I wish that I could blog from work.
Miss Kate sent me this link. (registration required)
The Abortion Debate No One Wants to Have
It is so exactly on target that I wanted to put the link up as soon as I saw it - but I couldn't. However, I see that many other bloggers picked up the ball and ran with it.
The question that I haven't heard answered by the pro-choice folk is this one.
At what point does the right to abort become a duty to abort?
I greatly fear that the predominant ethos in our culture has become utility. Time and money seem to trump all other values. I was explaining to a group recently that part of the reason docs throw birth control pills at just about every 'female complaint' is that they do offer great symptom relief, and don't require careful or painstaking detective work to get to the root of the problem. When a doc has the office manager reminding him or her that it takes seeing 3 or more patients an hour just to cover overhead, said doc is not going to be highly motivated to take 30 or 40 minutes getting into long discussions.
This is a very good question. Along with the question of if it's a right, does the state have a duty to pay for it? In Missouri, the state was ordered to transport a prisoner to have an abortion. The abortion is at the prisoner's expense, but the state has to pay for the transportation and guards.
This is a good article. This is the issue that always puzzles me: "he said he believes that prospective parents have a moral obligation to undergo prenatal testing and to terminate their pregnancy to avoid bringing forth a child with a disability, because it was immoral to subject a child to the kind of suffering he or she would have to endure." So...having your brain stem pierced with scissors, your brain sucked out by a vacuum, your skull collapsed and your body dragged ex utero in parts isn't suffering? Perhaps his parents should have undergone prenatal testing to avoid bringing forth a child without conscience, so we do not have to endure the suffering of his callous and self-serving drivel.
Anita >
Immoral to have a disabled child? That's a frighteningly cold way of looking at other people. And if it's immoral to allow your child to endure suffering, then it is immoral to have children. In the immortal words of the Dread Pirate Roberts: "Life is Pain." Living to avoid suffering is not living. Eliminating people because they will not be mentally or physically "perfect" is immoral.