neadods | Musings on floods and reproductive rights

I saw a bit of footage about the tsunami today. Unlike the Hollywood images of a wall of water slamming into a town like Godzilla, this showed water just rising. No waves, no ripples at all, just rising - and rising and rising and rising, at the rate of about an inch per half-second. Slow, quiet, relentless.

I have a sudden understanding of the Genesis flood story. I know that Bob Ballard supposedly discovered "how the Biblical flood happened," but can't you also see this? Another earthquake. Another tsunami. The water washes all into the sea, and over time the story goes "the village was covered and almost all died," to "the island was covered and they all died" to "the world was covered," to "the world was covered and stayed covered for a week" "No a month!' "Forty days and forty nights..." And so on, whisper-down-the-alley style until legends are put into writing.

Closer to home, I'm ending up in a reproductive rights sidebar fight/discussion with someone in

ginmar's comments. Basically, she asked for Gin's comments on her thoughts on abortion. (Boiled down: for the life of the mother/cases of rape=okay For contraceptive failure=not okay. In those cases, the mother should bear the child and put it up for adoption or otherwise face the consequences. She later pointed out that she meant "consequences" and not "punishment" because kids aren't really all that bad.)

She got my comments instead, and you can probably imagine them. (Kefir, I did mention your brother as a rebuttal to the notion that kids are naturally good.)

I've invited her here to discuss the issue, or at least to look at the news I've found on the subject. This is the open thread for discussion on the topic.

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However, once that kid is more than halfway through "cooking", you have a possibility that the kid could survive outside the womb, and in that case, I honestly think that they need to finish and carry the kid to term.
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The majority of birth defects can't be detected any early than 2nd trimester at best ... and most women will seek second opinions. Late term abortions are, sadly, done on much-wanted pregnancies that have gone wrong, not on women who want a "mulligan" on the whole thing. :-( Even though I'm childfree by choice, I have the utmost sympathy for women who have to make such a horrible decision.

Ah, yes, but I did say that I myself would do so if my own meds were to cause a kid to be in such a drastic state of health that they would not survive long or would have horrible nasty health problems. Yes, I did specify due to the meds I'm currently on now, but if it comes down to it, if the kid is going to be born in very bad shape and will likely die early due to said defects, then it's better to terminate it at that stage.

Life/health of the mother/child is something I will never fight someone on having an abortion for.

But there are actually some women out there, who because they either didn't do something about it soon enough or couldn't afford to do it soon enough, will try to have a non-health related abortion later in the pregnancy. And that, I cannot in good conscience support.

I know people who've had late-term abortions, yes. And in every case, it was because the health of the mother was at stake. If a choice must be made between the life of the mother and the life of the fetus, then I have always been firmly on the side of giving the mother her life. The woman can survive without the child, but the child's likelihood of survival without the mother is another question.

I do not envy the choices some women have had to make in late term, either due to their own health or the health of the child, it is a horrible experience to have to go through. If it is because of health reasons, I will never even think of standing in the way. But if it is because "I don't want to", I have an objection to it.

As I said, if it was a choice between "allow them all" and "don't allow them at all", I'll go for the choice of allowing all of them... but I won't like the ones that are later term.

But then, what we're really boiling down to here isn't so much "what I would do because I feel it's right" to "what people would be allowed to do."

'cause off the top of my head, I can think of a dozen things I wouldn't do with a gun to my head, but I don't have a right to tell other folks not to do 'em...

My point in the original conversation is more that life, particularly reproduction, isn't tidily black and white. There are so many shades of grey, and then you get into the question of "I don't like that shade, but I wouldn't stop you from coloring with that crayon" to "Now, that's just not right, period." I keep throwing shades of grey at her to see how she adjusts black and white thinking to it.

As someone else pointed out, most of us were adults when this child was *born.* I try to keep that in front of me. Add her relative youth to the fact that she practices a religion which *deliberately* keeps its practitioners ignorant and tells women that the whole of their purpose is to life support for a uterus, and you understand her position a little bit better.

The thing that always blows people away is that I used to be just as ignorantly anti-choice as the individual in question. Then I got out into the world and discovered that, as you point out, there are a myriad of grey shades.

She does, however, remind me of my favorite quote by Oscar Wilde: "I am no longer young enough to know everything."

"I am no longer young enough to know everything."

Heh. My dad phrases it "You're never as smart in your life as the day you graduate from high school."

Musings on floods and reproductive rights

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