5.02.2005

the ultimate hypocrisy

You all know how I love to blog about hypocrisy. Well, this one just blew me away.

I've long known that many women on the front lines of the anti-choice movement have had abortions. In this article, the Pro-Choice Action Network of Canada, has documented some of their stories.

++++++

"The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion": When the Anti-Choice Choose

By Joyce Arthur (copyright © September 2000)

Abortion is a highly personal decision that many women are sure they'll never have to think about until they're suddenly faced with an unexpected pregnancy. But this can happen to anyone, including women who are strongly anti-choice. So what does an anti-choice woman do when she experiences an unwanted pregnancy herself? Often, she will grin and bear it, so to speak, but frequently, she opts for the solution she would deny to other women -- abortion.

In the spring of 2000, I collected the following anecdotes directly from abortion doctors and other clinic staff in North America, Australia, and Europe. The stories are presented in the providers' own words, with minor editing for grammar, clarity, and brevity. Names have been omitted to protect privacy.

++++++

Read it here. Go. Read.

10 comments:

Sass said...

An excellent article, I'm quite glad you pointed it out. This is not the first time I've heard about situations where anti-choice individuals still reserve their right to choose when they have an unplanned pregnancy. In high school, one of my friends came from a very political family. One of her uncles was in the House of Representatives, and vehemently anti-choice. Turns out that not long into his term, his daughter (my friend's cousin) became pregnant and was convinced by her parents to get an abortion quickly and quietly (or else risk tarnishing the family name).

David Cho said...

That is really sad. Kinda like how everyone hates laywers until they need one.

laura k said...

Sassy, thanks for that. Sad how this is not uncommon.

David, good analogy.

I think an unwanted pregnancy is one of the saddest things in the world. My motto is "every child a wanted child".

Anonymous said...

Makes me wonder what the pro-lifers in the whole Schiavo mess would have said were they to suffer the same state ... but that's what happens when people rage against something they have never experienced firsthand.

Some people rail against so many issues for the mere sake of their own morality says so - until it happens to them. Now, logic would say that it would be then that they would understand. But, as we all know, people are idiots, and I'm sure that days after the abortion (or whatever else it was they did against their so-called hardline morality) they were right back out there railing against it again.

It is indeed interesting just how malleable someone's moral standards can be when it's that person's neck on the line. And it need not be social issues - it happens in business all the time.

Remember media megalomaniac Rupert Murdoch's initial dismissal of the Internet as a mass communication medium, and his assessment that it would only further fragment the market, hence ruining papers, TV and radio? The second he saw how much money there was to be made in it, and how each of his competitors were jumping onto online media technologies, his he was all over it like a 12-year old on a Sears catalogue. Now his entire media empire is immersed in and bound together by the Net.

You can say, yeah, it's just business, and electronic media has worked out, and I'd say you're half right. This is a guy who became an offline media folk hero when he fought the web tooth and nail in defense of newspapers, radio and television, only to turn around and, without admission of having made a mistake or anything, suddenly announces the Net's goodness as if nothing ever happened. He then watches the money roll in by merging it all into one package and speeding up the rate of info-flow, which we all know serves to slow the rate of info-intake by creating info-overload. Never mind how much the newspaper and radio industries have been crippled by the Net (online newspaper, radio sites still cost more than they make - but do they have a choice anymore?).

Guess I'd just like to see one high-profile person who has a moral turnaround admit he/she was wrong in what they thought, and why it is they are changing their mind. That would work as a lesson to the rest of us - perhaps educate people and make them think. When they do it silently, it just makes people angry and they won't think about it.

Look at baseball. Steroids. Big Mac wouldn't admit doing it, wouldn't implicate any other player, wouldn't even say whether he saw anyone do it (without names). Instead he says let's not talk about the past, let's move forward. Total Rupert. He is basically saying he has no issue with steroids, they are not a problem, let's ignore who did/said what and move on without exposing hypocrisy. And he wonders why the world hates him now despite his own. It's why I like Giambi. It's why everyone does. Guy broke down and apologized - called it his own mistake - didn't say exactly what for - didn't have to, we all knew, and he didn't try to deflect the attention away. That works as a lesson for those in favor of the drugs to maybe think again. After all, here's a user who did. Big Mac only accomplished saying if you don't see it, it isn't there - like Rupert's past, and the anti-choicers - which only teaching people that you can get away with whatever it is you hide.

Kyle_From_Ottawa said...

Totally off topic:

The new War Museum is opening here in Ottawa. This museum is supposed to show war in its true form, not the glamorized "we're the good guys" form usually reserved for such things.

Somehow, given the way things are down there at the moment, I can't see a similar national museum opening up in the states.


-----------------------
Our task is to show how Canadians have conducted themselves in war," says Laura Brandon, the museum's curator. "To show how it has brutalized some and how it has produced heroes in other respects… and how it reflects the complexity of the human condition in military times."

The complexity is evident in an abstract portrait of Kyle Brown, a private who was convicted of manslaughter in the torture and killing of a Somali teenager in 1993. That incident remains a stain on Canada's peacekeeping record.

"If you look at his hands, he's got a black cube in one hand and a white cube in the other hand, which symbolize the choices he could have made," Brandon says.

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1115070801597_1/?hub=Canada

laura k said...

"It's why I like Giambi. It's why everyone does. Guy broke down and apologized - called it his own mistake - didn't say exactly what for - didn't have to, we all knew, and he didn't try to deflect the attention away."

Pardon me while I roll my eyes until they stay back in my head.

Giambi didn't say what he was apologizing as a legal position. He made every attempt to deflect and deny until he was completely trapped, just like everyone else.

I don't care about steroids either way - some people are always going to cheat, at anything - but Giambi gets booed and heckled almost everywhere he goes. Everyone does not love him. Not sure what you're basing that on.

laura k said...

"Somehow, given the way things are down there at the moment, I can't see a similar national museum opening up in the states."

In fact, there's an outcry any time anyone tries to inject reality or balance into a discussion of any US war. Especially, of course, WWII. All hell broke loose when the Smithsonian planned an exhibit about Hiroshima - they eventually cancelled the whole thing.

Thanks for the info, Kyle. I saw something about the War Museum and meant to look further, this reminds me to do it.

Anonymous said...

"everyone" is a reference to the surprisingly gentle press coverage JG received up here (seems the press respected what he did do given the position he was in) as opposed to the others who took much heat for their nonadmissions that proved to be admissions of more than their guilt (that being the guilt of others) - ie Mac & co. Should've been more clear on that.

laura k said...

oh, interesting. the fans are all over him down here. (of course it would help if he would ever hit!)

Anonymous said...

Good Morning
ALPF
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/news/editorial/11558567.htm