Posted on 10/10/2005 9:48:46 AM PDT by curtisgardner
By the time this column is printed, Justice for All's cultish tribute to the fetus will have left the grass of our campus. While the right wing whack-jobs are now gone from our fading campus lawns, the ghosts of their messaging haunt me.
What we saw when Justice for All came to Auraria was complete and utter disrespect. Not only were we visually assaulted by an enormous display of gory images with questionable validity and undeniable shock value; the women who make up our student body, faculties and staff had the essence of their freedom questioned. This is not something that just came with the Justice for All fetus-fest; it is an ever-present violation of the privacy and liberty of women that is found in the media, politics, religion, entertainment and social interaction.
The fact that women's sexuality, their safety during sex and their health decisions that follow sexual relationships are debated as topics for broad consensus in the first place is misogynistic. When males are granted the right to make health choices freely while women have the same privacy and freedom denied due to biological characteristics, the sexism that runs rampant in our society is blatantly clear.
Now, self-proclaimed "pro-lifers" reading this column may venture to dub me a hypocrite, as I am opposed to war and the death penalty, yet I support abortion. They will most likely question my support of human life. This is where the error lies. I am not "pro-life" and have never claimed to be. I am opposed to oppression and violations of peoples' self-determination.
I stand behind abortion rights because I believe that no one can serve as a better governing body over an individual than that person. I believe individuals have the ability to discern what they will and will not do, as they are autonomous beings. For this reason, I am also vegan, against the death penalty, opposed to state power and fully supportive of individual sexual decisions.
Honestly, I do not care what a woman's reason is for having an abortion, as I am not in a place to judge. Economics, family, sex abuse, power disparities in relationships, education and many other factors I have no ability to begin to understand, play into a woman deciding to terminate a pregnancy. I do not care how many abortions a woman has or for what reason; it is her body and her choice, bottom line.
Of course, I will discourage one from undergoing numerous abortions as a casual affair. I would also encourage an individual from casually having root canals and open-heart surgery. Regardless of whether I think their judgment leading up to such a choice was the best or if I myself would make the same choice, it is a person's right to do so.
One may ask about the self-determination and autonomy of a child. Once a child is born, I wish it nothing but the best. I would love to see every child have an education, food, shelter and medicine. However, I fail to see how a mass of cells the size of a kumquat, with no nerve endings, or a potentially viable fetus that is so deformed it has no chance of surviving (plus, it may kill the woman carrying it) can qualify as self-determined individuals. I fail to see how one can even consider the aforementioned cellular growths to be humans.
I warn all advocates for an end to legalized abortion right now: you will never succeed in ending abortion. People like me will fight back. We will break any law and violate every social norm to ensure that our sisters can receive safe and affordable abortions on demand, without apology, because it is their right.
I, for one, am tired of having my legitimate decisions scrutinized in the name of morals and governance. I am tired of hearing those that undermine my autonomy, be they men or women, dubbed "pro-life." I refuse to live in fear any further that women will lose the ability to decide to go through a life saving procedure. No government, church, political organization or private citizen will take away my rights to my body, my uterus, my sanity and my safety. I encourage other women to adopt the same standard.
This leaves me to ask a question I once read on a button to Justice for All and their cultish following led by megalomaniacal religious fundamentalist privileged males. If you cut off my reproductive choice, can I cut off yours?
Life for the guilty, death for the innocent. Seems consistent to me......
Zoe needs to keep her knees together if she wants everybody to stay out of her uterus.
"Life for the guilty, death for the innocent. Seems consistent to me......"
And rights for animals, but not for people who haven't passed through the birth canal yet. Got it.
Yes, there are a few crazy FReepers who talk about freedom on Free Republic! They don't slip anything by you. Thanks for pointing this out.
fetus at 6 weeks. About the time most women confirm that they are pregnant. With eyes, brain heart, fingers, etc. (just a mass of cells)
Fetus at 14 weeks. First trimester cutoff. Nothing human like about this. Just a mass of cells the size of a kumquat, with no nerve endings, or a potentially viable fetus.
How dare you make us look at pictures of fetuses! We have a constitutional right to believe they're just kumquats!
I'm still waiting for the pro-abortion crowd to show me just one person who can say, "I was aborted and I turned out just fine". Or, "As I pro-abortion supporter, I only wish my parents would have had the right to abort me".
The article just oozes hatred for anything or anyone that would threaten one once of control. The unborn are no less despised.
These kinds of people never have a child - or only have a limited (chosen by themselves) number of children...
And they (their offspring) - no doubt - will be indoctrinated to beleive (falsely)that the "fetus" is just a mass of tissue as her article says!
The writer obviously does not know that the heart beats at 3 weeks and the brainwaves at 6 weeks!
What ever happend to true science being taught in schools? The development of All creatures - human beings and animals!
I remember studying that in high school - don't they do that anymore?!!
http://www.pregnancy.org/pregnancy/fetaldevelopment1.php
http://www.wprc.org/trimester1.phtml
"Embryo is the size of a raisin. By day twenty-one, the embryo's tiny heart has begun beating."
Dead children don't speak.
But lets nt go so far as to think that the "blob of tissue" is a human being with rights, too.
Let me see: kill the innocent and spare the guilty. Nope, I can't see anything hypocritical at all.
Another angry lesbian trying to take it out on everone else, especially babies.
Wasn't it Ronald Reagan who said "Isn't it funny how everyone who is for abortion has already been born?"
The following are beautiful pictures of the unborn babies (fetuses) that she wants to have the freedom to abort!
http://www.pregnancy.org/pregnancy/fetaldevelopment1.php
http://www.wprc.org/trimester1.phtml
From the article:
If you cut off my reproductive choice, can I cut off yours?
Isn't that the whole point? If women chose not to copulate (and I fully understand the existence of rape - I'm talking about casual, consensual sex), then the vast majority of abortions would not occur.
Beautiful, miraculous and totally lost on the selfish feminist radicals.
Having spent several hours on Auraria's neat campus last week
observing the superlative Justice for All display, I actually came
away encouraged. The truth couldn't be presented in a more
effective way. The comparisons between abortion and other horrible social injustices in the world are numbing.
I saw the healthiest display of genuine dialogue observed in a long while.
I think this Metropolitan author will receive many rebuttals to her rant.
My sister has a lovely cat named Zoe. There is also a St Zoe, a Christian martyr from the second century. That's about it :-)
Then she wouldn't have any objection to ending all state funding for this practice. If, after all, it's a 'private, individual decision,' then why should the rest of us have to pay for it? Hmmmmmmmmmmmm?
Then there's this question for little Missy Hissy Fit: "What, exactly, is indide a woman's body before she gives birth?"
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