from being a nation devoted to our children, I submit there is deeply inherent, ignorant, and selfish disregard for childhood that has infiltrated every institution from family to education to entertainment. How so? Two examples.

From the moment they are conceived we are seeking to manipulate babies in utero, scanning, filming, stimulating, playing music, inoculating, extracting fluids, even trying to teach them languages, math, and Shakespeare! The very act of giving birth itself has become a mega million-dollar cottage industry. Like The Judd's song says, 'some call this progress, but I just don't know.' American children are variously treated as an encumbrance, a liability, or a trophy and are encouraged in overt and covert ways to grow up far too rapidly. All with whom in mind? Far from providing a long childhood in America, we convey a damaging mixed message laced with undertones of disapproval for all that is associated with being young, innocent, and dependent, hidden beneath the facade of lavish attention and indulgence. Get them a motor-driven scooter when they are six, a dirt bike when they're eleven, and an automobile when they have barely turned 16. Shove them off to school, early, as early as possible. Push them into frenzied extracurricular activities, organized competitive sports, high-pressure academic preparation classes; have them read and use a computer when they are as young as eighteen months. And when they act out and up, anaesthetize the behavior. And who is choosing this? Adults; parents, teachers, legislators; insecure, ignorant, and misguided. For? Convenience. Postmodern adults are busy, important people.

Abortion is a particularly agonizing example of this systematic disregard. Women now justify killing their own nascent offspring on the basis that they have a "right to choose" what happens to their bodies. But, with the important and relatively rare exception of being victims of intentional violence, sexually active women always do choose, and perhaps not surprisingly, they select themselves and their own interests over the rights of other human beings (inclusive of the putative father, in not a few cases). When women choose to engage in activities, which may result in reproduction, they make a choice for two or more human beings. Grown women can then be their own advocates in these cases or select someone to act on their behalves and take steps to protect their individual rights. My question is this: who does society appoint to represent the second of perhaps several or more involved individuals in each such event, the fetus, a human being in progress? Is this always an easy or obvious choice? Is this choice cheap and capable of being dispatched after little thought? Where do women, or the edictive vocalists from Planned Parenthood who have become self-appointed epopts for this barbarous practice, get the idea that everything must be for the pleasure and service of only one particular group of individuals?

Those who, by their having reached a reasoning age, or, as a result of the accident of gender are an instrument of species continuance have the power to be their own advocates think nothing of denying it to the most helpless among us. Why does the mere suggestion of harm to the woman trump the death of her child? When does a woman's sense of personal responsibility, to balance her individual rights, enter into the equation? Are we breeding a nation of cowards hiding behind the government, allowing appointed and paid jurists to do their thinking for them? Wouldn't the logical progression of such an argument as that invoked in Judge Hamilton's ruling lead to perhaps a gruesome further extrapolation which might be interpreted to say that, if in the course of caring for her infant, postpartum, a woman's health is compromised, she may lawfully choose to take up a pistol and put a bullet through her baby's temple? We would rightly be outraged and deem her a murderous criminal or psychopath.

At what points in its development does any human being, whose own mother chooses herself over her child, earn the right to present its self-interest to the adjudicators selected to make such decisions by the just society or, if it cannot, to have that position presented and defended for it?