To the Editor:
Second Opinion: Mansplaining.
If you, as a reader of this column, have no interest in another discussion that touches on abortion, you should skip this entry. I will keep this brief.
Martin is not the only male who defaults to “mansplaining.” He would “never want to misquote anyone at any time,” rather, he is happy to decode my words until I can learn to represent myself properly. It should not be news that a man instructing a woman as to what she really thinks and intends is a dangerous lane in which to pull up.
You are unconvinced by my explanation of how I am both “pro-life” and “pro-choice.” That's fine. You modify the dictionary, then interpret my real mind. You imagine I am asserting rights for women that I would not assert for myself. I laughed at that one. I am long-past the personal dilemma, but I would have to confront the issue in real life to reach my personal decision. I demand the right to that choice for all women.
You state that you are arguing for the rights of “two persons,” the “mother and the child.” If you argued for the rights of women, I missed it. Nothing about a women's right, or no right, to control her own body. You are welcome to your opinion and practice, certainly, but have no business imposing your selected theological, historical, or imagined biological assumptions, on others.
Get off the Pol Pot, please. Beyond that evil regime, there is the Holocaust, Armenia, and Rwanda and more in just the last century, which revealed the depth of horror that humans can inflict on one another with the full knowledge of the “sublimely attentive – and avenging” Deity. One can ask, “who’s in charge here?” But it's ridiculous to blame our tortuous human history on a woman exercising jurisdiction over her own internal organs.
Partial-birth abortion is the terrible decision to terminate a pregnancy on a gestationally-complete foetus. Contrary to Martin’s suggestion, they are performed only under rare and drastic conditions.
Imagine a woman who has carried to term, with all the hormonal journeys she has taken, her dreams for the coming child, the nursery now ready, who must make the decision whether, in a dire circumstance (a child born with no brain, for instance), to abort or just make comfortable at that point. Do you really want to insert yourself - through your government - into that heartbreaking scenario?
I appreciate the concerns of people who struggle with this issue. Their expressed belief in the "value of human life” would be more reliable if they were also committed to life once birth occurs, for health care and education and equality in opportunity. When "No-Choice" advocates no longer protect an unborn “tiny person’s activity, kicking, sucking its thumb,” they assess the born and their mothers as "on their own," and freeloaders if they need help.
Martin, your feelings on this issue are clear. However, show even some reluctance to endorse gun-ready violence and bloodshed against your fellow countrymen for concocted and unfounded political accusations of hatred of country, and I will consider that you’re not blowing editorial smoke about your "reverence for [all] life.”
Kelly Scoles,
Fillmore