Pearcing words

Just a note to say how much I appreciate your dropping by and, especially your comments. Whether we agree or not, it heartens me to have a debate, openly and freely.

My only regret is that I don't have final authority over what comments get published. That's up to the Star's overworked goderators who must abide by our policy. (No flaming, no cussing, no hate, no endless quoting from other sources, no slander ...) Me, I would publish everything, except hate and anything that could pose a legal problem.

It's not often that I pull out a comment and publish it in a separate post but I just could not resist doing that today with these words from ''Barb Pearce'' -- if that's her real name, I don't know -- deep down in the Spermicide for the Mind thread below. It's response to other comments, and it's a doozy. I added some links.

Dianne: First the feeling of pain argument has not been scientifically proven. .... Before thalamic connections exist to the cortex, (22 weeks) responses to noxious stimuli are reflexes..

Why pro-life people think this argument will “sway” women is beyond me.........I'm pasting a statement by a anti-choicer who actually sees stupidity in the argument.

Douglas R. Scott, president of Life Decisions International, worried that arguing "pain to the fetus" will only mean requests for anesthesia...which might make women more likely to go through with an abortion. "The mother can believe she is making a benevolent choice, even as she simultaneously participates in a heinous act," he wrote on Christian Newswire. "I can hear it now. 'At least the fetus didn't feel pain...'"

Jean and Steve:

You are denegrating women! It's offensive that you imply abortion is something us poor dimwitted women are coerced into. Women are fully capable of making correct choices for themselves
Anti-Baby? From what I see, Pro-lifers spread misleading information and use fear mongering and physcological warfare. Comparing women to Nazis, calling it the "easy way out" (yet at the same time explaining the easyway out leads to a lifetime of guilt and mourning - yah, really easy),telling women that abortion causes breast cancer, is just sick.

When you wake up today, you should get off your self righteous high horse. While you drink your coffee think of all the child slaves that lost their lives so you can have your perk. Look at your pyjamas and pray to god that the child who sewed them didn't lose another finger. How many kid's did you kill today so you could purchase useless crap at low prices?

You all seem to forget about that. How convenient. I suppose loudly opposing abortion is kind of like off setting that guilt. No wonder the most stringent anti-choicers vote conservative regardless of their promotion of selfishness (oops I mean individual freedom) and their total lack of empathy and regard for their fellow man. All they have to do is hold up the anti-abortion card and you line up like sheep, selfishly hoping it will give you a get in free pass at the pearly gates.

It doesn’t matter how horrific pro-lifers present abortion. It is a deeper issue. It is an issue, regardless of a women's stance ( for/against), that sounds off alarm bells. The inequality of women is very obvious.....especially to women.

Women are not valued as equals, the pro-life philosophy is an attack against our reproductive rights...or an attack simply for being a women.

That's why polls show Canadians believe in choice. Most Canadians get what's at stake. A National Post poll from November 2002 (there are many, many polls like this) found 78% of respondents answered "yes" to the question: "Should women have complete freedom on their decision to have an abortion?".

In a June 2008 Angus Reid Strategies poll found only 5% of Canadians would outlaw abortion altogether.

So....the majority of people, including those who personally disagree with abortion, agree it is still a women’s choice.

You need to wake up and look around at the inequality women face at home and worldwide. When you have governments that force abortions of female fetuses (because the women have NO choice - No is also a choice), governments that view women as nothing more than incubators, and the fact that the majority of anti-choice leaders are men (an estimated 70%) who happen to be the same ones who promote the insane “True Women Manifesto” (god ordained female submission to the man) the majority of women will stand together stronger. Women have no other option than to protect ourselves.

Pro-Choice is really a matter of survival for women.

Instead of sticking your nose where it doesn't belong, I suggest you look in the mirror and then start picking your own cotton, sewing your own clothes, growing your own coffee beans, and stop shopping at Wal-Mart.

All I would add is, shop fair trade.

Comments

[deBeauxOs]

Bravo.

[...pat.]

I'm glad that Obama is getting rid of the gag rule.
There is also so much more that needs to be done.
When it becomes a standard operating procedure of war to rape women, somehow, the men doing this need to feel the weight of the world upon them -- maybe through the war crimes tribunals, maybe in terms of what kind of emergency funding goes to who in their countries.
And micro-loans for women seem to help, to enable them to start businesses and fund a life for themselves and their children.