OPINION & EDITORIAL
Abortion ‘facts’ flat out immoral
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Also by Hannah Shtein:
- Abortion 'facts' flat out immoral (November 20, 2007)
- Forget the base: Take middle path on voter issues (November 6, 2007)
- In politics, use your head, not your heart (October 23, 2007)
- UW making big mistake with quota (October 9, 2007)
- Timetable experts not 'world citizens' (September 26, 2007)
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- Former abortion doctor to speak in Grainger Hall Wednesday (October 4, 2005)
- Governor Doyle's veto right decision (October 21, 2005)
- Editorial board wrong on teaching assistants (March 8, 2005)
- Letter to Editor (March 10, 2005)
by Hannah Shtein
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
In seeking advice, on anything from what to order at Buraka
to what kind of health insurance to get, most people will seek out the
expertise of a professional: doctors, lawyers, food connoisseurs, etc. So, I think
it's safe to say that the point of asking for advice is to make a more informed
and educated decision. Right? Following this model, I think it's also safe to
say that a woman enlisting the help of a clinic that advertises itself as
providing counseling and information regarding all options available in case of
an unexpected or unwanted pregnancy probably would like more information on
becoming pregnant before she decides what do about it.
A situation such as the above is especially common among
young, often teenage women, who may be uninformed regarding adoption, abortion,
raising a child, etc., which means it is all the more important for these women
to gain as much information as possible before making a possibly life-altering
decision. Many look to federally funded Pregnancy Resource Centers — also
called Crisis Pregnancy Centers — to make a more knowledgeable assessment
regarding what should be done. These clinics market themselves as providing
pregnancy counseling, and can be found under "abortion services" in a phone
book or through searching "abortion clinics" online. But don't count on these
organizations to help you find an abortion clinic. According to a report on the
Committee for Government Reform, these PRCs — which practice a curriculum of
abstinence-only education — are not only staffed by volunteers who have no
medical training, but also have been providing false information to those
seeking credible information.
While there are obviously many organizations that promote
this approach, it is one thing to simply be a pro-life organization, and quite
another to deliberately conceal anti-abortion goals and manipulate women who
may be uninformed and vulnerable. Through subversive tactics such as seemingly
pro-choice friendly advertising, "abortion vulnerable clients" are lured into
these clinics, which distribute false information. For example, many PRCs hand
out pamphlets detailing fabricated claims such as the supposed "fact" that
abortion causes breast cancer or infertility and exaggerate the rates of
depression and suicide that may follow an abortion procedure. Never mind the
trauma that can be caused by a parent unwilling or unable to care for a child,
since that's obviously a trivial detail to be overlooked in the larger, nobler
plans of PRCs.
Whatever your ideological standpoint on the issue abortion,
the actions of these PRCs is truly immoral. The main issue here is not about
pro-life or pro-choice, it is that our government is providing millions of
dollars in grants for people to be intentionally lied to.
That our government allows untrained and unknowledgeable workers to essentially brainwash young women in order to reach the goals of the Bush administration speaks to the nature of our national identity with chilling clarity. While obsessing about our supposedly important civil liberties, we think nothing of trampling all over the basic rights of others, as long as we can attain our own ends. And while the omnipresent lust for power and control is obviously at play here, what is scarier is the drive that collective self-righteousness lends to this quest. Playing God in the lives of others has become an American value in its own right, whether the control is aimed at other genders, other countries, other sexual preferences, and so on. We are a culture that thrives on controlling and imposing to the point of complete blindness to the needs, rights and desires of others. And as long as these practices continue, we can never truly stand united.
Hannah Shtein (shtein@wisc.edu)
is a sophomore majoring in religious studies and philosophy.
Anonymous (November 20, 2007 @ 8:22am):
Amen, sister!
Anonymous (November 20, 2007 @ 3:28pm):
Look, the government obviously wants uninsured women to have children and give them up for adoption. Why else would this country give everyone free access to socialized medicine and make adoption as cheap and easy as going to the grocery store?
Anonymous (November 20, 2007 @ 3:30pm):
All "pro-life" women should sign up to receive implantation of unwanted embryos.
All "pro-life" men should STFU.
Anonymous (November 20, 2007 @ 4:21pm):
Fatma An-Najar, a 64-year-old grandmother, had a livelier Thanksgiving than most grandmas last year. She marked the occasion by self-detonating in the town of Jebaliya. And, although all she had to show for splattering body parts over the neighborhood were three "lightly wounded" Israeli soldiers, she will have an honored place in the pantheon of Palestinian heroes. Naturally, her family's pleased as punch.
Before her self-abortion, An-Najar gave birth to her first child at the age of 12. She had eight others. She had 41 grandchildren. Keep that family tree in mind. By contrast, in America, a "well educated" 64-year old Leftist woman will have maybe one or two grandchildren. That's four grandparents, one grandchild: a family tree with no branches.
Now, if Fatma An-Najar has 41 grandchildren and a responsible "better educated" Mz. Shtein aborts a few before having one or two, into whose hands is she delivering the stewardship of the earth? If your crowd isn't around in any numbers, how much influence can you have in "educating" future generations?
If you measure the births of the Muslim world against the dearth of Mz. Shtein's, you have the perfect snapshot of why we aren't "united": With every passing month, there are more Muslims and fewer Westerners as Muslims export their manpower to America, Europe and other depopulating outposts of the West. It's the intersection of abortion demography and Islamism that makes time a luxury Leftists can't afford.
Leftists can argue about exactly what this trend means, but not that it means nothing. At the very minimum, I'd suggest, it means the abortion educators are irrelevant to the stewardship of the Earth; and that Mz. Shtein will likely end her days on an Earth whose stewards regard being "educated" as a sign of many things, but not, on the whole, about "the needs, rights and desires of others."
Anonymous (November 20, 2007 @ 6:43pm):
I heard that the meek were going to inherit the Earth but there's nothing meek about Fatma An-Najar.
The future belongs to the people that show up.
The only optimistic thing I've seen lately is that children seem to be coming to seen as a "luxury good" among the rich, who have the resources to raise and educate a cohort that might possibly help maintain a first world economy that the liberals can tax the hell out of.
Anonymous (November 20, 2007 @ 8:25pm):
The argument about the grandmother is the most bullshit thing I've ever heard besides Bush's oath of weapons of mass destruction being in Iraq.
Anonymous (November 21, 2007 @ 9:59am):
8:25pm Thanks for your ad hominem admission of intellectual bankruptcy... you can't beat the champ!
checkmate
Anonymous (November 21, 2007 @ 1:15pm):
everyone just live life to its fullest
[sweetcheeks]
Anonymous (November 21, 2007 @ 3:22pm):
4:21, we should get some of those grandmas to fight for us. Say you have terminal cancer: I say, strap on some explosives and take a hike in Tora Bora. This idea also solves our Medicare woes.
Anonymous (November 22, 2007 @ 8:28pm):
No society can endure when it's women are unwilling to reproduce.
The abortion lobby is a civilizational suicide pact.
It's your duty... get busy.
Anonymous (November 23, 2007 @ 12:49pm):
"No society can endure when it's women are unwilling to reproduce."
Our society cannot endure when our citizens write it's instead of its.
Anonymous (November 23, 2007 @ 6:40pm):
Meet the women who won't have babies - because they're not eco friendly
"Having children is selfish. It's all about maintaining your genetic line at the expense of the planet," says Toni, 35.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=495495&in_page_id=1879
"Every person who is born uses more food, more water, more land, more fossil fuels, more trees and produces more rubbish, more pollution, more greenhouse gases, and adds to the problem of over-population."
While most parents view their children as the ultimate miracle of nature, Toni seems to see them as a sinister threat to the future.
***
But then what's the point of a future with no people?
Anonymous (November 24, 2007 @ 2:05am):
I support mandatory abortions fully funded by the government for all women.
Especially if they're terrorist grandmas.
Anonymous (November 28, 2007 @ 4:39pm):
No society can endure when people think making as many babies as possible constitutes a replacement for having few babies that are better educated, and better cared for. Would you rather have one well raised, nurtured, thoughtful human beings? or 200 dysfunctional, uneducated kids who were born just for the sake of having kids?
In terms of humans, i would like to believe quality trumps quality. Im not saying we should kill off everyone with an IQ under 80 and only nurture the gifted ones, but shifting the focus from quality of child care to feeling the need to fuck as fast as possible in some surreal human being arms race is just FUCKING RETARDED.
Shawn Snyder (December 5, 2007 @ 10:39pm):
if you have an unwanted baby, you either a)were raped and that's very unfortunate, or b)you and your guy have no self control. either way, you can still give it up for adoption and not murder it. if you don't purposefully kill it with abortion but merely let it die, I think you should also be hit with the good samaritan act.
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