Read this article.
posted by CharlesPeirce @ 3:02 PM
7 comments
Pragmaticism
Cut back to Shamrock: "Tito Ortiz is going to find out who Ken Shamrock is, was, and is now." The "is now" in that sentence wasn't really a redundancy. Shamrock was employing a new tense—the ultimate tense—to describe how he was about to be bringing it, how it was about to have been brung.
7 Comments:
this article was pretty and this the sickest part of all:
"When she became pregnant this fall, Sarah, who works in real estate, was in the midst of planning her wedding. "I don't think my dress would have fit with a baby in there," she says."
That is a totally unjustifiably selfish thing.
I know that most people who have abortions are not really bad people. In fact, I would probably like most of them if I met them. But the self-centeredness in all of their rationale was shocking. I know that there is a lot more going on beneath the surface when a woman is considering an abortion -- mostly fear, I assume. But things like not wanting to lose the use of your body to play volleyball... come on. "Well, I was thinking about having this baby, but then I realized I wouldn't be able to play volley ball. Doctor, destroy some life please." Like I said, I'm sure there is a lot more to the story here and I'm sure that girl was scared out of her mind about having a baby. But we can't let people think that excuses like that are good enough. If everyone starts to believe that having an abortion for casual convenience -- like being able to play sports -- then eventually women will start having abortions for those reasons.
Also, I found his 26 week deadline curious. Why 26 weeks? Why not 28? Or 22? Its so arbitrary, the way so many of us pick and choose when we want to believe life begins. If it really matters then why not err on the side of caution like you would if you really thought of the unborn as humans and not do abortions at all? Just in case its alive at 12 weeks. Or conception. If its really a human life then I think its worth the precaution.
First let me say that I find abortion morally reprehensible. I also find it societally necessary.
So I'll play devil's advocate.
Mair, Barnabas, and Standingout:
Yes, some people are incredibly petty, stupid, and selfish when it comes to reasons for aborting babies. That said, are these really people you want to raise children? Do you think it is fair to subject children to families where they hear, "I'm sorry baby, mommy is too busy watching her wedding video/not using birth control/playing volleyball to feed, clothe, or care for you right now?"
I think abortion should be an available option to women who don't feel that they can provide an appropriate environment for their children. I'm not defending these specific examples as reasonable, I'm saying that by allowing crack-whore women to abort babies they can't care for (which I think is a quasi-responsible thing for them to do) you open the door for some less serious cases. Besides, who wants to be born to a mother who will resent being forced to carry you to term?
Jack - that's why adoption is the obvious choice. Wouldn't it be much more ethical and functional for all of the women who didn't want children to give them up for adoption AND for all the couples spending immoral amounts of money on fertility therapy and totally unnatural means of conception to adopt the hords of unwanted children that already or potentially could exist??
P.S. As a woman, (though I realize a lot of women may not feel this way) I have to believe that perhaps if a lot of these women did carry their babies to term, and have the experience of holding a life that formed within them, they would realize that everything before was selfish and unimportant and would no longer think volleyball and wedding dresses are more important.
Mair- I agree with you on both points, but we both know it doesn't always happen that way.
On adoption- First, the system is horrible for kids until they get adopted, if they get adopted. I don't want to subject anyone to that. Second, there is a huge difference between adopting a baby and spending money on fertility to get your own. Do I want to raise someone else's child? No. Do I want my own? Hell, yeah! Would I adopt if I was unable to have my own? Maybe, but there is absolutely NO way I would adopt first. I want my piece of immortality... besides, I am selfish/narcissistic/arrogant enough to believe that the "fruit of my loins" will be superior to all babies offered up for adoption, and that does double if I find a tall, beautiful, intelligent wife!
On priority changing- Yeah, I'm sure this happens to some women, maybe even most women. But not always, babies still wind up in trash cans in public restrooms and the like- and I find abortion preferable to those scenarios.
"On adoption- First, the system is horrible for kids until they get adopted, if they get adopted."
While that's true, Jack, I think it's also more responsible and socially constructive than to decide for said child that it's better off dead. I think the bigger issue here is fixing the adoptive process and social service system. I think the right to kill, if it exists, must be exercised with the utmost of extreme cautions, as it has huge implications on the values created in our society, as this article shows.
I find the argument that before a certain point in time a baby is not fully human reasonably arguable, but that's the only reasonable defense of abortion. To put a threshold on the quality of life one should be allowed to live is extremely dysfunctional.
Now if you want to start a program to sterilize the crack whores, I'm with you.
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