Sick Kids | Evolving Abortion Thoughts
Feb. 13th, 2008 11:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altarflameOh goodness. What a crazy few days. That sickness I mentioned in the last post has been making the rounds big time...it seems to come back for seconds and thirds on everybody :/ There was the whole night that I nursed and crooned to Elise for 10 hours of exhaustion while Grant either dozed or rushed to sit in the steamy bathroom again with croupy Jake. The day he and I took turns wearing her all day long while the other played with him, because she had such a fever but he was still clingy. Yesterday he had VeriFone and Isaac had it, as well as Jake still recovering, and I was running on like 5 broken hours of sleep in a 48 hour period...argh. The whole time, Aaron is laying around on the couch asking for tea and books and refusing food and needing a backrub. I decided to run a sweatshop - Ananda got up and I said "Babe, how would you like to have a job today? I'll pay you a dollar fifty an hour." She was thrilled, so there that was and it actually worked out really well - she played with Elise most of the time that Jake nursed for TWO SOLID HOURS, and took drinks to Isaac and Aaron while I cooked lunch holding Elise, and made batter while I nursed and changed Elise, and read Isaac books while I rubbed Aaron's back, and started laundry and put away clean dishes so I could start more of each...it was kind of incredible. I gave her a $1 bonus after she ran around behind my sweeping with a mop :p She ended up spending it all on an orchid at Lowe's, that she's thrilled with.
Today was just as needy - all our boys are hoarse and cranky - but Grant was here so it wasn't nearly so nutty for me. Tomorrow, though, he starts a 3 day spell of 12 hour shifts :x Plus commute. Somebody saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaave me, let your warm hands melt...ok probably most of you don't watch Smallville.
One thing you get a lot of done when you're forced to sit, stand or lay basically captive with no entertainment, is thinking. I've composed most of a story (mentally) that I want to submit to a magazine. I've come full circle and back again politically, on all sorts of issues. There are so many things I'd like to write about, but really I don't think I'll have very much time.
Every single thing I catch a byline about, hear a mention of on tv or NPR, EVERYTHING makes me like Obama more and Hillary less.
I had a kind of epiphany the other day, about the abortion thing. It's one of those things I can't please anyone with - the liberals reading are going to slap there foreheads and think I'm pretty dense for just coming around to it and the conservatives are going to think I'm moving to the dark side, but hey I'm getting used to ideological isolation ;)
Anyway, basically...I don't believe in abortion, as previously stated. I think it's wrong, it's killing, it's sad, tragic, whatever. I don't hate people who've HAD abortions, I just think it's a procedure I see very differently than they do. So I try to weigh things, you know, in my mind, I try to figure out how I should prioritize my political life. People die in wars, that's horrible. People die in electric chairs, THAT's horrible. I can't control any of this, I get just one vote, and of course when it really comes right down to it I've always felt that if I WAS given the power to say abortion would be illegal..I'm not sure I could do that. It would save a bunch of unborn babies, it would endanger some desperate women, it would enrage a whole LOT of people who have totally different belief systems than me and it would feel like I was forcing total strangers to undergo life altering circumstances because I think they should. Which is, you know, wack.
Though I will not lie, part of me is like, it's not ME saying they have to undergo life altering circumstances, it's basic nature, it's biology, it's God's will, whatever you want to call it or think it is I didn't get anybody pregnant. How did we get around to a point where a fetus is a burden nobody should be forced to bear, or an infringement of basic rights? That's ridiculous.
But the rest of me is confused. I think I should have sovereign rights over how and where and when I want to birth any baby I gestate. Regardless of whether someone less or more informed or educated thinks it's more dangerous, regardless even of whether or not it IS more dangerous. Because...why? Because it's my body. Because it's my baby. Because nobody else is up in this but us.
Well. This is where I start to think maybe from certain perspectives I'm trying to have my cake and eat it too. I mean you can't even pass laws granting fetuses personhood or else you can try a woman for attempted murder if she refuses a c-section. Or reckless endangerment or whatever the hell "they" term it to be.
Again the pro-life part of me speaks up, NO, you can choose to educate your born child however you see fit or to feed it anything that will keep it alive, but you can't beat it or kill it. There is a line of intent, my birth choices are not intentionally harming like an abortion would be...but I'll bet, I'll just bet there are women out there who are INTENDING to save their unborn kid WITH an abortion, from their abusive spouse or their life of poverty or their severely bipolar genes or who knows what. I'll bet there are women who cry their eyes out, haunted and grieving for a child they just can't inflict this or that life on. I disagree, yeah, but who the hell am *I*, in that highly personal deal?
There are a lot of gray areas here (that is a cliche for a reason). A lot. There are things I did "wrong" with my first two kids, wrong by my definition for myself, I mean. I didn't know about cloth diapers, I fed jarred baby food and weaned at a year and I didn't even know what a sling was. I did a lot right too, I was a good mother, I was a GREAT mother for an 18 year old with back to back kids and very little support - they were read to and played with and healthy and happy and I never yelled at or hit or neglected anyone. But my house was a big nasty mess and I stayed in a bad situation with them for too long, out of teenage stupidity and misplaced loyalty and who knows what else, that put them in danger...
Basically I went around in big mental circles like this for a long long time the other day. God entrusts kids to our care knowing we're sinners, knowing we're selfish, knowing we don't know the future. He entrusts them to us and then...he sits back and watches. He watches everything. And maybe some of it is bad, but he doesn't step in to stop you. He gives you free will.
That was my epiphany. God gives us free will. And maybe Christians are being really backwards trying to stop abortion by making it unattainable and impossible. That's not what God does. I'm not sure I always agree with it, but the trendy way for modern Christians to gauge all answers is supposed to be to ask "What Would Jesus Do?" Jesus would grant people free will. He already HAS granted people free will. He'd talk to them and love them and help them if they asked for it, and advise them if they felt like listening, but mostly he would just be present. And forgive whoever needed it if they said they were sorry. And deal with it who knows which way after we all die and know all the stuff none of us can know now.
If we look around and there are doctors who think it's important or at least ok to provide abortions and women who go to them to have them done, maybe (well, obviously) the thing to do is to step in and figure out how to make this world a place a woman would want to have a baby in. Not to (this is where I meant to say maybe) criminalize them both and illegalize sin.
This was all inspired by an article I was linked to by a commenter, that was titled something like, "Why I'm pro-life and voting for Obama with a clear conscience". The whole thing was about how it's peoples' hearts, not their laws, that have to change if we want abortion to lessen or even end, and that Obama will make this country a place where it isn't so scary to get pregnant. It seemed very cut and dry at the time. In the days since, though, I've gone on to wonder...
What about protecting the innocent?
Because we DO punish people for hurting born children. We can't prevent it but we penalize for it because some things SHOULD just be black-and-white wrong, gray areas aside.
...Or do we? I'm someone who's against CPS involvement in the vast majority of cases because I think parents have sovereign rights and that kids will always want their parents, love their parents, look to their parents...you can remove them from them but that will not erase what's been done or stop it from shaping their life. You can fill up their heart, but somehow the hole left behind where parents should have been will transcend it. You can't save a child from their own mother; one way or the other, they'll have to live with her in the end. That's what we're trying to do by illegalizing abortion: get between the mother and the child that's inside her body and save it from her. I mean I'm someone who thinks that just growing inside a mother who's ambivalent and resentful about your existence can cause you trouble. I think I've done it to one of my kids. This shit runs deep. I look at my sister's sister in law who's formula feeding and (admittedly, bitches about it) can't afford it, and her baby has all this gas and reflux and is inconsolable and the woman is complaining to Laura about how her engorgement won't go away and the kid doesn't want a pacifier, and yeah ok I'm a weirdo I guess because I can actually cry about that situation. I would nurse that baby. But that baby doesn't want me. It wants it's mother. And I can't make it's mother do a damn thing. And a part of me wants to be able to force that, too, you know? There is a part of me that thinks, if there was no formula available except by prescription when there was a real problem, women like that would feed their damn babies.
Or else they'd have wet nurses and go in the back yard and milk the goat or whatever else was done for centuries back when women didn't want to nurse their babies. My mother in law's mom gave them all corn syrup and some flour concoction. I don't even know how they lived. It's like the back alley abortion of illegalized breastfeeding I guess.
My admittedly copout answer to all of this is still, "I'm glad I'm not the one in charge".
Feel free to comment and don't worry about offending me.
Today was just as needy - all our boys are hoarse and cranky - but Grant was here so it wasn't nearly so nutty for me. Tomorrow, though, he starts a 3 day spell of 12 hour shifts :x Plus commute. Somebody saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaave me, let your warm hands melt...ok probably most of you don't watch Smallville.
One thing you get a lot of done when you're forced to sit, stand or lay basically captive with no entertainment, is thinking. I've composed most of a story (mentally) that I want to submit to a magazine. I've come full circle and back again politically, on all sorts of issues. There are so many things I'd like to write about, but really I don't think I'll have very much time.
Every single thing I catch a byline about, hear a mention of on tv or NPR, EVERYTHING makes me like Obama more and Hillary less.
I had a kind of epiphany the other day, about the abortion thing. It's one of those things I can't please anyone with - the liberals reading are going to slap there foreheads and think I'm pretty dense for just coming around to it and the conservatives are going to think I'm moving to the dark side, but hey I'm getting used to ideological isolation ;)
Anyway, basically...I don't believe in abortion, as previously stated. I think it's wrong, it's killing, it's sad, tragic, whatever. I don't hate people who've HAD abortions, I just think it's a procedure I see very differently than they do. So I try to weigh things, you know, in my mind, I try to figure out how I should prioritize my political life. People die in wars, that's horrible. People die in electric chairs, THAT's horrible. I can't control any of this, I get just one vote, and of course when it really comes right down to it I've always felt that if I WAS given the power to say abortion would be illegal..I'm not sure I could do that. It would save a bunch of unborn babies, it would endanger some desperate women, it would enrage a whole LOT of people who have totally different belief systems than me and it would feel like I was forcing total strangers to undergo life altering circumstances because I think they should. Which is, you know, wack.
Though I will not lie, part of me is like, it's not ME saying they have to undergo life altering circumstances, it's basic nature, it's biology, it's God's will, whatever you want to call it or think it is I didn't get anybody pregnant. How did we get around to a point where a fetus is a burden nobody should be forced to bear, or an infringement of basic rights? That's ridiculous.
But the rest of me is confused. I think I should have sovereign rights over how and where and when I want to birth any baby I gestate. Regardless of whether someone less or more informed or educated thinks it's more dangerous, regardless even of whether or not it IS more dangerous. Because...why? Because it's my body. Because it's my baby. Because nobody else is up in this but us.
Well. This is where I start to think maybe from certain perspectives I'm trying to have my cake and eat it too. I mean you can't even pass laws granting fetuses personhood or else you can try a woman for attempted murder if she refuses a c-section. Or reckless endangerment or whatever the hell "they" term it to be.
Again the pro-life part of me speaks up, NO, you can choose to educate your born child however you see fit or to feed it anything that will keep it alive, but you can't beat it or kill it. There is a line of intent, my birth choices are not intentionally harming like an abortion would be...but I'll bet, I'll just bet there are women out there who are INTENDING to save their unborn kid WITH an abortion, from their abusive spouse or their life of poverty or their severely bipolar genes or who knows what. I'll bet there are women who cry their eyes out, haunted and grieving for a child they just can't inflict this or that life on. I disagree, yeah, but who the hell am *I*, in that highly personal deal?
There are a lot of gray areas here (that is a cliche for a reason). A lot. There are things I did "wrong" with my first two kids, wrong by my definition for myself, I mean. I didn't know about cloth diapers, I fed jarred baby food and weaned at a year and I didn't even know what a sling was. I did a lot right too, I was a good mother, I was a GREAT mother for an 18 year old with back to back kids and very little support - they were read to and played with and healthy and happy and I never yelled at or hit or neglected anyone. But my house was a big nasty mess and I stayed in a bad situation with them for too long, out of teenage stupidity and misplaced loyalty and who knows what else, that put them in danger...
Basically I went around in big mental circles like this for a long long time the other day. God entrusts kids to our care knowing we're sinners, knowing we're selfish, knowing we don't know the future. He entrusts them to us and then...he sits back and watches. He watches everything. And maybe some of it is bad, but he doesn't step in to stop you. He gives you free will.
That was my epiphany. God gives us free will. And maybe Christians are being really backwards trying to stop abortion by making it unattainable and impossible. That's not what God does. I'm not sure I always agree with it, but the trendy way for modern Christians to gauge all answers is supposed to be to ask "What Would Jesus Do?" Jesus would grant people free will. He already HAS granted people free will. He'd talk to them and love them and help them if they asked for it, and advise them if they felt like listening, but mostly he would just be present. And forgive whoever needed it if they said they were sorry. And deal with it who knows which way after we all die and know all the stuff none of us can know now.
If we look around and there are doctors who think it's important or at least ok to provide abortions and women who go to them to have them done, maybe (well, obviously) the thing to do is to step in and figure out how to make this world a place a woman would want to have a baby in. Not to (this is where I meant to say maybe) criminalize them both and illegalize sin.
This was all inspired by an article I was linked to by a commenter, that was titled something like, "Why I'm pro-life and voting for Obama with a clear conscience". The whole thing was about how it's peoples' hearts, not their laws, that have to change if we want abortion to lessen or even end, and that Obama will make this country a place where it isn't so scary to get pregnant. It seemed very cut and dry at the time. In the days since, though, I've gone on to wonder...
What about protecting the innocent?
Because we DO punish people for hurting born children. We can't prevent it but we penalize for it because some things SHOULD just be black-and-white wrong, gray areas aside.
...Or do we? I'm someone who's against CPS involvement in the vast majority of cases because I think parents have sovereign rights and that kids will always want their parents, love their parents, look to their parents...you can remove them from them but that will not erase what's been done or stop it from shaping their life. You can fill up their heart, but somehow the hole left behind where parents should have been will transcend it. You can't save a child from their own mother; one way or the other, they'll have to live with her in the end. That's what we're trying to do by illegalizing abortion: get between the mother and the child that's inside her body and save it from her. I mean I'm someone who thinks that just growing inside a mother who's ambivalent and resentful about your existence can cause you trouble. I think I've done it to one of my kids. This shit runs deep. I look at my sister's sister in law who's formula feeding and (admittedly, bitches about it) can't afford it, and her baby has all this gas and reflux and is inconsolable and the woman is complaining to Laura about how her engorgement won't go away and the kid doesn't want a pacifier, and yeah ok I'm a weirdo I guess because I can actually cry about that situation. I would nurse that baby. But that baby doesn't want me. It wants it's mother. And I can't make it's mother do a damn thing. And a part of me wants to be able to force that, too, you know? There is a part of me that thinks, if there was no formula available except by prescription when there was a real problem, women like that would feed their damn babies.
Or else they'd have wet nurses and go in the back yard and milk the goat or whatever else was done for centuries back when women didn't want to nurse their babies. My mother in law's mom gave them all corn syrup and some flour concoction. I don't even know how they lived. It's like the back alley abortion of illegalized breastfeeding I guess.
My admittedly copout answer to all of this is still, "I'm glad I'm not the one in charge".
Feel free to comment and don't worry about offending me.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-02-16 10:51 am (UTC)And I still totally know where I was coming from.
It's just a lot to think about for me right now, I guess, because I really can see every damned side of it, although I'll never agree with the one that thinks it isn't a life or something of value at risk.