November 15, 2005

A Thought from George Bernard Shaw

For a nice non-controversial posting , I thought I'd share the Thought for Today from the Ancestry Daily News e-mail newsletter:

"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas."

Posted by elizabeth at 09:16 AM | Comments (0)

My Unsolicited Opinion on a Controversy

Here's what I think: if people wanted to decrease abortion to negligible frequency today, that could actually be accomplished. Women have been getting rid of unwanted babies ever since society began to attach a stigma to certain births (those out of wedlock, for instance), but in the last thirty years for the first time, that is no longer necessary.

Now we have birth control, multiple options (some better and safer than others, but still--there are options).

So pregnancy can be prevented. But it requires educating all women about how babies get made and then giving them the tools to prevent it.

I find it astonishing that someone can say both that they are against women having access to a safe abortion and that they are simultaneously against birth control. That is not an argument about "saving the lives of unborn babies", not in the least. One truly concerned about unborn babies would be all about birth control and education. This is about something else entirely. So here's my take about some of those who call themselves anti-abortion or pro-life--they are not being honest (possibly even with themselves) about their true objective/objections.

Note that this is carefully not a comment on my own feelings about abortion. It is simply a comment on the hypocrisy I cannot fail to see in the contradictory position expressed most often by the "pro-life" camp.

Posted by elizabeth at 09:12 AM | Comments (2)