Happy Independence
Day! My flag is on
display now out a front window and I’m just taking life easy today. Summer is
definitely here, along with summer flowers. My friend Jennifer in Canada just sent
me these lovely images of flowers in her garden.
Oh my gosh, I forgot to post this flag cake image for July 4, so now here it is!
Alex is not back from Costa Rica, so
I wonder what’s going on with him there? No word as yet.
Daughter Stephanie
visited from Honolulu recently, as mentioned before. She must have raided old
photo albums while here, as she just posted on Facebook a long-ago Christmas
photo of me with my late former husband, Tom.
That photo must
have been taken before we became parents, as no children appear. I think that
was during a fairly tranquil, hopeful period that we experienced when living in
Sacramento, California. I do feel nostalgia looking at that photo and feel some
regret that our life together so many years later was shattered. The photo was
taken well before we moved to Washington, DC, in 1969 with our 2 older kids who
were quite small then, right to the very same house where I still live today. We
eventually became parents of 4 kids.
The future is
never guaranteed and change is a fact of life. After my husband left us in 1980
after 24 years of marriage to marry his young office assistant, I was initially
devastated. He was totally blind, so had relied heavily on me, making us more
interconnected that perhaps most couples. But I actually rebounded rather quickly
and was able to provide for my family, branching out into occupational therapy,
a field I had never explored before. I had a serious suitor who wanted to marry
me, but I wasn’t ready to do that again and he died in the late 1990s.
Unexpected events
happen all the time. We try to guard against them, but cannot eliminate them
entirely. From my perspective, being divorced after 24 years of marriage was an
accident, a shock over which I had no control. But it was not
the worst I was to experience. That came when my older son died suddenly after
a work accident in 1994. The next year, a Cuban foster son, an unaccompanied
minor who had arrived in 1980 with Mariel, died of AIDS. Their deaths blindsided
me, left me completely devastated, and were totally out of my control. I became
a walking zombie for a few years, as is recounted in more detail near the end
of this posting and also in my books. I pray that no more younger family
members go before me. Sometimes, I just sit out by son’s grave in my backyard and
recall the good times of our life together.
In 2000, seeking
a completely new environment, I joined the Peace Corps in Honduras at age 62 and
stayed there for 3 1/2 years, extending my term by more than an extra year (read
more about it in my Honduras book). Then, after returning to DC, I worked as an
on-call Spanish interpreter, a new job for me, traveling all around the city on
public transportation. I had to take a test telephonically before being
approved, interpreting in both directions and also simultaneously going one
way, then reversing direction, which takes immense concentration, and also to submit
a chest X-ray and fingerprints. Being an interpreter meant being intimately involved
in medical, legal, and other human dramas, though not as a direct participant.
I only gave it up when the pandemic struck, as I don’t have car and am no longer
willing to risk Covid by traveling to in-person assignments or on public
transportation.
After Peace
Corps, I had also started making annual medical/humanitarian volunteer missions
to Honduras up through Feb./March 2020, when medical brigades there were
halted.
(Again, please overlook any typos or misspellings. This is a tricky format to work with. My main intent here is to share personal news as well as observations about the wider world. I welcome your comments, which almost always come in via email.)
Personal flash
alert! So now, after much
consideration, I’m on my way back to Honduras once again in mid-July. I’ve
already bought a new wheelchair to take as I gave away the one that I’d been
saving to someone here who needed it, as per the photo below and after that, you see me in the new wheelchair.
My motivation to return
started out with online requests from Hondurans. I also had a special offer
from a former Peace Corps friend, now retired in Honduras, offering to drive me
around the country in his car, provided I covered expenses. That was a very tantalizing
proposition, eliminating the need to get in and out of commercial buses with my
folded-up wheelchair and all my other give-away items. I am no longer agile and, because of Covid, wouldn’t want to be exposed to other bus passengers. I used
to enjoy talking to fellow bus riders, but now that would be risky. I’ve always
returned home empty-handed from such trips, with Honduran airport staff
surprised to see me walking onto the plane on my own, after having arrived in a
wheelchair. This will be my last blog posting until after my return, so you
won’t hear from me again until later. This is an extra-long post before my
journey, to hold readers until the next one. You don’t have to read this one all
at once. (Should I write another book instead?)
This blog is mostly about
one woman’s life and observations, namely, my own. While I hope it’s proving informative
to readers, it also helps me try to make sense of the world. Sometimes, I scroll
back to a particular date to remember what happened then, such as on Jan. 6, or
even to my last visit to Honduras in Feb./March 2020. I do appreciate people's feedback, mostly coming in via email, and sometimes I share portions of it here.
After many New
Yorkers and other city dwellers, including those here in DC, had moved out during
the pandemic, some are now coming back, according to both cities’ 2022 population
figures. As a city dweller myself, living in close proximity to the capitol,
Supreme Court, national mall, federal buildings, monuments, and museums, I feel
able to monitor the national pulse up close and personal, and hope to remain living
here in my own home until the end.
But some scary things have
been happening in our immediate neighborhood, and not just package thefts. This
report appeared recently on the neighborhood website:
I was with my kid in the
playground at 8th and penn across from Trader Joe’s when a man entered the
playground and tried to take a child. Parents at the park thankfully stopped
him, but he got away. Police are currently looking for him in the eastern
market area. I was only able to get pics as he was walking away from the park.
Here is another worrisome report
on the neighborhood website. Still, I have vowed to stay on and stand my ground
after more than 50 years in this neighborhood.
Around 2pm this afternoon,
MPD officers responded to several calls in the area of Eastern Market involving
a suspect that reportedly assaulted multiple individuals. Concerned citizens
followed the suspect and called police. Responding 1D officers located the
suspect and gave chase on foot, until the suspect entered a vacant residential
building. Our officers quickly established a perimeter around the building and
additional assets were sent to the scene to assist, including MPD’s helicopter,
which scanned the rooftops around 6th and Pennsylvania Ave SE. Shortly after
3pm, with the consent of the property manager, members of the 1D Crime
Suppression Team made entry into a locked apartment in the building. The
suspect, an adult male, was located inside and taken into custody without
incident.
Just an
observation now about gmail, which I have as well as Yahoo mail, namely,
that when I’m writing a message there, not only are spelling errors
automatically corrected in either English or Spanish, but when I leave out a word
in either language, gmail inserts the proper word. Is gmail a mind reader, or
what?
Almost daily, I read
the Wash. Post and NYTimes online, also listen regularly to NPR.
Now, with digital access, newspapers can reach so many readers, almost too many
to count. The Post has a print circulation of 160,000 and 3 million digital
subscribers. The Times estimates 10 million readers in both print and digital.
Many New Yorkers buy the print copy from a sidewalk vendor. My daughter Stephanie
in Hawaii and her husband are online subscribers to both the Post and the
Times.
What about fake
news? On this blog and
in my personal life, like most people in the world today, I rely on many sources
for news and information, including print, broadcasts, and the internet. I’ve
also contributed to them all, appearing occasionally on radio and television, also
in print through my articles and books, as well as via the internet with daily email
exchanges and with this blog. I've also given book talks in person. But our cyber/electronic life today almost overshadows
our in-person exchanges with others and even our reliance on print and broadcasts, in huge contrast with earlier times. My sister and her husband refuse to
participate in this new world by having no internet, though they do watch TV
and have a daily newspaper delivered to their door. To communicate with them, I
must write a letter, call, or visit them.
Those of us with
cyber connections have access to so much more information than before and enjoy
instantaneous communication with others all over the world. This keeps us informed
and engaged but also perhaps too involved digitally to the detriment of in-person
relationships, and also exposes us to potential “deep fakes,” that is, to realistically
engineered cyber and audio sometimes hard to distinguish from the real thing. Apparently,
it can be produced by anyone and everyone—even amateurs. So, how can we recognize,
police, and control our actual consumption of “fake news”? It seems that every
new advance induces a negative counter-development and this is one. Donald
Trump has called attention to the existence of “fake news,” by twisting real news
into “fake” and vice versa. So I'll put a challenge out there, how do we know what
is real and actually happening beyond our immediate observation? I have no answer
and can only hope that sources cited on this blog are as reliable and genuine as
I trust them to be. I also try to be as forthright as possible with my own personal, firsthand
observations.
Wash.
Post,
Trump
knew his supporters were armed on January 6 and tried to
insist on leading them on their march to the Capitol, said a former White House
aide. (We who live nearby all witnessed the commotion on that day.)
NYTimes, Aide’s Testimony Highlights Legal Risk for Trump Cassidy Hutchinson, a young, very credible former
aide to Mark Meadows, Trump’s White House chief of staff, gave explosive Congressional
testimony, saying that Trump knew
his supporters were armed and potentially violent but encouraged them to help
him overthrow the 2020 election anyway. She also testified that a Secret
Service agent told her that Trump had tried to grab the steering wheel of his
armored limousine to turn back to the Capitol after the Secret Service informed
him that they’d be unable to take him there on Jan. 6. Considering Hutchinson’s
testimony as a party insider to be trustworthy, even the conservative Washington
Examiner has pulled back on its support of Trump. Is this a death blow to
Trump’s future candidacy or will his supporters rise up to defend him even more
fiercely?
The Guardian, Mark Meadows’ associate threatened ex-White House aide
before her testimony
Daily Beast, Fox
News Anchor Martha MacCallum Defends Trump Smashing Lunch Against the Wall:
‘Not Wholly Out of Character’
Donald Trump
was obviously upset about losing the 2020 election and tried to reverse the
outcome in very childish ways.
Social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger identified a bias whereby people of low ability disguise it by a show of overconfidence. In their studies, people who scored the lowest on tests of logical reasoning and grammar had the most inflated opinion of themselves. Does this describe a certain prominent politician? No further comment.
NPR, A host of companies have announced job cuts or hiring freezes in just the last two weeks. They range from Tesla and JPMorgan Chase to Redfin and Coinbase. Netflix last week announced a second round of job cuts for the year, this time eliminating around 300 positions.
Why
would a female enabler like Maxwell want to lure young sex victims to her lover?
Was it simply to please him and remain in his good graces? Maxwell had been expected
to pay dearly for her role, especially as Epstein himself is dead and can no
longer be punished.
And
now she actually has been sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Wash. Post, 46 migrants found dead in San Antonio inside sweltering
truck,
(The toll has now risen to 53
and 4 men have been charged.)
LA Times, The 53 migrants who died in Texas
included this college-educated Honduran couple
It’s happened
again, with numerous migrants from Mexico and Central America now dead after
trying to illegally enter the US. Those of us already living here, confronting daily
problems, can only wonder what folks expect once they cross that magic border?
Probably it’s the same as many folks here anticipate when getting married, winning
the lottery, or getting religion, that they are entering a new problem-free existence
or even one of never-ending bliss. However, as those of us who already live
here can readily attest, there is no such nirvana, at least not here, rather only
life’s regular ups and downs. Those who survive the crossing may actually come
to experience some improvement, but was it worth all the risk to their own lives
and to those of their loved ones? Most of us do tend to justify previous
decisions after-the-fact, as undocumented immigrants probably do as well,
provided they are lucky enough to have survived and not get deported.
Modest traffic can
also go in the other direction. Some Americans and Canadians are retiring to
Mexico where their dollars will go further. A friend from DC, now deceased, who
bought a home in an expatriate enclave in Mexico, kept urging me to join him
there. A good friend right now, as mentioned, has retired to Honduras. Of
course, a big part of feeling comfort and satisfaction in living anywhere requires
not experiencing privation—in having adequate shelter and enough to eat. That’s
why Kamala Harris is promoting more wealth generation and better income distribution
in Central America hoping to keep people there from wanting to leave, but, so far, she’s
had limited success. That was also part of our efforts in the Peace Corps,
which is only tentatively reviving service now, though not yet in Central
America or Mexico.
Wall St. Journal, Latin Grammy Winner Gets 9-Year Prison Sentence in
Cuba
Cuban court sentences rapper Maykel Castillo
and artist Luis Manuel Otero for contempt, public disorder and desecrating
national symbols. (I have
met Otero.)
This is from my friend at the Hudson Institute: China’s Forced Organ Harvesting
Continues These organs reputedly are taken from prisoners
to be executed, including Uyghur Muslims, Falun Gong members, and prisoners of
conscience.
NY Times, Patient and Confident, Putin Shifts
Out of Wartime Crisis Mode He
is said to be back again to hunting and fishing.
Reuters, Danish police say several dead after
Copenhagen mall shooting As people come out of Covid lockdowns and gather again,
even relatively safe countries are seeing gun killings. This attack in Denmark follows a deadly shooting in neighboring Norway
last week, in which two people were killed by a lone shooter in the capital
Oslo. Are some copy-cat shootings?
HuffPost, 2 Killed, 3 Cops Wounded In Texas By
Suspect With Assault-Style Rifle And 'Battle Belt'
WSB Cox, ‘Too much mayo’: Subway customer arrested
after shooting 2 employees, killing 1 over sandwich order
An armed customer in the Atlanta area shot 2
young recent hires, injuring one, killing the other, after complaining that his
sandwich had “too much mayo.” If he had not possessed a firearm, there might
have been a shouting match over the excess mayonnaise, but not injury and
death.
AP, Newspaper:
Oklahoma gun deaths rose as firearms access grew
OKLAHOMA CITY— Gun deaths in Oklahoma have increased
since a “permitless carry” law allowing people over the age of 21 to carry a
gun without a permit or training went into effect in 2019, according to a
recent review.
The Oklahoman analyzed
state medical examiner data and found that Oklahoma has recorded some of its
deadliest months since the law took effect. The expansion of gun rights was
touted as a measure to make Oklahomans safer by allowing them to defend
themselves. But as state lawmakers have increased access to firearms over
the past decade, firearm suicides, accidents, and homicides in the state have
increased, The Oklahoman reported. As usual, more guns mean more gun
deaths.
Fox, Chicago 4th of July
weekend violence begins with 22 people shot, 4 fatally, in 20 hours
Homicides have
reached 104 in the city this year, a 21 percent increase over this time in 2021.
NBC News, 1-year-old fatally shot by 8-year-old playing with gun
in Florida motel
A father
took his loaded gun along on vacation and hung it inside a motel closet. He
apparently felt he needed to have that gun with him, although he left out the
door without it, leaving 3 children unsupervised in the room while his partner
slept. An 8-year-old found the gun and shot the 2 other children, killing one. A
gun, if actually needed, must be guarded with utmost caution, but folks seem to
just leave them around where kids can find them, often with fatal results. It
happens all the time, but gun owners seem unaware that the danger to their
loved ones from their owning a gun is greater than if they actually didn’t have
one.
WTMJ, 3-year-old dies after accidentally shooting
firearm
WJLA, Man fires handgun at teens who
said they mistakenly pulled in his Va. driveway
For that, he
tried to kill them?
When do wanton gun deaths and injuries reach the point where
the American public and even the Supreme Court decide it’s time to reinterpret “the right to bear arms”?
Progress
Index,
Chesterfield
toddler dies in unattended hot car. His father killed himself afterward
If
you put your precious young child in your car in a protective car seat in case
of an accident, why can’t you remember to take that child out afterward? What
is so important that you would simply forget? You turn off the motor, you unload
purchases or a briefcase, you take care to lock the car doors, so what about
your baby? It happens every summer when a number of children die in hot cars
and, in winter, others die in freezing cars.
NBC
News,
1-year-old
dies after being left in hot car outside Walgreens in Georgia for hours
AP, More than 1 million voters switch to
GOP in warning for Dems
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has now officially joined the
Supreme Court, replacing now retired Justice Stephen Breyer. On the last day of June, Brown Jackson was sworn in at
noon just as Breyer was vacating his seat, swearing a Constitutional oath
administered by Chief Justice John Roberts and a Judicial oath
administered by departing Justice Breyer himself.
Before Brown Jackson came on board, Amy
Coney Barrett was the only high court member who was a mother, in her case
of 5 bio children and 2 adopted from Haiti. So when she voted to overturn Roe,
you might say she had “skin in the game.” Subsequently, “abortion rights” protesters
have demonstrated outside her Virginia home. NY Post, Pro-abortion protesters target
Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s home
Politico, Clarence
Thomas claims Covid vaccines are derived from the cells of ‘aborted children Using fetal cells was once routine in vaccine testing and
other medical research, but the practice seems to have been cut back due to
public objections.
Daily Beast, Whoopi Comes for Clarence Thomas:
Your Marriage Rights Are Next!
Many voters
supported Joe Biden only because they opposed Donald Trump. But the prospect of another Trump presidency is very
scary indeed. Still, at this point, support for Biden seems lukewarm at best and no other
Democrat is on the presidential horizon. Harris, so far, does not look viable. So,
what to do? Biden and most other Democratic lawmakers may hope that going big
on “abortion rights” will help them retain voters, especially among women, in
the midterms.
But many lifelong
Democrats, like myself, are not so outraged by the reversal of Roe. I actually thought
that law went too far, though I’m still not ready to vote Republican, never having
done so in my entire life. Many of us would have preferred not to have had to
confront the abortion issue again, which seems to pit 2 rights against each
other, that of a woman who becomes pregnant inadvertently and that of someone
not yet born. Gay rights’ folks have rallied around abortion rights, even
though the issue seldom directly affects them. Pregnancy centers are now being
vandalized, even as abortion clinics had been before. Feelings are running high
on both sides and reconciliation looks out of reach. If there is a middle
ground anywhere, where is it?
Fox, Democrat House candidate in Illinois says
Democratic Party must 'make room at the table' for pro-life Dems
Abortion has
become a news topic impossible to avoid now after the Supreme Court has struck
down Roe vs. Wade. That long-ago decision was apparently not written in stone nor
actually protected by the Constitution, as has just been demonstrated. The
ensuing controversy has led to the coining of the term “Disunited States.”
It’s been hard
for some folks to wrap their heads around the realization that Supreme Court
justices, both those who decided Roe almost 50 years ago, as well as those now on
the bench, are not infallible, but simply ordinary humans with opinions and
prejudices, just like the rest of us. It’s also especially hard for women
who have relied on abortion in case of a contraception failure or their own
mistake to feel that option being threatened, that what they had regarded as a right
may no longer exist, at least in some states. Even women who may never have
personally confronted an abortion decision might still want to preserve that future
choice, just in case.
Podcaster Sarah
Stewart Holland advises “abortion rights” advocates to refer to “abortion care”
and “abortion services” to link abortion in the public mind to routine
medical care. That’s what NPR does. She and others also propose various
strategies to win over the public, including citing the case histories of pregnant
women in trouble. Pro-life folks have yet to produce persuasive arguments on
their side, except to introduce single mothers who had considered abortion but
are now caring for their live babies, which may be more powerful than any
slogan.
I’ve explored the
whole abortion question further, not only because it’s still big news and the
subject of fierce controversy and political debate, but also to try to clarify
my own thinking and position. While I’m past child-bearing and child-rearing
myself, it’s a subject that may impact my kids, as well as people everywhere. For
women, pregnancy may be considered both a privilege and a burden, ardently desired
by some, regarded as a calamity by others. Having been a single parent myself, I
can imagine a woman thinking that she simply cannot go through all this again,
that she cannot add another mouth to feed, bring forth another helpless being needing care. But with abortion, depending on her personal circumstances
and where she lives, she may have the option to reverse course. That, along with
contraception, gives her fertility control than women in past generations never
had, so it’s no surprise that women now are having fewer children. I can
empathize with a woman not wanting to be pregnant who now has the means to
reverse course via abortion, but also can envision a future person who would otherwise
be born. Of course, with birth control, many potential people are never even
conceived.
While diehard “abortion
rights” advocates support abortion at any point in a pregnancy and for any
reason whatsoever, most Americans’ actually hold more nuanced views. About 60%
of Americans do support abortion, but just in the first trimester, approving of
it only beyond that point when there is a problem with the fetus or a threat to
the mother’s health. That is the same timetable being proposed in some red
states where protests are now becoming loudest. And even the most ardent pro-lifers
are not advocating taking away the right to an abortion if a woman’s life or
health are in danger or the fetus has a potentially fatal condition. Dire warnings
about rare fetal defects and other scare tactics have energized “abortion
rights” demonstrators, even though most pro-lifers are not opposed to pregnancy
termination in such cases. Abortion after rape or incest, especially in the
case of a young girl, also has broad support, although some people actually born
in such cases report being glad to be alive.
Back when I was
working as a Spanish interpreter, a girl of 11 or 12 was 8 months pregnant
before her mother even noticed. I considered the stepfather to be the likely
culprit—though, of course, as the interpreter, I did not express an opinion.
The girl admitted to sometimes sleeping in the marital bed, but steadfastly refused
to name the actual father. The pregnancy was so far along that it was expected to
result in a live birth with the baby then being kept within the family. DNA
evidence later might well have pointed to the step-father, something the girl’s
mother seemed to fear, as he was the main family breadwinner, but I was not asked
to follow the case that far.
Pill abortions,
the majority of current procedures, as indicated before, are a done deal and
will go forward regardless. Since the Supreme Court decision was announced,
there has been a run on “morning-after” pills, with some women reportedly just wanting
to keep them on hand. Abortion numbers in the US have been falling steadily as
contraception has improved. Are morning-after pills just an extension of
contraception or do they actually snuff out an incipient individual human life?
What is the line? Could it be when the fetus can start feeling pain and how
would that be determined?
Arguing
against even trying to draw a line is professor Amanda Roth, who herself lost a
twin pregnancy at an intermediate stage. She proposes “gradualism” instead.
The Conversation, When
does the fetus acquire a moral status of a human being? The philosophy of
'gradualism' can provide answers
Amanda Roth, Associate Professor of
Philosophy
“[W]hile a 6- or 8-week embryo might have very minimal status, a
fetus at 32 or 35 weeks has virtually identical moral status to a newborn.
Therefore, the earliest abortion is generally morally unconcerning to someone
with a gradualist view, while third-trimester abortion is seen as a grave
action that requires the strongest of moral reasons. Meanwhile, midpregnancy
fetuses are morally “in between”... by this point in pregnancy
fetuses have not achieved full moral status, but they certainly have
significant moral value – and ending their lives therefore requires moral
justification. Compared with the bright line views, gradualism has the benefit
of making sense of the public’s strong support for early abortion, but hesitating about
terminations in the second and third trimesters.
The Hill, The end of a life: One doctor’s view of abortion
by Dr. Marc Siegel, Opinion
contributor
Another article attempting
to take a measured approach comes from a physician who says that a fetus with a
beating heart appears in the very first trimester of pregnancy, not a mere clump
of cells. But neither does he advocate that all abortions be stopped. Instead, he
argues for making more medical and other resources available to support incipient
life, pointing out that almost unlimited medical and other resources are spent to
keep semi-comatose patients “alive” indefinitely, as in the case of one of his
own relatives. I’ve mentioned before that a woman I know has shown no signs of
consciousness or response for over a year now, but is still breathing on her
own while lying inert in a care facility with a stomach feeding tube. Is she
“alive” and leading a life that has any value or meaning for her? As a member
of her immediate family, I would not have authorized a feeding tube. I would
not want one for myself. When my own 93-year-old mother could only swallow
small sips of water, my siblings and I agreed not to have a feeding tube inserted.
She died peacefully at home with all of us at her side.
Here's what Dr. Seigel has to say: My religion does not assert that life begins at conception,
though at some point a fetus does become a viable being. Exactly when that
point — viability — is reached has continued to be the subject of much debate,
and medical technology has altered our perceptions since 1973, when the court
handed down its Roe ruling...One thing I am certain of ethically is that an
abortion should never be performed based on convenience, or because of external
pressures on a woman, or because a woman cannot afford to raise the child.
Consider that we live in a country where hospitals spend millions of dollars
each day keeping alive people like my relative, who has no viability beyond
artificial life-support. Certainly, we can extend that courtesy to an unborn
child who hasn’t seen life outside of the warmth of the womb.
Reuters, Pro-life is not just opposing abortion, Vatican
says after U.S. ruling Anti-abortion activists should be
concerned with other issues that can threaten life, such as easy access to
guns, poverty and rising maternity mortality rates, the Vatican's editorial
director said on Saturday. In a media editorial on the United States Supreme
Court's ruling to end the constitutional right to abortion, Andrea Tornielli
said those who oppose abortion could not pick and choose pro-life issues. "Being
for life, always, for example, means being concerned if the mortality rates of
women due to motherhood increase."..."Being for life, always, means
asking how to help women welcome new life," he wrote, citing an unsourced
statistic that 75% of women who have abortions live in poverty or are low-wage
earners..."Being for life, always, also means defending it against the
threat of firearms, which unfortunately have become a leading cause of death of
children and adolescents in the U.S."
Daily
Beast,
Abortion
Ruling Is a Start, But U.S. Needs to Go Further, Vatican Says Being pro-life extends beyond concern for
unborn children, though, the Vatican said. “This also means ensuring adequate
sexual education, guaranteeing health care accessible to all and preparing
legislative measures to protect the family and motherhood, overcoming existing
inequalities"... “We need solid assistance to mothers, couples and the
unborn child that involve the whole community, encouraging the possibility for
mothers in difficulty to carry on with the pregnancy and to entrust the child
to those who can guarantee the child’s growth.”
Insider, Some anti-abortion organizations say
they're unprepared to provide services for those who need them as Texas braces
for a surge of births following the overturning of Roe v. Wade: report
Among those receiving help
from Blue Haven is T., a domestic violence survivor and mother of four who was
denied an abortion of her latest pregnancy for being too far along at seven
weeks. Blue Haven will support her family of five for up to a year after the
birth of T.'s son but, with limited donation-based resources, the organization
is forced to turn away other pregnant women in need of support.
It’s certainly much easier and less costly to
provide an abortion for a pregnant woman, especially if she pays for it, than to
provide care and services for a woman giving birth, then to assure care for a newborn thereafter. (Abortion also makes the consequences of sex more equal between men and women.) Many
Texas facilities offering help to pregnant mothers in need have now been caught
unprepared for the end of Roe and for an avalanche of requests. And states adopting
abortion restrictions have not stepped up their services either. The Biden administration
may not dare to offer more assistance to pregnant women or to states for fear
of muddling up its “pro-choice” message before the upcoming elections. But Biden
is promoting more daycare for working mothers.
Are aspirations for achieving a world more
welcoming to new life mere pie-in-the-sky? How and by whose efforts would such support
actually come about? What is the government’s role, either of a state or the
federal government? And why don’t we already offer more help to needy new
mothers? Pro-lifers should be on the frontlines now as advocates, but they too seem
to have been caught unprepared. If fewer abortions mean that more needy mothers and
babies are coming on board, pro-life folks certainly should be out there displaying
signs, not of a fetus in the womb because they’ve partially won that battle, but
rather of a woman now holding her tiny newborn. Support for new mothers is crucial not
only for their families, but for our country and for humankind in general, as the US population and that of many developed nations is already top-heavy with
elders like me, lacking enough young people coming along behind. Granted, with so
many problems in the world today, with so much strife already, the task of creating
a more equitable, more caring world for families poses an overwhelming challenge,
and not just to prevent abortions.
Each citizen’s contributions are the only path forward
for achieving long lasting social improvements. Our own finite, personal efforts
are all each of us has to offer during our brief time here on earth, though not
everyone is on board with helping new mothers and babies, as well as many others in
need, as some folks seem bent only on creating misery for themselves and others.
Do we even consider our own personal life worth
living? And do we, those now alive, have the right to decide on the value of
the future life of someone else, of someone not yet born? No one can really
answer that question and until safe, routine abortion appeared, just in our own
lifetime, it was never even a question that called for an answer.
Until recently, babies—people—simply were born
into an imperfect world, often at times and in situations inconvenient and
stressful for their parents, who then undertook the task of raising them as
best they could, a task that fate had decreed, sometimes while even lacking the
means to feed them, as is still the case for many children today. Of course,
sexual abstinence and same sex relations have always been options that do not
result in births. But often married women felt obligated to submit to sex as
their wifely duty. Men traditionally held agency over female partners, just as
slaveowners once did over slaves and masters over their servants. Even today, workers
submit to the directives of their employers in exchange for wages.
The whole idea of “rights,” that is, of individual
personal autonomy, is itself a modern Western concept. In bygone days as well as
in some places today, tradition and habit have governed and still govern behavior
more than our own idea of individual rights. According to Wikipedia, “rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is
allowed of people or owed to people according to some legal system, social
convention, or ethical theory.” As such, “rights” are not immutable, but are always evolving, reflective of a particular society, and are not actually "universal", although
my friends at Amnesty International might disagree. So “abortion rights” exist only
if most people involved agree they do and, right now, there is significant disagreement,
even in our own country. And this may be the time to extend more specific rights to a fetus
at some point in its development.
On a very practical note, though it’s something
rarely mentioned, when more babies are nursing than is now common in the US, overall
fertility may be reduced or delayed by natural means. And something like the US
baby formula crisis would not arise in other parts of the world where babies are
routinely nursed and don’t require formula. Furthermore, nursing is also a
natural form of birth control, delaying the return of menstruation, though not totally reliable in that respect. Yet many American mothers using bottle
feeding don’t even know that they might delay their period and reduce their risk
of pregnancy by nursing, as well as avoid having to worrying about formula, as
most mothers here no longer adopt this most basic natural process.
Pregnancy as the result of
heterosexual relations is also a natural process, happening since almost forever,
and is how the human race has continued so far. Now many questions have arisen.
Is abortion, which interrupts the natural process of pregnancy, mere “medical
care”? And is the morning-after pill just an extension of birth control and
where does the crossover into ending an incipient individual human life begin? Abortion
either ends the existence of a potential human or an actual one and doesn’t
that distinction matter? Additionally, countless frozen fertilized human ova
are now being held in suspended animation in embryo banks, so what rights would apply
to them or to those who created them? There is no agreement on these answers, which are also related to the current controversy over abortion.
Abortion involves not just an individual
woman and her rights—that is, those of a mother or a potential mother depending
on the definition-- but also the rights of a developing human at the very earliest
stages, a helpless being without any agency. When does the fetus begin to feel pain?
Maybe that’s the threshold that should be considered. We do try to prevent or minimize pain for animals,
after all.
There is a growing consensus about protecting some
animals as sentient beings, certainly of mammals, especially of pet dogs and cats. Even
animals expected to be eaten need to be slaughtered “humanely,” though more consumers
are now opting for veganism and artificial “meat.” But even regarding animals,
a divide exists, as some still extol hunting as a legitimate sport, although the
animal killed will not be eaten, only displayed after death as a trophy. (“Animal
rights” is also largely a Western concept.)
And what about fathers' rights? Is there a point
in fetal development when a father might exert some rights to guarantee the wellbeing
and future existence of his offspring? Our tradition does not recognize a father’s
rights prenatally, but that could change, especially now with gay males taking
custody of infants whose conception and birth they have specifically engineered.
Nor does unwed motherhood, once the main impetus for seeking an abortion, still
carry a stigma. To the contrary, it may now even be hailed as a brave choice.
Yet, pro-life advocates have simply not come up
with adequate or pithy public messages to counter “my body, my choice” and the depiction
of abortion as mere “medical care.” Skipping over the abortion pill phase of
pregnancy termination, which pro-lifers cannot influence except by persuasion, they need to focus instead on laws addressing the direct effects of abortion on the
next developmental phase of what is, at that point, an undeniably human fetus, that is, on
procedures that would end the continued existence of (kill?) that incipient or
future person. Among aborted fetuses, half are female, after all. However, appeals
to religion mostly won’t work. And the social and economic supports must be
there for the long haul that raising a child either by a biological parent or
someone else necessarily entails. That’s not something provided adequately right now for many
babies already being born, so how can it be assured for others not yet born? And those opposed to capital punishment might also be
enlisted to support unborn life as per the “seamless garment” philosophy. So now, get to work, pro-lifers!
Last time, I posted this same photo of a
teenage Texas mother changing the diapers of her twins, born of an accidental
pregnancy, as is actually the case with most pregnancies. In the photo, her
male partner is seen sitting back calmly eating a sandwich. OK, Dad, how about
stepping up and changing those diapers yourself? Those babies are yours as much
as hers.
Star
News [N
Carolina], Men's mysterious silence on their responsibility for pregnancy Where
are the men? Have you noticed the peculiar absence of them from the Roe v. Wade
discussions? It’s as if no one realizes they supply half the genetic material.
Have they “gone fishin’?”
Based on my own experience of pregnancy and
that of other women I’ve known, the very early days, when morning sickness first
kicks in, are quite uncomfortable and might be when a woman first thinks about
having an abortion. But later on, until actually nearing the birth, she often feels
pretty well and in good spirits. Might those hard early days convince a woman to
try to halt the whole thing immediately with an abortion?
Pregnancy is a natural process, one that women
have experienced since time immemorial and is how all the world’s people have come
into being. It trivializes this universal process of gestation and birth to characterize
abortion as just a “medical procedure.” Abortion is a medical intervention halting
crucial gestation and a subsequent birth, but the decision to intervene is
not a medical one except in the case of a serious fetal anomaly or a threat
to the woman’s health, which are not the actual reasons for most abortions. But
that loud message coming from abortion advocates has still gotten the attention
of the American public. Pro-lifers remain far behind in the war of words. While
the Supreme Court has now extended a lifeline to pro-lifers, most have not seized
it by making a compelling case for “choice” on their side.
Kansas City
Star, We women don’t need Roe v. Wade. We can choose not to get
pregnant in the first place
Here’s a woman
who does not regret the loss of Roe.
Roe should die. At 75 years old,
I can remember life before Roe v. Wade, a decision that came out of the 1970s,
a decade when we women became vocal on how we were treated and perceived on
many issues: wages, access to high-level jobs, whether we could work and be
parents. Roe was caught up in the melee. After all these years, it seems that
Roe was an unnecessary issue. All we really needed was access to contraception.
As I remember, we already had access to abortion to save the life of the
mother. That is all we need.
A woman’s right to choose and have control over her own body
means the ability to choose when and under what circumstances to become
pregnant in the first place. The right to be free from any kind of violence,
including rape and incest... Equal wages, job opportunities and child care
should already be rights...These are how we have personal autonomy. Let us stop
bemoaning the fate of Roe and recognize that it was an unnecessary
oversimplification of our rights. Just let it die. Mary Bognich, Overland
Park
It’s a truism
that we all sometimes have regrets and might wish for the chance for a do-over,
and not only for reversing a pregnancy. Almost half of marriages end in
divorce, as happened to me after 24 years of marriage. But the pain of divorce
for me was overshadowed by the loss of my older son Andrew, my very first
child, whose gravestone still remains in my back yard.
When Andrew died,
I later imagined having gone to his place in Florida after his serious work injury
to stay by his side to make sure he didn’t stop breathing in his sleep, as that
was what had actually happened. (I’d been planning to go, but hadn’t left yet
when he died.) Only in my dreams has he ever come back to life again. Then the
following year, when my Cuban foster son Alex died of AIDS, he also began
living only in my dreams. During those dreams, I would pinch my boys’ solid arms
to assure myself that they were really there. They’ve even argued with me in my
dreams, just like in old times. But, of course, when I awake at morning’s light,
I realize with a sudden sinking feeling that both are really gone forever. I
also sometimes dream that I am with my late former husband, always blind in
dreams as in real life, but sometimes acting quite friendly toward me, as
indeed he was during much of our 24-year marriage. As time goes by, my boys and
my ex appear less often during sleep, now replaced by more recent associations and
composites.
///////////////////////////////////////////////////
(Facebook group recommendations)
ALIENS ON EARTH
Cheeky Monkeys
HONDURAS PEACE CORPS
(This looks like a real possibility!)
(ads)
Envío gratis en 2 días
¡Refréscate!
