Blog For Choice Day
I am very pro-choice. My reason for this (along with having three daughters) is that what goes on between a patient and a doctor is none of my business, and, more importantly in my political view, none of the government's business. It really is that simple.
One thing I am sure that I have done right as a parent (because it has been confirmed by my kids, both in word and action) is that I have always figured that my main duty when it came to things like sex and reproduction was to arm them with the best information out there. Then, armed with the facts, they could make their decisions. After a life on the road playing music I didn't really see any moral high ground that I could take and occupy without base and shameless hypocrisy. I could talk, from experience though, about protection, disease (never had any), and pregnancy. I went so far as to sneak condoms into my daughter's purses, in case they might be too shy to either ask or too respectful of my privacy to raid my stash. I have had long, deep conversations with my kids about this. They have responded by becoming comfortable in their sexuality and open about their thoughts and desires. When I say that none of my children had to deal with disease or pregnancy I must qualify it by saying that it is true as far as I know. This is because I tell their doctors that if my children ever seek treatment and do not wish to inform me, for any reason, the doctor may safely presume that I consent to that treatment. I even filed letters to that effect with the doctors.
I'm a country boy. Hell, even when I lived in Hollywood I was still a country boy. We believe strongly in the right of an individual to live their own life, in their own way.
Choice? It's a very liberating thing. Informed choice is the foundation of freedom. I make mine and I try to live with them without complaint. I grant you the same freedom.
Regarding the choices or procedures a woman, in consultation with her doctor might make I will paraphrase Thomas Jefferson:
It makes no difference to me whether or not my neighbor has one abortion, three abortions, or no abortion at all. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
Other than the rare times I have been asked for my opinion or advice on this deeply personal issue the whole subject is generally put on the ever growing list of things that aren't my job, or my business.
posted by The Minstrel Boy at 9:54 AM
5 Comments:
This is excellent.
I'm sending it to my anti-choice
brother in law.
Probably won't make a dent but...
when i am talking to my more conservative/libertarian friends i take the "strict construction" angle from a constitutional basis. the "born or living" clause is quite clear on the issue of who gets rights under our system. it says nothing about blastocysts, fetuses (or should it be fetii?). there have never been, until recently, double murder charges filed when a pregnant woman was murdered.
So succinct, so well-said. If only more men would speak out on behalf of women.
*sigh*
Dubya et. al. want to make abortion illegal here, and they're certainly succeeding in pushing matters that way. I don't have daughters and R got himself fixed after the third, but I can't ignore the very remote possibility that I might be raped--and then what? I'd be able to afford to travel to Canada, if I had to, for the procedure. And that's what I'd do. But what about the large number of women who couldn't do that?
I worry about them as much as I worry about the daughters I never had. And yes, we have a similar philosophy as yours, MB, when it comes to talking to the lads (well, just the 14-year-old so far) about S-E-X. Honesty, and lots of "For Christ's sake, not if she's been drinking heavily, and not without a condom!"
there's a real intrusive, judgemental insanity going on when people would allow smiling creeps like Tom DeLay, Bob Barr, James Dobson, Henry Hyde, and (rhymes with fat bastard) Dennis Hastert to make medical decisions for them. Next thing you know some asshole will be standing up on the national stage and diagnosing a case after viewing heavily edited videotape. . .oh, wait, that's already happened. . .
never mind.
... things that aren't my job, or my business.
Indeed. Nobody without a uterus has any business trying to tell someone else what to do or not do when it comes to pregnancy. When Fat Dennis spends 9 months pregnant and goes through childbirth, I'll say that he has a viewpoint on abortion worth listening to. Until then, he should just shut his fat yapper and let the womenfolk figure this thing out, because it's none of his business. Or mine. or yours. or anybody else's with a Y chromosome. 'Nuff said.
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