Boy, talk about a weak effort to misdirect from the point.
In response to the shallow coverage of the latest abortion statistics released by the South Dakota Department of Health, I wrote a letter to the Rapid City Journal .
My letter was published earlier this month:
The recent Rapid City Journal article about the latest South Dakota abortion statistics and the accompanying Rapid Replies online highlight some important issues.
While many comments focused on women's rights, a woman's right to do with her body ends (ignoring for a moment drug and prostitution laws) where another human being's body begins. Is the unborn child is a human life? Since the unborn child has unique human DNA from the moment of conception, science tells us that the unborn child is indeed a unique human life.
Further, the most stunning part of the abortion statistics has been inexplicably left out of all but one I've read about the report.
The statistics indicate that while the percentage of abortions done for rape was 0.4% and the percentage for health reasons was 1.5% (the two reasons most often cited for rejecting the 2006 abortion ban), the percentage done because "the mother did not desire to have the child" was 84.6%.
So we kept abortion for the 1.9% that a majority of voters said we must have the option to abort, while at least 84.6% were killed for convenience.
Why can't we admit we want abortion for retroactive birth control?
Not only the Journal, but pretty much every other media outlet seemed focused on whether condoms were working or not, rather than how many unborn children were being killed and why. Especially when the statistics boldly pointed out that the vast majority of the abortions in 2006 were conducted purely as retroactive birth control (84.6%), and less than 2% fell within the exceptions that voters insisted must be in any abortion ban that year.
It seemed (and still does) to me that the obviously impactful part of the statistics, the elephant in the room, was being ignored.
Now today comes a letter to the Journal in response to mine. This one comes Helen Crosswait of Spearfish:
Missive misinforms on major biology, marginalizing dads
In a missive from Bob Ellis (Jan. 6), he refers to retroactive birth control. However, one extremely pertinent issue was blatantly omitted from his informative material.
One sentence referring to “the mother who did not desire to have the child” left out the word father (as in: father and mother). There were obviously two people involved here and I feel quite certain Bob Ellis is most certainly aware of that. If he isn’t, some education on how babies are made needs to be forthcoming before any further virgin births take place.
HELEN CROSSWAIT
Spearfish
Was there any implication in my letter that men were not involved in the conception of babies, aborted ones or otherwise?
Did you also notice that the word "abortion"--the very object of my letter and the article about which I wrote my letter--was not mentioned once in Crosswait's response. Why was that? Could it have something to do with the same reason the "mainstream" media avoided the issue of abortion (in an article about abortion statistics) and instead focused on sex education?
But here's something that apparently Crosswait doesn't realize: the decision to abort, legally at least, is totally the woman's decision. If a man wants the child to live and the woman wants to kill it, there isn't jack squat he can do to stop that abortion.
It actually says “The mother did not desire to have the child” (Crosswait slighly incorrectly quoted my letter, probably for grammatical flow) on the official state report. That isn't my language; it's what the report says.
Oh, it's true that in reality, many times men (husbands, boyfriends, etc.) coerce women into getting abortions. These men are obviously as morally culpable--or more--than the women in these cases.
But the father has no legal right to protect his child: the affirmative decision to abort the child is completely the woman's.
Maybe I should thank Crosswait for exposing yet another logical and moral inconsistency about abortion. That is, if there are enough people with logical faculties and moral discernment left in our culture to notice.
How's that for equality? Takes two to make the child, only one (as long as it's female) to kill it.
4 comments:
Bob - ideologies based on such inconsistencies surely can't stand forever. The more they open their mouth the less they make sense. I see the foundation under their whole fascade crumbling. It's only a matter of time and Planned Parenthood will be discredited and Roe v. Wade overturned. Be encouraged and keep pointing out the cracks in the pillars holding this up. It'll soon collapse like the bridge in Minneapolis under the weight of the truth.
I concur with Steve. Political support for abortion weakens every year, especially among young people. In 1976, when I graduated from school, a pro-life student took great personal risks in taking a stand publicly for the unborn child. Opponents would have slapped him down quickly, verbally and sometimes physically. Polls today find as much as 50% of college-age students opposed to abortion on demand. Kate O'Bierne at National Review Online discusses this and other interesting facts such as the myth that women of the early women's movement such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were "pro-choice." This was not true; both women condemned the practice of abortion.
Mr. Ellis, the cause grows stronger year to year. We who respect God's gift of life only need to keep the faith and soldier on. We have a few more battles to fight, but the outcome of the war is in little doubt.
I couldn't agree more.
I particularly agree with the points about father’s rights. I would add to that though something that our friends on the side of infanticide often raise:
Male responsibility as well as rights.
It’s sickening to me that so many single parent (never married) or broken families have Men who refuse to pay their child support or often even to be involved in their children’s lives. I don’t even like to call them “fathers”. Fathers are involved intimately with their kids no matter what obstacles are placed in their ways. They will fight for the right to pay and be an integral part of raising their children beyond the money issue.
I know, there are many who are denied that opportunity because the former girl-friend or spouse resists granting opportunities as way to extort more support, but I’m talking about the dozens of men I personally am acquainted with who have all the moral sense of a Bull Angus in heat.
Mount ‘em and dump ‘em.
Furthermore, I think all South Dakotans of good conscience should sign the petition to get a new anti-abortion referendum on the ballot. My understanding is that it has clear exceptions for rape, incest (the two adding up to the ridiculous percentage above), and the life of the mother (not health) that supposedly so many pro life people were successfully convinced it should have had by the un-Healthy Families Coalition.
I liked the law that passed our legislative muster in 2006 much better but this would eliminate the vast majority of abortions done in this state at least. It would also allow us to advance the "ball" almost all the way to the goal and perhaps encourage those afraid of appearing close-minded in the eyes of the media/liberal coalition to Cowboy Up and go the rest of the way.
I'm not associated with this particular petition drive in any way other than wanting to get involved with anyone gutsy enough to charge into the hate filled fire of the opposition again and do what's right because it's right as opposed to what is expedient.
I refuse to allow the pro-death lobby and their willing accomplices in the traditional media to browbeat me into thinking that: "I'm just sick of this subject and tired of this fight and don't want to deal with this again."
I hate strife as much as the next South Dakotan. I want to live in peace, as much as I am able, with everyone. I desire that we could at least agree that live baby = GOOD, murdered baby = BAD.
Unfortunately, we can't even get everyone to think in terms of Good/Bad unless it's narrowly defined as what Good or Bad for them in an intrinsically selfish sense so I must strive for the lives of those who are allowed no voice in this culture except ours.
Bob, I feel a little foolish climbing up on my soap box my first time commenting on your blog and haranguing everyone on a blog that probably is read by a majority of people who understand what the pro-aborts refuse to understand or, more probably admit.
But, I believe that the time now is, and indeed has been for 40 years now, for all of us to show: (in the words of the old Carman song)…”a little bit more Conviction” and then to give that Conviction, Mouths to speak, Arms to work and comfort those hurt by this hideous practice, and Legs to walk out our talk and take one more step and then another until this horror is erased in South Dakota and indeed throughout our whole nation.
Thanks for the comment, Jim. I agree with you across the board.
And don't feel foolish about your comment. You're welcome to borrow the soapbox here anytime you'd like. I allow comments here that I agree with and disagree with, as long as there's no profanity, prepared campaign statements, and it isn't off topic.
So come back and climb aboard anytime!
Thanks again!
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