Pissed off Wiccan for Peace: 04/25/2004

Friday, April 30, 2004

The March has come and gone. Those of us who couldn't attend lit a candle for them in church on Sunday. Everyone is, as usual, putting in their two cents. I have a pretty well established position of the whole concept of abortion. I went back through my archives but couldn't find where I had put in on this blog so I guess I can do it now, so as to record it for posterity.

I am pro-choice. I find it the absolute pinnacle of arrogance to be otherwise. This is one of those topics that positively burns my chimichungas when it comes to the Wrong. They want less government interference, no laws limiting a person's right to bear arms but when it comes to a woman's body they want absolute governmental sovereignty. Don't tell me how to worship but tell her what she can or can't do with her uterus.

The evil gun dealer on 302 has on his sign something like "Smile your mother chose not to be a murder. If it cramps your lifestyle murder it". A supreme case of irony if you ask me considering the source. The fact that he looks at it from that perspective shows how little he knows about the entire topic. Yes, there are some women who use abortion as a form of birth control. Do I think that's right? No. Do I want to smack them and shove an Ortho Evra down their throats? Yes. But it's not my business to tell anyone else what they can do with their own bodies.

For the women who get abortions because they really can't afford to be pregnant, or raise the child, I say that's a decision that it is your right and responsibility to make. For yourself and for any already born children you may have.

For anyone who would force a woman to go through an unwanted pregnancy, these are my requirements for you. You must:

Pay the medical bills, lost wages and any additional pregnancy-induced expenses incurred for at least one woman from the time you intercede until the time of delivery

Pay the hospital bills for labor and delivery and the expenses incurred by the baby after delivery. (Trust me, they are separate)

Adopt the baby

If you don't do #3 you must pay any and all fees incurred by the birth mother in her efforts to have the baby adopted

If for any reason the baby isn't adopted, say for health reasons, and the birth mother is forced to keep the baby, you will pay all medical bills and/or carry this child on your insurance and you will pay child support including daycare, educational expenses, toys, books, food, summer camp, clothes, extra curricular activities, etc., until the child reaches adulthood where he/she can support his/herself. If the child is so debilitated that they are unable to EVER support themselves, you will pay for their perpetual care until they pass on.

Because this is what you are forcing this woman to go through while you sit back on your self-riteous, holier-than-thou ass telling someone else what to do with their life.

A child is not a punishment for a mistake some poor teenager made. Forcing them to give birth to/raise a child as a lesson to not have sex does nothing. It is a lose/lose situation for the teenager and the child. If you are so worried about it, fund programs in your local school district to provide sex education, to provide condoms to the students. Donate to the local Planned Parenthood, start a counseling group for teens. Do something to help PREVENT the pregnancy in the first place!!! That way, the teenager won't get pregnant, and the fetus won't be aborted. Do something constructive instead of destructive.

And get your own damn life so you don't have to go muckin about in other people's.

posted by Kimber at 3:05 PM :: ~#~

Monday, April 26, 2004

We had a wonderful speaker in church yesterday. He reminded me of a work written by one of my all-time favorite human beings Carl Sagan. Sagan was one of the most spiritual people I have ever encountered regardless of the fact that he was a self-proclaimed athiest. He knew the wonder and beauty of the universe as well as the wonder and ugliness of the human soul. Here is a bit of it that I wanted to post and share in this time of political self-importance...

(From Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
by Carl Sagan, Random House, 1994)

Earth (the dot in the middle) as seen from 3.7 billion miles away by the Voyager 1 spacecraft, on 6/6/1990.

... Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

The ultimate perspective shift, eh?

posted by Kimber at 11:55 AM :: ~#~