Why Politics Makes Me Hurt

Many people today put their political labels on such a pedestal that even the "compassionate" learn to harden themselves and even the logical learn not to think for themselves. It doesn't matter whether you are conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat, if you let your political persuasion decide your views for you, then you have lost sight of your humanness, at least just a little bit.

Let me give two examples: abortion and the poor.

First, let's examine poverty issues. While I do not think either of the major parties has come up with adequate ideas for how to help the poor, I think the Republican party often forgets to be compassionate. Not having a solution is quite different from not giving a damn because you think they somehow deserve it. And anyone who doesn't want the government to be part of the solution had better be doing something on a private citizen level to help, or he or she is a hypocrite of the most selfish kind.

Now what about abortion? The Democratic party makes such a dogma of it that its members frequently feel that being pro-choice is the litmus test for being a good liberal. Let's put that litmus test to the test. Again, while I do not think either of the major parties has come up with adequate ideas for how to ensure women's full rights, I think the Democratic party has forgotten the very concept of compassion in naming the right to kill a positive step. The Democratic nominee for president has gone so far as to put himself on record -- by legal vote -- as opposing the right of a born baby to remain alive. Even if you believe that a person does not gain legal personhood until birth, and that until then the baby is merely part of the mother's body, the mother is free to walk away once that baby is outside her body; how is killing him after the fact going to affect her right not to be pregnant? How does the death of a born child help the unpregnant birth mother?

I know that few Republicans are going to read this post and say "Oh, man! Now I realize that I can't stay Republican!" And Democrats are unlikely to say "Now I see that the Democratic party doesn't represent my perspective after all!" I am not asking you to change your affiliation, or your self-image as a liberal or a conservative. But I am asking you to take a moment and ask yourself if the things you support are compassionate to all people involved. Nobody can hear your thoughts; you do not have to feel disloyal for asking the question. It is all right to ask; thinking people do stop and consider sometimes.

If you are to be truly human, ask yourself hard questions. Put aside the rhetoric of your people, no matter which "side" they are on, and just face the questions as though you were looking at them for the first time. Then ask yourself "What can I do to help my brothers and sisters to work toward a kinder world, even in the places where compassion and rhetoric disagree?"

Says my daughter:

The pro-abortion people say that denying abortion makes women slaves to their uterus; but abortion makes them slaves to their vaginas.

There's nothing I can add.

The Death of Inconvenience

Today I was greeted at the entrance to the store by a man seeking petition signatures to get items on the ballot. One of them was called "Death with dignity." I cringe even thinking about what it means. "If you have any dignity, you'll off yourself when you become inconvenient."

If that sounds cynical, ask yourself what the message of abortion on demand is. Take a refresher course on the Michael Schiavo School of Disability Management. Let's face it, those who are not 100% self-reliant are treated like parasites on society, no thought given to their past or future accomplishments, or to the fact that by the very fact of their life they have dignity.

So we call it "choice" and kill inconvenient babies. We call it "dignity" and hurry the elderly on their way. We call it "right to die," and we decide for the disabled that they can't really want to live. And we pat ourselves on the back for having brought ourselves to this advanced, modern, humanist way of thinking. We value humans so much that we convince ourselves that the ones who don't have any value should be gone to help those who do have value to have a better human existence. Not only that, but we then go on to convince ourselves it's a kindness we have done.

All of this reminds me of the quote attributed to Ben Franklin, that democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner. We cannot truly call ourselves enlightened until we start caring about the needs of the sheep.

Sickened

I'm just sickened when I read the news. One mother is accused of microwaving her baby. Another killed her toddler in a murder suicide as revenge on her ex husband. And there was the recent national news about Baby Grace, whose mother and stepfather tortured and killed her.

And I ache and feel nauseated over each one of these. I hear my tiny one cry, and it makes me go all mushy. I am outraged... and so are we all. But where is the outrage, hurt, nausea, over the millions of tiny ones deliberately and legally killed every year? How can we call ourselves compassionate if we put political theories on such a high pedestal that we no longer care whom they hurt?

That New Pill

I don't know how many times I would have jumped at the idea, when I was younger, to take a pill to make my periods go away. Now that I'm older, they've come out with such a pill (a contraceptive) and I'm less enthusiastic. In fact, I'm a little worried. I know everyone has already hashed out the contraceptive arguments, so I think I'll gloss by those for now, not wanting to repeat what has already been said. What I really want to say is that there is a whole list of reasons that taking a pill to stop your periods sounds like a bad idea.

1. The pill is a contraceptive. Every contraceptive method has a failure rate, and the most common way of knowing when a contraceptive has failed is by a missed period. A woman on this pill may go a long time before she realizes she's pregnant. In the meantime, she is not getting prenatal care, she is not likely to know her due date, and the pills may be harming her unborn child. Where a chance of pregnancy exists, the idea of eliminating the most common method of pregnancy detection seems at least unwise.

2. The period exists for a reason. It is not an illness to be corrected, and in fact for a reproductive age woman not to have them can cause health problems. Especially if the body thinks it is pregnant (which is how this and other typical birth control pills work), the endometrium lines the uterus for implantation and nutrition. Without periods, this endometrial lining cannot wash itself out and refresh. I very seriously doubt that the long term effects (like 5-20 years) of this pill on the endometrium and uterus have been fully tested. I have a strong suspicion that in a decade we'll be seeing a whole lot more Pelvic Inflammatory Disease and bacterial infections, as well as damage to the uterine wall from old endometrial tissue.

3. Most women who go on hormonal contraceptives want to have babies someday. Again, I doubt sufficient testing on long-term use and future fertility.

If anyone knows of any studies on the long term repercussions of this pill, I would be grateful if you could point me to them.

Bombeck and Feminism

I'm reading a biography of Erma Bombeck, which expresses Erma's attitude about women's rights like this:

"The problem with the women's movement is that it's been too elitist." Erma meant that the leaders of the movement had usually been women who had never been housewives, had never had children, and, in some cases, had never been married.

This really points to what my problem has always been with the so-called women's movement and feminism in general. While they claim to be fighting for the rights of all women, or even just their own rights, what they are really fighting for is the right to tell me what to do. They claim to be fighting for the right to be professionals, when many or most of them already are; then they go on to label any choice that differs with their own (such as the choice to stay home and raise children) as oppression or in some other way harmful.

Let me clarify here and now that if wanting women to receive equal pay for equal work is feminism, I'm a feminist. If contending that women deserve every bit as much respect as men deserve, I'm a feminist. If supporting women in the choice to work or not is feminism, sign me up!

If, on the other hand, feminism means pitting women against each other, I don't much like it. If the working woman, in the name of feminism, has the option of degrading the housewife for making a different choice than she has made, I do not believe the feminist is truly advancing the cause of women at all. Rather, the woman who degrades traditional womanhood brings harm to all women. This is a brand of feminism I cannot endorse.

If all things female must be abrogated for the sake of women's rights, then the fight itself merely reflects a belief of the movement itself that womanhood is despicable.

Demand Truth in Advertising

I've gotten fed up with the idea that "choice" requires that women be denied full disclosure about medical procedures, medications, how they work, and what their risks are.

The condom, widely promoted as a deterrent to sexually transmitted diseases, does not prevent the most prevalent STD, Human Papilloma Virus. It also does not prevent Herpes, and the pores in latex are approximately 1000 times larger than the AIDS virus. Condoms continue to be promoted for the prevention of STDs and AIDS without this disclaimer.

The IUD and IUC are known only to prevent implantation, not conception, yet both are listed in medical literature as contraceptives. Women who do not choose abortion are being tricked into inducing abortion with these abortifacients.

Progesterone only contraceptives, known to work almost exclusively by preventing implantation and not conception, are marketed as contraceptives. Women who do not choose abortion are being tricked into inducing abortion with these abortifacients.

"The Pill," or the traditional two hormone birth control pill, is known to have a dual action of contraception and an abortifacient "backup" action; yet this information is not listed on packaging or package inserts. Women who do not choose abortion are being tricked into inducing abortion with these abortifacients.

Abortion is marketed as the destruction of "tissue" but mothers are routinely left ignorant about the state of development of this "tissue" before making the choice to destroy it. Abortion practitioners and promoters are fighting to make it illegal to obtain this information by ultrasound.

It is time for us to DEMAND the truth. They tell us that we have choices, but we deserve the right to make informed choices. We have a right to demand that providers of birth control and sex-industry medical chemicals and procedures be legally required to tell us the truth.

Women's liberation has supposedly made us equal to men; so why are we still being exploited for the profit of medical companies and practitioners by being denied access to full and accurate information about our own health care?

Get the word out. Spread it far and wide. Tell your representatives and senators. We have the right to know the truth.

Please distribute this appeal to everyone you know. They deserve to know the truth.

Who's Really Benefitting?

Dawn Eden, in her usual delight of words writes a brief exposition of the lyrics of a song, in "From Bed to Verse." I highly recommend the read.

In it, she describes a feminist discussion about the meaning of the song, being the way men use women. Dawn describes the ache of sleeping with a person when words of love have not been expressed. All I could think was how very sad... not that men are using women in such a way, but that today women are asking to be so used. It's a "right" to be used and tossed. A right guaranteed by everyone from the abortion industry to many state governments.

I really cannot understand how people who purport to stand up for the "rights" of women can so highly recommend their emotional bruising and physical using as an expression of emancipation. If that's freedom, I'll pass.