Posted on 05/05/2007 2:32:57 PM PDT by Baladas
Our columnist, who has opted to have a termination since the birth of her two children, argues that it is a moral duty not to bring unwanted offspring into the world:
On Wednesday, More4 broadcast Travels with My Camera — A Matter of Life and Death, a “personal journey” by the journalist Miranda Sawyer. This was heralded by a piece in The Observer, written by Sawyer, explaining the purpose of her quest.
Sawyer’s dilemma has been that, until recently, she had been a dyed-in-the-wool, card-carrying, pro-choice feminist. After the birth of her son last year, however, she began to have doubts about the ethics and logic of abortion. “I was calling the life inside me a baby because I wanted it,” she wrote, after visiting picketed abortion clinics in America. “Yet if I hadn’t, I would think of it just as a group of cells that it was OK to kill. It was the same entity. It was merely my response to it that determined whether it would live or die. That seemed irrational to me. Maybe even immoral.”
Later she explained that: “When you’ve experienced . . . pregnancy and birth, and the fantastic beauty of the resulting child, it’s hard not to question what a termination does, or is.”
It’s odd, because, since I had children, I’ve found myself becoming much less troubled by the pro-life argument. Of course, that echoes that old, black-humoured mum joke, often heard in playgrounds on wintry February afternoons — “What do you think should be the cut-off point for terminations?” “I dunno. Secondary school?” — but also reflects how many issues still remain within the abortion debate.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
So you think it acceptable to murder your child if it might help you maintain you High School GPA?
Perhaps you stumbled into the wrong forum Skippy ?
Absolutely disgusting! The ultimate act for these women would be to give up the baby for adoption.
Since when is MURDER described as a “motherly act?”
She is hearing the ghostly cries of her murdered baby in her dreams and is trying so hard to tell us she isn't.
I can empatyhise with those who regret their decision- I know someone who had an abortion and is FURIOUS with the crowd who told her is was just 'a choice' when she was too young and stupid to understand the consequences that she now lives with on a daily basis.
That’s pretty sick.
Who defines "unwanted?"
Abortion is an unholy, immoral cop-out!
It's a black joke today, but will be allowable in a few years the way things are going. This idiot talks about killing children as easily as she would talk about killing a cockroach.
Really?
I would have thought mankinds miseries were caused more by people who "...don’t believe in the sanctity of life"..."
It’s a moral duty not to CONCEIVE unwanted children. What part of “the CHOICE should be made BEFORE the intercourse” don’t these lazy, self-indulgent people not understand?
People, if I wasn’t one of them, I likely would not want to have many of them around me.
Ultimately, I don’t understand antiabortion arguments that centre on the sanctity of life. As a species, we’ve fairly comprehensively demonstrated that we don’t believe in the sanctity of life. I don’t understand why pregnant women — women trying to make rational decisions about their futures — should be subject to more pressure about preserving life than, say, Vladimir Putin.
However, what I do believe to be sacred — and, indeed, more useful to the earth as a whole — is trying to ensure that there are as few unbalanced, destructive people as possible. By whatever rationale you use, ending a pregnancy 12 weeks into gestation is incalculably more moral than bringing an unwanted child into this world. Or a child that, through no fault of its own, would be the destructor of a marriage, a family, a parent. It’s fairly inarguable to say that unhappy children, who then grew into very angry adults, have caused the great majority of mankind’s miseries. If psychoanalysis has, somewhat brutally, laid the responsibility for mental disorders at parents’ doors, the least we can do is to tip our hats to women aware enough not to create those troubled people in the first place.
In short, while I am now packing something just short of the contraceptive equivalent of Trident, if I ever did have to have an abortion again, I would like to think that it would be something unlikely to provoke a moral dilemma in anyone, least of all me. I would like to see a time when abortion is considered an intelligent, logical, humble, compassionate thing to do. I would like abortion to be considered as, perversely, one of the ultimate acts of good mothering.
This is Orwellian in its twisted logic
That's a pretty disgusting rationalization. Is she saying she could not make a happy life for the child? She would let him/her know he/she was not wanted?
My Dad was not wanted. His mom went to the doctor to see if he could give her something to "break up" the pregnancy. She had a bad marriage to an abusive alcoholic. I am thankful her doctor did nothing to help her kill my dad. He had a difficult life, was an alcoholic himself, but was successful in business, had a 60 year marriage to my mom, and produced two daughters. Both of us are well adjusted, have four kids each, my sister has five grandchildren, two of whom were born to teen aged, unmarried moms who refused to kill them. One was adopted, the other raised by mom and loved by his grandmother. None of us are angry murderers. People can rise above their circumstances. How many angry murderers come from lives of spoiled indulgence?
I count six times that the author refers to a living child as 'it.' She views her children as possessions first, people second. I would guess it would be much easier to kill an 'it' as opposed to a 'him' or a 'her.' I feel sorry for her surviving children.
Calling abortion a motherly act is like rape a romantic act. Who do they think they’re kidding?
I have had a few surprise babies. Usually after thinking, “ugh! I can’t handle anymore right now.” But I never would have considered an abortion. They are just too cute not to have around.
Too right!
How much twisted logic is the result of spoiled indulgence,especially when the real world won't indulge that spoilt indulgence.
Good for you and God bless!
My friend, being a loving mother is a much higher achievement than being a college graduate.
We have plenty of college graduates. Loving, self-sacrificing moms are, however, in short supply. As the authoress of this abomination demonstrates.
Sophie’s choice would be a no-brainer to this gal. What a cold hearted bitch.
I can argue that it is every bit her “moral duty” to go home, draw a hot bath, have a glass of Chardonnay, and open her veins. In this case it would truly be “for the children”
I wonder what your parents had to sacrifice to enable you to get where you are today.
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